CURRENT MISSION

Learn Norwegian, understand Norwegians!

ABOUT ME

**I have no space to host until the middle of June! Completely inundated with requests! Sorry, guys***

“There (s)he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

How to write about yourself without writing about what you do, or other people. What are you?

Not what you like, not where you're from, not where you've been, not where you live. Not what you study or who you hang out with.

What's even left?

Not emotions, not personality traits...

Good luck!

PHILOSOPHY

Liberty for all.

Pourquoi je suis sur Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

**ANYONE ASKING ABOUT GEORGIA**I got a few messages, thought I'd put something easy to read. Yes, it's safe. I think it's one of the safest countries I've ever been in. Yes, there are plenty of interesting things to do. Hiking, swimming, skiing, exploring, hunting, horseback riding, trekking...it's wild. Yes, the people LOVE foreigners. LOVE THEM. You will be more loved than perhaps ever before. Yes, they will want to take you back to their houses, fill you with wine, and feed you till you burst. Yes, the food is excellent.The best advice for Georgia: Just run with it. Let it be, go along, play it by ear. Nothing much is planned here, but it generally works out. If you: like to plan - forget it. Like to know exactly what's going on - forget it. Want to know what you're eating - forget it. Just say 'ara horsi' if you really can't eat meat. Georgia rules :)I love showing people around Adelaide, although this year I'm actually travelling through Europe, so you will need to find other cool people to show you around. There are some, don't worry.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Now I live in Bergen. Before, I lived in Australia. While living in Australia, I travelled Europe for a year. It was awesome, and people are awesome. People are what make places amazing.

Have a list:

Well, since I've been in Europe, I've stayed with some awesome folks.

Right before I jetted off for my year overseas, I stayed with Sam & his housemates - cool bunch of guys :) very friendly, very Austro-polish ;)

Nataly & the crew were my first ever hosts for Europe, in Berlin. They are awesome! Berlin is awesome! Go to Berlin!

Adam hosted me in Krakow, and we had fun having multilingual conversations in pubs (knajpy) - he spoke Polish, I spoke English, we understood each other perfectly. Great way to lazily train a language ;)

Coen hosted me in Amsterdam, and showed me the more normal side of the city. I hope he creates his wall, with quotes for why people still eat meat - mine was "I'm scared of cows, and they're tasty."

In Russia I had amazing hosts. Really, truly amazing. They just made it even more of an awesome experience, and I'm very grateful to them. First up were the girls in Krasnodar, who were just fantastic! Great group, and they have cool friends as well. Definitely hope I see them again.

In Moscow my host cancelled at the last-minute, and I was lucky enough to be hosted by Genrikh and the lovely Vika, in a very nicely located Muscovian flat. It was awesome, and they're really amazing hosts. Masters. If you could get a black-belt in hosting, these two would have it. Fantastic!

Finally in Petersburg I stayed with Natalia, and her cool flatmates. She has an awesome dog who goes for adventures, and she was kind enough to show me around, and listen to my ramblings. Great girl, great city, amazing museums.

I have also met a few people through couch surfing, I showed some very sweet Barcelonians around Adelaide, which was awesome, and I like going to CS meetings. It's nice to have this site, it's like a filter for finding open minded individuals :)

When in Istanbul, I found the CS meetings, or hearing from different travellers a great way to make new friends. I think I'd have been much lonelier there without this site!!

Centres d'intérêt

People
Languages
Cultures
Ideas
Discussions

Anything, really...

• dogs
• writing
• dining
• wine
• running
• walking
• pub crawls
• reading
• tv
• traveling
• equestrian
• hiking
• hunting
• surfing
• snorkeling
• skydiving
• skiing
• swimming
• languages
• last minute travel

Morceaux de musique, films et livres

Asian films are amazing. Anything from delicious Miyazaki to Wong Kar Wai, to crazy Korean horror...

I inhale books. I love reading, it's amazing. Japanese writers, Russian writers, and South American writers are my favourite. I love how they construct reality.

George Orwell is also amazing. Everyone should read 1984, hell, do it for language practise - native tongue + a translation into whatever language you're looking to learn.

Also, wrap your mind around Catch-22. Let me know how that goes.

For music, I love Australian artists. There is a lot of talent here, for only 22 million or so.

Une aventure extraordinaire que j'ai vécue

Skydiving
Skiing in Treble Cone - amazing, spectacular views.
Snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef
Snorkeling in Thailand!
Seeing elephants walking the street in Bangkok
Teaching adorable little kids in Georgia
Being showered with gifts in Georgia, what an amazing country, what amazing people.
Travelling is amazing in general.
Getting married. It's so much fun! I never knew.

Enseignez, apprenez, partagez

Teach? Well, I know some good foreign language sources, and I definitely think that if you want to learn to speak, you need to spend as much time as possible just listening, reading, watching because translations only go so far, and if the links are not made directly to concepts in your mind, you will forever be translating.

Here are some sites/videos I recommend:

For many romance languages, and English as well,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/ is a great free resource.

Spanish

http://spanish-podcast.com/
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/spe/

French

French in Action - it's an old TV series where they only speak French, and they show you situations. I'm sure you can download it somewhere off the internet :)

Russian

I have some good iPod apps for this, if you search there are many, some free, some not.

Mandarin

http://chinesepod.com/

Polish - well, I was raised in Polish. I really recommend exposing young children to many languages, it really helps them to know how to learn more languages later in life :)

Pays que j'ai visités

Austria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Latvia, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russian Federation, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey

Pays dans lesquels j'ai vécu

Australia, Georgia, Norway, Turkey

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