HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING I've surfed and attended CS events all over Europe, had my first hosting experience in France, and I finally have my own "couch" here in Toronto! COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE So I really, truly stumbled into this Couchsurfing thing. I was on exchange in Utrecht, a city in the middle of the Netherlands. It was a sunny afternoon which, when you live in the Netherlands, means you HAVE to leave the house. I was walking around Utrecht looking for something to do when two people offered me a free hug. I accepted and I asked what they were doing. They asked if I wanted to join and next thing I knew, I had a sign and was walking around the city with them giving away "gratis omhelzing" for the next few hours. Turns out I had stumbled onto a Couchsurfing meeting. I followed this bunch to someone's house for dinner and a night of board games. After meeting them and hearing about their Couchsurfing experiences, I had to try it for myself. Since then I've Couchsurfed in Brussels, Oslo, Bergen, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Budapest, Strasbourg, Basel, and Lyon. My first hosting experience was in Strasbourg. Now that I finally have my own place, I hope to do it again!

I'm going to go on the record and say I'm more of a TV person. If you want to have a passionate discussion about Game of Thrones, GIRLS, Mad Men, and all the usual HBO/AMC suspects, you're in for a treat. I'm bad at describing what kind of music I like despite having worked in a record store, so I'll list some: The Smiths, Kings of Convenience, The Knife, Beach House, Robyn, Bjork, Death from Above 1979, Royksopp, and pretty much anything 90s.