I'm a huge fan of meeting people from different backgrounds (I was a sociology major ages ago), and Couchsurfing has been an incredible way to do that! I can't believe how many amazing people I've stayed with or had stay with me, and I'm sure there will be more.

I ate an entire bowl of edamame before someone told me you aren't supposed to eat the pods. Oh, you mean not embarrassing things? I've seen the light of the blue grotto under Capri, walked through the dead city of Pompeii, played cards with children in a Romanian burn ward, bickered with nuns at midnight on the border of Turkey who refused to call Istanbul anything other than Constantinople, worked on software that's being used on the International Space Station...and the edamame thing.