CURRENT MISSION

Get back to UK alive and unarrested by American border cops

ABOUT ME

We are spending a year in South America - mostly in Bolivia - to learn Spanish, paint, and write about the social movements we find.

After finishing a degree in English, Toby has been working in IT-related sales and marketing for the past year purely to save money and has successfully retained some of the things that he ever liked about himself in that time.

NJ has been finishing a degree in medieval literature (of multiple languages) and is keen to escape the general smogginess and essential smugness of London.

We want to meet people who have a lot to say about their lives and opinions, so we're willing to try out any conversation no matter how erudite, braindead or whimsical it may be.

Did I mention drinking? We like this...

PHILOSOPHY

Getting fucked up in vaguely stimulating intellectual and political environments. NJ is frequently worried that Toby will martyr himself to the revolution someday, but Toby secretly wants to live to see the future.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Toby couchsurfed a few times two years ago in South America and has hosted a few people when back in Oxford in return. NJ is new to the whole thing.

This time round it should be even better for the people who host us because NJ is a great cook alongside her many other skills.

Interests

Toby: Music, mythology, anti-capitalist politics, lists, writing things like silly articles (http://www.geeks.co.uk/20816-chris-morris-funnier-than-youll-ever-be), more serious articles, corporate blogs (http://www.saffroninteractive.com/whats-in-a-moodle/) poetry, diagrams, prose; reading everything including Shakespeare, Blake, books, Bahktin, Conrad, subtitles, Woolf and Joyce. I've had a stab at making comedy but never hit the big-time and had an avatar appear in GTA San Andreas like Ricky Gervais (have a look at our finest work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Gt-7HLx5k).

NJ: bards, gods, giantesses and verse rebounding from ice-flows; cooking and watching cooking programmes with a sharply critical eye, athletics (and being stronger than Toby), painting, calligraphy, classical music. Did I mention Vikings?

• writing
• books
• literature
• poetry
• cooking
• drinking
• politics
• reading
• socializing
• painting
• music
• classical music
• guitar
• piano
• violin
• calligraphy
• languages
• mathematics

Music, Movies, and Books

Toby: lots and lots. IDM, extreme metal and hardcore, mathrock, mathcore, post-rock, post-hardcore, post-metal and post-punk... Did I mention acid house, techno and all their many sub-generic variants? I have a big interest in New Journalism, the King James Bible and Finnegands Wake. I love William Burroughs and I'll also be thinking heavily about Nostromo by Joseph Conrad during this trip. Bakhtin and Terry Eagleton's writings really rev my engine. The films of Stanley Kubrick and plenty of other interesting films. I won't say no to Arnie though. Chris Morris is a personal hero of mine, and Armando Ianucci's name brings a small smile to my face.

NJ: In terms of music: ska, classical (Sibellius, Tchaikovksy, Mendelssohn, gabba (gabba gabba gabba...). Much-loved cinema includes the movie of Naked Lunch, Bloom, Lord of the Rings and Juno. Too many books to name, of course, but Flaubert, Charlotte Bronte, Sylvia Plath (Ariel etc), all of T S Eliot, Joyce's Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Shakespeare's Sonnets and Henry IV, John Wilmott, Earl of Rochester (I have a gerbil of the same name).

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Toby: Getting hammered (nearly to death) with the miners in the mines at Potosi, Bolivia, on the night of the Pachamama. That was pretty cool.

NJ: competing in national athletics competitions; driving the whole way around Iceland in the winter!

Teach, Learn, Share

Toby can teach:
- how to use MOODLE!
- lots about English-language literature (you don´t spend two years at Oxford without soaking up a lot of crap...)
- some of the metrical techniques involved in making sweet sweet poesy
- basic charango, guitar and notsobasic violin
- key stage three maths

NJ can teach:
- viola and piano
- athletics
- lots about Old Icelandic, Old Norse and Old English
- how to make a tasty meal

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, United States, Venezuela

Countries I’ve Lived In

Bolivia, United Kingdom