CURRENT MISSION

To live with grace, strength & compassion. To create beautiful art that expresses the ideas & experiences I feel compelled to understand and share. To learn every day, developing ideas, knowledge & experiences as I wander. To create a more peaceful world.

ABOUT ME

I am busy lady, with numerous passions and interests that I dedicate myself to. I work for a charity, and want to be a meaningful contributor to international development. I have trained all my life as a dancer, and continue to perform (despite a debilitating arm injury that has left me with a crooked arm!) I am terribly inspired by my work as a choreographer. Photography is one of my great passions, and I am a published photographer and writer. I am incredibly fortunate to have some of the best friends and family in the world. My sister is my soul mate, and we have a good laugh together, all the time. I love a good laugh, and have a number of sides to my personality that are constantly surprising even myself! I am kind and warm-hearted, with a quiet exterior and a feisty, soulful interior. I love to laugh and sing and dance. I am pretty well easy-going about living arrangements - I get along with most anybody.

PHILOSOPHY

I believe in adventure and in being impractical. It is my intention to do everything that I can to find creative solutions to suffering and inequities. I believe that all people should live with compassion, first and foremost.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

This is my first journey into the world of couch surfing, and I have heard only wonderful things about it. I will be spending two weeks in Europe shortly, and would like this to be me CS introduction.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Good friends of mine swear by it!

Interests

Oh, sheesh. So many.

I love dance, beautiful music (especially waltzes), reading, wine, writing, laughing, wandering the globe, and forests. French literature. French language. Dark chocolate. Piano. Loud music. Paleontology, anthropology, evolution and paleoanthropology. African history. Ballet. Nature shows.

• arts
• writing
• literature
• singing
• performing arts
• photography
• dancing
• ballet dancing
• chocolate
• wine
• vegetarian
• reading
• traveling
• music
• piano
• surfing
• cricket
• anthropology
• history

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies:
Charlie Chaplin films, When Harry Met Sally, Annie Hall, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Paris Je T'aime, Mission Impossible, Jurassic Park, The Squid and the Whale, American Beauty, Black Swan.

Music:
Nina Simone, Johnny Cash, Stevie Nicks, Radiohead, Tchaikovsky, Robert Plant & Allison Krauss, '90s Alanis Morissette, Etta James, Depeche Mode, Louis Armstrong, Janis Ian, Yann Tiersen.

Books/Authors:
Simone de Beauvoir (She Came to Stay, Prime of Life, The Mandarins, The Second Sex, and so forth); Jean-Paul Sartre (Nausea); Jared Diamond (Collapse, Guns, Germs & Steel, The Third Chimpanzee, and so forth); Virginia Woolf; John Steinbeck (East of Eden); Roald Dahl's short stories; Ernest Hemingway.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I have taught at an HIV/AIDS orphanage in Kenya, worked within the Congolese refugee community in Uganda, had misadventures that took me to Gombe forest and its chimps on Lake Tanganyika, travelled alone through countries and continents, spent the first year of my life sleeping under a piano, been a trained dancer since age 3, lived creatively as a choreographer, dancer, writer and photographer, been a fudge maker, gone through ups and downs like anyone, been in a travelling circus, spent time in a town and butterfly conservatory on the edge of the Amazon, been lost many times, and am a vegetarian who has tried ostrich, llama, crocodile, alligator, cricket and camel.

Teach, Learn, Share

I am able to teach/share about creativity, literature, the art that I am creating, African history, evolution and the history of hominids, international development, working in a charity and working with small NGOs around Africa. I can share about my odd, interesting life which has taken me across continents, to life in a travelling circus, to forests and cities and hovels and mansions. I can share thoughts and thoughts and thoughts.

I would like to learn any perspectives that are different than my own, and that challenge my own. I enjoy hearing about projects that people are working on, and their life history. I would like to learn about being more open and optimistic, and about living in this moment. I find that two new people meeting inevitable leads to sharing, and you can't predict what that will look like.

Countries I’ve Visited

Benin, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Morocco, Peru, Tanzania, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Canada