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Portland, Oregon, United States
@aubreygates
Member since 2013
CURRENT MISSION cruise, grind, meditate ABOUT ME I moved around a lot growing up, so I have a perpetual wanderlust. I'm a bit of an idealist and an optimist, but luckily this is balanced out by my dark humor and biting sarcasm. I'm a fiction writer, piano player, vegan chef, jack of all trades. I like biking, hiking, camping, kayaking, climbing or most activities outdoors. I've been teaching English in Yunnan, China for the past two years. PHILOSOPHY "we get bored with the routine and crave beauty and excitement fire is beautiful and we know that if we get too close it will kill us but what does that matter it is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while" -The Lesson of the Moth
Interested in Adventure Sports
Interested in Books & Literature
Fluent in Chinese (Simplified)
Learning French
Music, Movies, and Books
Movies I've recently watched: Hateful Eight, a Mongolian documentary, a documentary about an Israeli composer, an Indian band, and the guitarist from Radiohead making an album. Music I've listened to lately: Wye Oak, Eternal Summers, Junun. Books I've read recently: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Dropping Ashes on the Buddha by Seung Sahn.
One Amazing Thing I've Done
One? Let's do five: Trekking with Tibetan nomads in 四川 (Sichuan). Staying at Thich Nhat Hanh's monastery in Vietnam. Hiking the 怒江 (Nujiang) valley. Sleeping in a treehouse in Laos and waking up to the wild calls of Gibbon monkeys. Hiking and camping in Tian Shan, Xinjiang.
My Interests
Asia, writing, veganism, Buddhism, literature, electronica, running, biking, films, folk, mountains, food.
