I live in the Umbrian hills with my Iranian-American husband Josie and our two daughters, now 16 and 19, working from home as a freelancing writer, translator and book reviewer. I met Josie while passing through Bamako, Mali, in 2000, and by 2003 we decided to stop living out of our backpacks and settle here. It's a beautiful place, but also one that I need to go away from and come back to on a regular basis - as do the kids.

我为什么加入 Couchsurfing

I love to travel, not necessarily to check countries and sites of a bucket list, but to really learn something new about a place and its people - including people making that place their new home (as we did here in Italy). In fact, most of the traveling I do and have done in the past is visiting the many friends and family members we have all over the world - and having them visit us here in Italy.

兴趣

• theater
• reading
• music
• opera
• backpacking
• outdoors
• bicycle riding
• hiking mountains

我做过的一件不可思议的事情

Went down the Niger river in Mali on a local traders' pinasse boat from Mopti to Timbuktu.

教，学，和分享

I can share our experience with living in rural Italy, raising two girls here being a mixture of three different cultures ourselves (German, American, Iranian). How it is living with trilingual and quadricultural kids. How you can travel a lot, while staying on a low budget, with children.

I'd like to learn about people and the places where they live. What makes the place special, what makes it challenging. I think that life is always a compromise, and you have to try things and pick what works for you, always avoiding to lament what "could have been".

我可以与沙发主分享些什么

My own and our kids' experience with adapting to different cultures (see above), things to do, see and taste around Spoleto, where we live, our experiences traveling to many different parts of the world.

我游览过的国家

Albania, Armenia, Austria, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Finland, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Macedonia, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Niger, Northern Ireland, Norway, Oman, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Senegal, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Togo, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, United Kingdom

我居住过的国家

Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, United States