CURRENT MISSION

Embrace with abandon.

ABOUT ME

I'm currently a graduate student in medical anthropology in the United States. I'm writing up my dissertation and trying to have cool thoughts about social theory, art, social movements, health, agency, power, and related topics. :) I'm also deeply involved in the US Midwest psytrance scene (I discovered psytrance while in South Africa doing fieldwork for my Ph.D), so I definitely love music and dancing.

PHILOSOPHY

Thought: If anyone ever needs to know, or if it helps explain my character, the seven writers who most influenced me during my adolescence and early twenties were as follows: Hermann Hesse, Jorge Luis Borges, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, Brian Andreas, Don Nigro, and Leo Tolstoy.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

I have returned from my field research in Johannesburg, South Africa and am back home in Saint Louis, MO. While I'm not in a position to offer a couch at the moment, I'd love to get a cup of coffee with people or show them around town.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I actually haven't had much of a chance to participate in the Couch Surfing world. I'm hoping to remedy that soon!

Interests

Mmm...I would have to say these would be my work (medical anthropology; sub-Saharan Africa; health arts activism), the global psytrance community, reading novels (classic literature and sci-fi/fantasy, mostly), traveling, rocking out to classic 70s funk music, mixing music, aerial silks. Things like that. :)

• arts
• writing
• literature
• make up
• dancing
• coffee
• reading
• traveling
• music
• surfing
• anthropology

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

1. Getting to visit my ancestral castle in Scotland.
2. Dodging elephants during a roadtrip on the backroads of rural Botswana (at night, while listening to Michael Jackson's "Thriller"...which amused me to no end).
3. Really...mostly just *being* in other places, with other people. Experiencing "being" in a different space from my normal one. Having conversations with strangers, having strangers become friends. Those make up the amazing moments.

Countries I’ve Visited

Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, United Kingdom, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Countries I’ve Lived In

South Africa, United States