Hi everyone, I'm Jacob! 👋 My wife Mackenzie and I are currently at home in Wilmington and accepting travelers into our home!

We travel ~8 months per year and live at home in NC in the other months. Our longest trip was about 20 months from early 2022 to the end of 2023. We've traveled extensively through the Americas, Europe, and Asia and look forward to spending more time in Africa and Oceania in the years to come!

When traveling, we value immersion - meeting locals, learning languages, and understanding cultures. Add to this a love of adventure and desire to stretch our budget, and the result is we always travel overland by hitchhiking or public transport and couchsurf as much as possible. We've found that CS and hitchhiking have also brought us our best memories from across the world.

As we transition into a more sedentary lifestyle, we're very excited to host any traveling visitors to our beloved town. 😃 If you're a backpacker or on a long trip, we will do our absolute best to find a way to host you. We have much to give back to this community!

Interests

• cooking
• coffee
• reading
• traveling
• geopolitics
• history
• languages
• religion
• food
• nature
• football
• trekking

Music, Movies, and Books

BOOKS
I try to read a book from every country I visit, so I'm always open to suggestions. I love historical fiction. Some favorite authors are John Steinbeck, Khaled Hosseini, and Gabriel García Márquez.

MUSIC and MOVIES
I'm not a huge music or film guy, though I'm always up to hear your favorite local band or relax on a Friday night to a good movie.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

If I have to choose one, it's quitting our good corporate jobs to travel like broke backpackers for 3 years.

But, some favorite travel experiences:

- Hitchhiking 6000km across Arabia,camping in the desert and attending a local wedding between cousins.
- Cruising through the Galapagos, swimming with sharks, sea turtles, and sea lions
- Canoeing the Amazon for five days, finding 5m long anacondas and rare pink river dolphins
- Flying in a helicopter over an erupting volcano in Hawaii
- Witnessing a sacred sky burial while hitchhiking through Tibet
- Hiking to a remote section of the Great Wall of China to sleep in a tower, then waking up to the best sunrise ever
- Living with Orthodox monks on the holy Mount Athos for four days
- Witnessing an epic game of kok boru the Pamir Plateau (horseback capture the flag but the flag is a dead goat)
- Attending the sacred Jamaya festival in Iraq alongside thousands of Yazidis
- Experiencing a birth celebration with the Kalash people in the Hindu Kush mountains of Pakistan
- Exploring the remote Karamoja region of Uganda and uncovering one of Earth's most traditional lifestyles

Teach, Learn, Share

Teach: English, programming, budget travel, cultures around the world.

Learn: Must-try local food, some phrases in your language, and anything else you're interested in.

Share: Anything about our complicated country (USA) - whatever you want to know, we have an opinion! Plus tons of travel stories and tips.

What I Can Share with Hosts

Lots of discussion, cleaning, cooking, travel tips and stories.

Countries I’ve Visited

Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Belgium, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United States, Uzbekistan, Vatican City State, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Sweden, United States