CURRENT MISSION

Wiggling my toes in as many bodies of water as possible.

ABOUT ME

Hi! I'm Jimmy, and I'm really exciting to finally be giving this a shot. I'm a recent university graduate from Minnesota, getting my license at a high school English teacher. I spent last year living in Bitterfeld in Germany, teaching English to high school students (video-blog about it here http://www.youtube.com/user/jimmydreese?feature=guide). I'm an outgoing, friendly, gung-ho person, trying to make the most of my time by traveling as much as I can.

The most important part of travel for me is meeting people and making a connection. It's so easy (and I'm horribly guilty of this) to go to a place, see the sites, have a wonderful time, but not meet anyone, local or fellow traveler, and then the place becomes little more than a section of a photo album. When I've been able to make a connection with someone in a place I visit, my memories are more bright, I learn immeasurably more about the place, and we can make the world a little bit smaller.

PHILOSOPHY

This year abroad has truly been a year of exploration.. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I believe, searching and finding, and certainly I'm still working it out. I imagine I might be working out my philosophy for the rest of my life. But central tenets of it right now have to do with love, and people coming together, and God, and some more love on top of that. We'll see where the world takes me. :)

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

As of yet, I haven't done any couch-surfing... I've been in hostels most places I've gone in Europe. But I've heard enough about couch-surfing that I really want to give it a try.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Hoping to have one soon.

Interests

I've been knitting since I was twelve years old or so, and I love the challenge of creating patterns and the satisfaction of creating a useful item out of raw materials. Recently I've also begun spinning my own yarn, going back another step in the process of garment production. Last summer I purchased a llama fleece from a farmer in my area and began the work of cleaning, carding, and spinning it into yarn for a sweater. Hard work, but lots of fun! (if you wanna see my stuff, it's all posted on Ravelry.com, username verdreesen.)

I play the banjo, mostly clawhammer style but sometimes bluegrass, and really enjoy various types of folk music, especially US Appalachian and Irish. I picked up an old mandolin at a flea market in Berlin and am starting to work with it as well.

I studied English literature at university, and now that I've graduated, I spend a lot of time reading for pleasure. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, whatever I'm feeling like. At the moment, I'm bouncing between some Shelley poems, the Hunger Games, Winnie the Pooh, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and the Mind Tree by Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, which is a book by an eleven year old from India describing his experience growing up with autism.

I'm very into astronomy, learning how to cook, hiking, and German and Chinese language.

• animals
• writing
• books
• literature
• poetry
• cooking
• working out
• politics
• reading
• traveling
• socializing
• blogging
• knitting
• music
• folk music
• hiking
• surfing
• skiing
• astronomy
• teaching
• tourism

Music, Movies, and Books

Movies: My Fair Lady, the Sound of Music, Amelie, Where the Wild Things Are, My Neighbor Totoro, Hitchcock movies, lots of others.

Music: I play the banjo and am really into folk and bluegrassy-country music. On my banjo I do Appalachian tunes and have also started working on some Irish folk music. In my itunes library is all kinds of stuff, from pop to rock to mainstream country to soundtracks to a bit of Bollywood to West-African banjo music to songs I don't even know what language they're in.

Books...! Too many! Favorites have to of course include Harry Potter, and also Great Expectations, Murder on the Orient Express, Cutting for Stone, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. A book on my un-favorite list is Treasure Island.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Last February I took a trip to Sweden, as far north as I could go to the Abisko National Park where I hoped to see the polar night and the northern lights. The first night I was there, the clouds were horribly thick. I stood outside surrounded by snowbanks, craning my head back to look for holes in the clouds, convincing myself I could see patches of the green auroras through the opaque sky. I tried to keep a positive attitude, but I was absolutely disappointed. Then the next night, cloudy again, until I took a ski-lift up the mountain, broke through the clouds, and saw the auroras racing above me. I climbed up away from the station where all the photographers stood with their tripods, mumbling into cups of cocoa, and I climbed until I could only hear the wind. I felt as if I were at the top of the world, as if I were watching something deep-rooted in the fabric of the universe that exists unchanged no matter what politics are currently winning, irrespective of every silly piece of gossip, just existing, doing its thing, being a part of the universe. I remembered a legend I had read about earlier that day in a museum, that according to the Sami people, who are originally a nomadic people from northern Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Russia, the auroras are the spirits of dead people on their way to the next world. I watched the auroras until they faded away, and then I just watched the stars, until it was time to come down.

A moment that left me awestruck in a different way happened this past summer, when I was working as a discussion leader at a writing enrichment program for high schoolers. A lot of the kids in my discussion group were nervous but one girl in particular seemed petrified by the idea of speaking to the group. Through the three-week program, I sat down with her, trying to give her encouragement, and as she got more comfortable, she began to open up as well. The awestruck moment happened when, at the end of the program, she volunteered during a poetry reading and recited from memory a Langston Hughes poem to sixty of her peers and all of the teachers. She was incredible.

Teach, Learn, Share

I can gladly teach knitting and some elementary spinning. I will also soon be a licensed teacher of English in Minnesota high- and middle-schools, so anyone who wants to get together and talk about teaching, literature, or writing would be super welcome! :)

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Germany, United States