ABOUT ME

Graduate student, third culture kid, aspiring journalist, lapsed pianist, compulsive language learner. I like bumpy train rides with no apparent destination.

Always glad to meet new people and learn new things!

PHILOSOPHY

Live and learn, be respectful, never pass up an interesting conversation or a cup of tea

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Happy to host whenever I have a semi-permanent address, to meet for a chat or language exchange, or to show you around

Interests

Journalism
Literature (mostly Latin American/Russian/English-language, but interested in everything. Writing things in my spare time
Music - piano, bass guitar/guitar guitar, choirs big and small
Learning languages
Photography
History, politics, development studies

• culture
• writing
• literature
• poetry
• photography
• cooking
• politics
• music
• guitar
• piano
• history
• journalism
• languages
• language exchange

Music, Movies, and Books

Books: Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Christopher Isherwood, Michael Cunningham, Faulkner, Rilke, Lorca, Marquez, Cortazar, Gabriela Mistral, Juan Rulfo, Idea Vilarino, Clarice Lispector, Else Lasker-Schuler, Mandelstam, Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva, Sergey Dovlatov, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Eric Hobsbawm, Tony Judt, Marjane Satrapi

Music: jazz, funk, trip hop, soul, classical, flamenco, tango, Brazilian, most things in between?

Movies: Casablanca, The Graduate, A Single Man; Jane Campion, Guy Maddin, Fatih Akin, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Wes Anderson, Wim Wenders, Michel Gondry, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Jarmusch, Fellini, Kim Ki-duk, Wong Kar-wai, Pavel Lungin, Anna Melikian, Vera Storozheva, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Station for Two, Irony of Fate

May as well come clean about liking old Soviet rom-coms (they exist)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Working as a journalist in Moscow! Cue polar explorers, Soviet film directors, JFK's photographers and Putin's protégés. Would go back in a flash...

Teach, Learn, Share

Russian, Polish, English
Piano technique
Photography
Reporting / Journalism 101

Countries I’ve Visited

Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Peru, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, United States, Uruguay

Countries I’ve Lived In

Argentina, Poland, Russian Federation, United Kingdom