Grew up in the middle of the US (near Chicago and the big empty middle), lived in Brooklyn NYC for a while.

Got the travel bug in my mid 20s: Took time off in the middle of grad school to travel through parts of Europe for 6 months. Then after finishing school I traveled/lived around Guatemala for a while, then the rest of Central America for a year and a half.

Have been living in Costa Rica for 2 years now in a small beach town learning to surf.

My Spanish should really be better by now, but I'm trying.

Currently: Not much tutoring work in the summer and I'm out of the water to heal a finger injury, so impulse booked a plane ticket to wander around Europe starting June (eastern part at the moment, unsure where I'll end up).

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

Started this when I was traveling in Europe the first time around 2012. I was convinced to give this a try by some friends I met in a hostel, and it provided me with some of the best experiences of my trip!

I feel bad that I've surfed but not hosted, but if you could see the dimensions of the places I lived in NYC, you'd understand. But in a prior house in NYC where I lived with 4 friends and we did have space, we would host friends of friends of friends. So, not through this website, but same general idea.

Now I’m interested in using this to meet up with people for a drink, some food, exploring.

Interests

Learning to surf 🏄‍♀️
History and museums
Craft beer (I used to home brew for 6+ years)
Coffee and coffeehouses
Pub trivia
Punk rock and melodic hardcore
Vegetarian food

• music festivals
• festivals
• dining
• cooking
• beer
• coffee
• vegetarian
• drinking
• pub crawls
• gardening
• politics
• trivia
• traveling
• music
• outdoor activities
• hiking
• backpacking
• camping
• surfing
• american football
• soccer
• economics
• history
• psychology
• statistics
• beaches
• lakes
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Music: Pretty open, but am a punk and melodic hardcore kid at heart: Rise Against (loved them back in the day, and then our hometown Chicago band got huge!), Strike Anywhere, A Wilhelm Scream, Modern Life is War, Rancid, Hot Water Music and Chuck Ragan, Tim Barry, The Gaslight Anthem, that kinda stuff

Books: I used to always read nonfiction, social commentary and current event kinds of things (psychology, economics, anthropology, history). Lately I've been making myself read fiction and novels and have really been enjoying it. Recent reads I really liked: Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and Freedom, William Finnegan's Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, and back on the non-fiction train Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Started learning to surf in my 30's... when I barely knew how to swim, haha.

Countries I’ve Visited

Albania, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, El Salvador, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Montenegro, Nicaragua, Northern Ireland, Panama, Poland, Scotland, Serbia, Slovakia, Turkey, United Kingdom

Countries I’ve Lived In

Costa Rica, United States