I am Marianne, 24, living in New York now. I've been recently been described as a 'smiling neuroscientist baker singer social worker poet'.
I am generally an optimistic, life-loving person who really likes sharing things and stories, and walking everywhere. I've been backpacking since I was 18, lived in 4 different countries, am an avid social worker, who has worked in healthcare, with refugee adults and children, and in public education.

I love learning about cultures , but most of all, i love learning about what there is that makes us feel so at home in something from other cultures: a tradition, a food, a saying. I've been fortunate to meet many people who have shown me their sense of home while I've traveled.

I am a singer (I sing in English, French and Arabic but like learning songs from everywhere), and a poet (I've led a poetry society in Beirut and in the UK! I read here in New York). I've worked as a baker at a hotel and at an art gallery (I preferred the second one, if worse pay!), but now I love to bake for friends :) I am generally a morning person who wishes they could have breakfast for every meal of the day, so I won't be staying up for very long or coming back home at 4:00 AM.

My day job is that I'm doing a PhD in language neuroscience in New York, it was an excellent excuse to combine my interests about language, people, and health all at the same time. Plus academia makes you travel for free, woo! (Really though, I am a big nerd).

I really love pedestrian cities and care a lot about urban planning and people's lived experiences existing in a space. I'd love to explore that in wherever I go. And wherever I go, I find myself most interested about the everyday life and the life philosophy of the people there.
At heart I am from the Lebanese mountains and some of my lifestyle behaviors reflect that; I hope I get to celebrate parts of it with you. In my travels it reflects in my love of the mountain, hiking, and local people's home life.

Interests

• poetry
• singing
• baking
• walking
• folk music
• cycling
• hiking
• camping
• languages
• social work
• nature
• bikes
• indie music
• urban planning
• mental health
• neuropsychology
• pedestrian cities
• cognitive health

Music, Movies, and Books

Music: I love indie folk music, am a folk singer myself. I love the artists who write beautifully, compose simply, focus on voice and tune with lyrics conveying a social cause. People I love are Kings of Convenience, Piers Faccini, Hozier, Leonard Cohen, recently a socttish folk band called Salt House.

Books: James Joyce in general (dubliners, portrait of an artist as a young man). Frank O'Hara and Patrick Kavanagh as poets of the everyday, the banal, but very different, in NYC and in rural ireland/dublin respectively. I like contrasting them because I've lived in scotland and nyc and these are both everydays, however different. I've recently gotten into the feminist , political, nostalgic, sometimes infantile style of Etel Adnan.

Movies: I really love Everybody's Fine; I also really like Awakenings, Patch Adams. ; I also love Inside Lewyn Davis, as all folk singers do. I really like films on migration and identity, so i really like Aki Kaurismäki's films, like The Other Side of Hope. I love Adrien Brody as an actor, (I have phantom of the opera memorized, but it's because i was a sub for Christine at one point!)

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

What a high bar! I'm not sure. One thing is that I don't usually evaluate what I've done in some rank order.

One thing I'm proud of is that wherever I've lived/traveled sometimes, I've managed to maintain friendships despite us moving more than once, calling regularly, making efforts to meet in middle countries, visiting each other, etc.

Teach, Learn, Share

I can teach you some songs, and I can teach you how to bake many things. I'm a really good cook of lebanese cuisine, my home cuisine!
I can talk a lot about social work (in healthcare settings and with refugees especially), mental health (particularly depression and suicide, on both the individual and collective level. I was a researcher at the national suicide hotline in Lebanon) , as well as cognitive health (I am a neuropsychology/neuroscience PhD! I've worked with patients with language deficits especially, but other cognitive impairments. I took care of my grandfather with Parkinson's for some years).
I can share with you about all these things, as well as my travels, both short term and living around. Maybe we can talk about me shifting careers back and forth between neuro, baking, social work, etc.

Countries I’ve Visited

Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Jordan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Sweden, Syrian Arab Republic, Turkey, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Finland, Lebanon, Scotland, United States