CURRENT MISSION

'Be the Change You Want to See in the World' (Ghandi). 'Be Realistic, Do the Impossible' (Che Guevara). We are now on the mission of trying to construct our lives up to our standards and believes!

ABOUT ME

YOU is two people for us,Masha and Dom.It will soon be 9 years that we share love, life, dreams, travelling and all those magic moments that you want to carve forever into the cracks and crannies of your memories. We met during our semester abroad in London, UK and ever since then our life became a carousel of events. It was then that we started believing that nothing was impossible. Following each other we moved between Russia, USA and UK to settle down for 2,5 years in Paris, France...all in all just to move on for the World Tour in July 2010 and come back recharged with new energy in October 2011. Having swept through Russia, Ghana, USA, and France we moved to Belgium in August 2014.

PHILOSOPHY

'Be the change you want to see in the world'
(Ghandi)
'It always seems impossible before it is done' (Mandela)
'If every person in the crowd of million people thought he could not make a difference, then a crowd of million people would be impotent'
(Fadeev, Russian author from 1940s)
'Quem agüenta tempestade é rochedo.' - 'Only cliffs face the tempest.'
(Mestre Bimba / Capoeira proverb)
'Every Day is an occasion to learn'
(from our Mamas)
This is our life motto.Besides...life is not an easy game to play whatever you do. So, as well play the game that passionates you! Not mentioning that we live only once. Thus, 'Life is an icecream, eat it before it melts!' (our Hindu friend Jitu from Udaipur, India)

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Due to our lifestyle we move a lot between the countries and don't always have a place of our own. However, when we do, we "open" our couch to Surfers with great delight. We will offer our next couch in Brussels, Belgium beginning from September 2014. Meanwhile Masha's Mom, although not being an official CS member, takes in couch surfers in our Moscow apartment in Russia. This year she is happy to propose herself to continue doing that so whenever we meet travelers in need of a roof heading to Moscow, we refer them to Masha's Mother (if we find them trustworthy of course). Other than that, we spread the word about CS wherever we go and we are proud to become more and more "experienced" CS members. Of course, we fancy meeting more couch surfing members to learn more about projects and possibilities of building this beautiful community!!!

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

We learned about Couchsurfing on our trip to Shanghai in October 2011 at the great international hostel party. Our first CS was with awesome Mark Willy Brandt whom we actually met in Shanghai. Mark told us about CS and became our first host in Sydney, Australia. Then we started CS full power in Latin America: Peru, Argentina, Brazil, then Turkey, Israel, Jordan, USA. One amazing experience after the other. It is true, what you learn about the country, people, and culture through CS you can never obtain through any guide, museum or hostel party.

Interests

Masha: THEATER (big time!), reading, dancing, travelling, photography, art, world history, politics, horse riding…Oh, CAPOEIRA of course! Since April 2012 Masha joined the world of Capoeira Angola that became her ultimate spiritual universe...isn't life too short and why there is only 24 hours in a day???
Dom: more or less all of the above (well, take out dancing maybe:))) plus macro economics (big time!), micro finance, economic model of communism, snowboarding, mountain skiing, tennis, political philosophy, pocker, FOOTBALL...and friends, friends, friends! and sharing all these things with people around, people we meet, people we love!

• arts
• culture
• writing
• theater
• photography
• dancing
• capoeira
• cooking
• modeling
• partying
• politics
• reading
• traveling
• magic
• surfing
• skiing
• snowboarding
• hinduism
• soccer
• tennis
• economics
• history
• tourism
• budget travel

Music, Movies, and Books

We are open to discoveries but no cheap beaten main stream produced for the sole goal of making money and clogging people´s brain!!! however...
Music: World music, Capoeira music (for Masha:), Dance Music, Music that makes you cry and laugh! Rock, Reggae, Ragga, Hip Hop, Electro, whatever you wish!
Movies: some favorites: 'Requiem for a Dream', 'Macbeth' (from Polanskii), 'Burned by the Sun' (second Russian Oscar in Russian history), 'Rock 'n Roll Swindel'(history of Sex Pistols), 'American History X', 'Le Dinner de Cons'..we also looove historical documentaries!!!
Books: some favorites: Boris Vian, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabele Allende, Nietzsche, Machiavelli, Sartre, Oscar Wilde...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

An old Maori saying goes as follows:

He aha te mea nui?
He tangata.
He tangata.
He tangata.

"What is the most important thing? It is people, it is people, it is people."

We could say that one most amazing thing we have done was our 15 months World Tour or else "Great Escape". However, even on the World Tour the most fascinating thing we experienced was…people. PEOPLE who make you see the world differently, who make you learn, who open your eyes, who encourage you to discover yourself.

Teach, Learn, Share

For Masha one special knowledge would be work with Imagination. Imagination is Masha´s ultimate universe that allows her anything from dreaming to practical making of anything...from theater sets to wooden wings to decorate her living space. Thus, Masha's skill would be the conversion of surreal and imaginative into practical.
Dom: Dom's special skill would be finding means of converting dreams into reality. Dom is the one who analyzes, draws parallels, works with numbers and distances. This goes from mere talking to computer generated diagrams. Dom is also the king (in Masha's perception at least!) of Budget travelling. The last proof of Dom's practical and calculating genius was finding a way of surviving on the road for 15 months of the World Tour!
In terms of us learning...we are interested in learning anything for there is no skill unuseful in our world. For example, during our World Tour we stretched our learning skills from goat milking to reading into the political ideas of Pinera in Chile with the help of our Chilean friends.

What I Can Share with Hosts

The first thing we would offer to our hosts is our open minds towards and respect for our host's life schedule, life style, background and house policies. We love getting to know our hosts so we would offer our humble company as well!:) Of course, we can also gladly offer our Russian/French moderate cooking skills spiced with our international travel stories!

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Mongolia, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Vatican City State, Viet Nam

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, France, India, Russian Federation, United Kingdom, United States

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