Currently laughing, eating, drinking and traveling our way through life

We are a couple (Heidi 28 and Nick 30) who work as lawyers in Melbourne. We recently got hitched which is exciting.

We are avid travellers and are keen to keep the adventurous spirit alive by meeting and hosting lovely people from all walks of life while we are settled in Melbourne.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

We use CS to meet people and surf while we travel and also to repay the favor when we are home or settled somewhere.

We have hosted when we are in Melbourne and also when we lived in Nairobi. We have surfed throughout the USA, Canada, once in El Salvador and met friends through CS and hosted in Kenya. We have met so many lovely people, had great experiences.

Interests

Heidi enjoys coffee, all of the cheeses, dancing & singing spontaneously and musings about issues that interest her - mostly everything but feminism, identity, race, east africa, development, politics. Before being a lawyer she was previously a barister (coffee makerer) and worked at the Melbourne Museum. At uni she was particularly interested in international criminal law and the laws of war which has taken her to Tanzania and Cambodia for work. She has also worked at Kenya Human Rights Commission doing a legal aid clinic and policy work in transitional justice.

Nick likes drinking boutique beer and brewing not-so-boutique beer, finding out about history (his undergraduate degree is in history), knowing lots of wacky and geeky facts about the world and occasionally playing the ukulele. Before being a lawyer his studies focused on transnational crime issues and policy - think terrorism and drug policy. While we were in Nairobi he worked at the UN in counter-piracy in the East African region (the real pirates not the movie/dvd kinds).

We both love cooking and food and this takes up a lot of life which is great. We are passionate about fresh, good quality and interesting food, coffee and booze. We would love to eat and cook with yooouu!

We also both love animals of all shapes and sizes and have two baby Australian native turtles as pets. Their names are Lincoln and Douglass and they are hilarious!

We read and chat about politics, culture and the world generally a lot and love interesting conversations with engaged people over drinks. We have recently taken up playing Yahtzee and find this a great way to spend an evening.

And of course we both love travel, experiencing new places and meeting people from different cultures! In 2013 we spent the whole year away. We spent a couple of months in the US and Canada, a few months traveling from Mexico to Panama then headed to Egypt for a few days and spent 5 months working in Nairobi, Kenya (warning we can talk anyone's ear off about Kenya and the work we have done overseas) before traveling from Kenya all the way down to Cape Town.

• animals
• pets
• culture
• singing
• dancing
• human rights
• womens rights
• dining
• cooking
• beer
• coffee
• drinking
• politics
• traveling
• socializing
• snorkeling
• history
• law
• beaches

Music, Movies, and Books

HEIDI
Books: King Leopold's Ghost, Veronica Decides to Die, The Dark Side of the Virtue, Tender is the Night, 1Q84, anything by Chimamada Ngozi Adichie. Films: The Commitments

NICK
Books: Picture of Dorian Grey Films: Fight Club, Brick

As for TV we both love The Wire, Community, Archer, House of Cards, Girls and the West Wing. Oh and have a slight addiction to old episodes of Law and Order.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I can't pick just one so:

Starting the day seeing a blizzard in the middle of an Australian summer and finishing the same day on the beach in the sun surrounded by kangaroos.

Snorkeling in a sunken ship wreckage in San Blas.

Seeing a cheetah about 1 metre away from our truck in the Mara.

Teach, Learn, Share

We would love someone to help us learn a bit of Spanish or Kiswahilli. Happy to practice English with non-natives too of course.

And tips for traveling to places we are going, or hope to go in the future (pretty much anywhere). And would love to share some of our experiences too.

Countries I’ve Visited

Belgium, Belize, Botswana, Cambodia, Canada, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Monaco, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Panama, Russian Federation, Rwanda, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Viet Nam, Zambia

Countries I’ve Lived In

Australia, Cambodia, France, Kenya, Tanzania

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