CURRENT MISSION

I tried to save the world in the Peace Corps but we got kicked out of Kazakhstan a year and a half before I was supposed to go home...so I'm going to settle for trying to see a few more pieces of it instead.

ABOUT ME

Currently revising my five-year-plan. My two-year volunteer teaching service in Kazakhstan was cut short after just eight months, as Kazakhstan and the U.S. Peace Corps part ways after 18 years of continuous partnership. What's next? No idea; I was supposed to have another year and a half to figure that out!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I've taken surfers for tours of my town in the U.S., but didn't have a couch of my own. More recently, friends in Aktobe, Kazakhstan, where I've been living for six months (and intended to live for two years), have hosted couch surfers.

Interests

Snowboarding, cooking, journalism, history, rectifying my horrendous geographical ignorance

• culture
• ethics
• cooking
• vegetarian
• snowboarding
• teaching
• history
• journalism
• volunteering
• tours

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Peace Corps experience is pretty amazing. Working with kids who don't speak your language but desperately want to, coming from the U.S. to live in a former Soviet country, coming from the U.S. to live in a primarily Muslim country, seeing the reaction of a people whose culture was oppressed for two hundred years when you, a foreigner, speak their language back to them... It's changed my life.

Teach, Learn, Share

I absolutely love to cook. (I'm a vegetarian.) I was a journalist for two years before living here in Kazakhstan, where I've been working as an English teacher. I'm also finishing my master's degree in philosophy, with an emphasis on applied ethics; my thesis is on the struggle between ethical and economic demands in journalism.

Countries I’ve Visited

Kazakhstan

Countries I’ve Lived In

Kazakhstan

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