Couch Surfing: it’s better than I imagined
Today is International Couchsurfing Day!
Where CouchSurfers are
Last winter I had a houseguest I knew from different venues who is a Couchsurfer. I’d barely even heard of the concept and I was convinced it was only for kids, but she made me look and opened my eyes. I signed up.
I thought: “No one will ever want to come to Città di Castello! No one even know where it is.” Ha! I started getting requests immediately. Some had mistaken where I was and needed to be elsewhere. Some wanted to come when I couldn’t host them. One pair had to cancel because of the illness of one of them, but asked if he who was well could still come to the dinner I was giving that night even though he didn’t want to stay over. There was an immediate rapport bertween the CSer and a guest, boyfriend of a friend, and we hardly got to speak to them most of the evening.
I have been asked to host by a Korean honeymoon couple, by a Moroccan who is walking around the world, by innumerable Italians who come here to see the unique artifacts in our Museo del Duomo. I have been asked transportation questions by people coming from Brazil and Poland who don’t need a place to stay, just some advice. I am now teaching conversational English to a young man I met through CouchSurfing.com.
It’s a yeasty sort of idea that can be anything you want as long as you are decent and honest. There are loads of older people involved. Who, after all, is most likely to have a spare room and a bed or two? There are people of all ages and from all places and they are coming and going, talking, asking, telling and being involved. It’s the closest thing to one world I have yet seen.
Maybe some day I will even go somewhere!
I’ve been in CS for some time now but I’m getting a little bored with it. Too often the people coming change their schedule. I work so if they are coming on a weekday it has to be in the evening and the next morning I have to leave early. So now I screen out the people I don’t think will show up. Still I have met a lot of great people and I’ve stayed in another CSer house only once but it was a great trip.
Jeff’s last blog post..Summertime…umm sort of
That has happened to me, too, but illness means I wouldn’t want the guest. How do you know which ones are unlikely to show? What are the signs?
That kind of behavior could end up screwing up the whole CS effort. At least you can make a comment about bad behavior, if only in your regional newsletter.
So, as I reading the blog, I mistook you’re teaching of the language as “controversial,” not “conversational. Somehow, Judtih, that made infinite sense to me, and I was disappointed when I realized my misinterpretation.
Controversial? My sweet student? LOL Not even.
It was a great experience, but because he couldn’t find a summer job here, he took a job in Iceland milking cows. That’s right. With a brand new engineering degree he is off to be a cowboy! Now that’s a real brain drain.
Judith in Umbria´s last blog ..CSA box: zucchine and lettuce