Just to catch you up a bit, I've spent the last week and a half before Friday in a couple different hostels, one in Byron Bay and one in Surfer's Paradise. Friday I got to go to a couchsurfer's house for the weekend, which is where I am now. If you've talked to me on this trip, I've probably mentioned either how I hate hostels or how I love couchsurfing or both. The week and a half in hostels was just brutal. On my last post I mentioned how I had been getting really lonely and homesick as a result. Now I'm couchsurfing again and having a wonderful time, praise God.
My couchsurfing host is a woman from New Zealand who has 3 adorable children. Those of you who know me know that I love children and really get a lot of joy from being around them, particularly my friends' kids. School's different because you can't just play with the kids, your job there is to educate them and get them to somehow concentrate when they're used to being constantly entertained at the press of a button. It has been so wonderful to play with kids again, for some reason I almost connect bettter with them then other adults. Maybe it's the fact that there's no pretense with kids, what you see is what you get. They don't have masks painted on yet pretending to be a better version of themselves. They're genuine and authentic, and will let you know if they like your or not. Thankfully, these kids seem to like me, the youngest one even informed me that I was his favorite couchsurfer so far; this obviously put a smile on my face.
Words can't express my gratitude to all the people who have hooked me up with a bed or a couch over these last six months. It has been an incredible experience and a once in a lifetime trip. It may be a once in a lifetime trip, but I already know I'd like to do something similar someday in the future. Maybe next time with a 'partner' as they call a significant other here in Australia. It would certainly be a pretty memorable honeymoon.
My couchsurfer has another friend staying here this weekend too. What's cool about him is that he does photography as a habit on the side. He's made a couple of books of pictures for different events in his friends' lives. I didn't realize you could do this but after talking to him he said all you had to do was go to a website or get the right software. Then you pick the design and the pictures that you want on each page, send it to a company, and voila, you have a book with your selected pictures sent to you. What's cool about this is it got me thinking how cool would it be to make a book about my round the world trip with a 'best-of' pictures from my trip? I could also add text and make it a little non-fiction book about different places in the world for my students to enjoy. My students seem to eat up non-fiction so I'm sure they'd like it, and I'm sure they'd love seeing where their teacher had been over the past year. I don't know, maybe I'll just do a book with the pictures but I think it would be cool if I made a little non-fiction book for my students. "Mr. Hemming Travels Around the World" or something along those lines. I could even have a glossary for words in the book, like RTW stands for round the world or vocabulary that might be a little tougher for the students.
So after a tough week and a half, I'm back to where I'm loving being on the road again. More and more I'm seeing couchsurfing is not just about saving money, it's about connecting with locals around the world and having a healthy cultural exchange. What better way to have a cultural exchange than to invite someone into your home? I really love the idea behind couchsurfing; make the world a smaller place, one couch at a time. It makes me really want to get my own place not because I want to own my own home but just so I could open it up to couchsurfers. From a Christian perspective, what better way to practice hospitality and invite the stranger in? When you're the one doing the surfing, you get to see all these cool places off the beaten tourist path and get to know how a real local lives. What could be better?
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