couch surfing

I am new to couch surfing. Before this trip I only heard about it from Kelsey, who used to host and surf in Russia. To help find us a place to sleep, I registered an account on couchsurfing. In the beginning, I didn't make any successful requests, maybe because I was new and didn't quite write much about myself on my page. Kelsey has some references from her past experience so she found us Daniel and Angel at Columbus, OH and Makai at Madison, WI.

We arrived at Daniel and Angel's house around 9. Before arriving Kelsey suggested picking up flowers for them, which was very sweet. Daniel is Polish-Taiwanese American and Angel is Indian. Their house was very comfortable with two large baby toys besides the fireplace. Angel said her daughter was in the room asleep. I used the bed in the living room and Kelsey and Whitney shared another bed in the bedroom. We chatted with them on the impressions on American Mid-west states. They mentioned some cities and states but I wasn't familiar with those places. Daniel must have had some thought on this area as he sounded that he had a pretty complete picture in his mind.

Makai was an interesting guy. His two walls were covered by game/movie discs and CDs. He said that those were currencies on his job, which was ground staff at the airport. His grandparents had multiple ethnic origins, not to say him. When asking him to list the countries he had traveled, I soon regreted that I should have let him list the countries he had never been to, that would take much less time! A most incredible thing was his love story in Hawaii. He fell in love with a pretty girl. One day he had to go to a party in the backyard of his grandma, and he knew that she went to her relative's party that day as well. After a few minutes in the party, he found her walking through his grandma's door! That is the situation in Hawaii. It seemed that every one is a relative to someone else, as long as you keep asking questions.

At Portland, I began another round of search for hosts because I had a reference from Angel and Daniel now. Rosslyn replied to me very quickly with a brief message. We were all very impressed by her trust to us, because she agreed to let us in without even meeting us beforehand. We arrived under her building and I ran upstairs to find an envelop sticking to her door with a key and a parking permit. After we had supper, I bought her some flowers and Kelsey gave me a Thank-you card to write. Her room was not very big, but very comfortable with thick carpet. And she uses a lot of Kieh's products. Her bathroom was also spotlessly clean.

Her two cats were friendly and fluffy, walking quietly in her clean room. We had a good time with the cats. After we took another walk to Powell's City of Books and chatted in a brewery with Kelsey's friends, we went to bed. Rosslyn came back from work later that night. I got up to shake her hand. Her hand was cold, but from that handshaking I was somehow touched. What trust! That is her, not some gunman or a crazy person. She took her shower and went to bed very soon. On the second day, she got up a few minutes later than we did and talked with us a little bit. I felt sorry that we had to leave soon, but would really love to be friends with her.

I feel doing couchsurfing is similar to playing trust game. You can feel the warmth and friendliness of the world, and also let you gain a glimpse into local people's lives. However, who knows when danger will seek on you? Anyways, be trustful and trustworthy, and also vigilant.