Ambassador Beaming Sun
I feel so thankful about the opportunity to have become an Ambassador on Couchsurfing. Thanks Mike Joy for your message.
Expansion.
Expansion is my vision for the Couchsurfing project. Everybody is a co-creator, a participant in the organization. Hosts and travellers remain organized. And through effective communication there is an expansion share, much like the Exp.Share in Pokemon games - the victor Pokemon in a battle would have part of his experience points distributed among the other Pokemon in the party. That's part of why I like to listen to the stories of couchsurfers. I'm curious about their travels and encounters with other surfers. Each of these stories provide a part of the Couchsurfing togetherness-network. In Thai there is a word for what I'm trying to describe: ใย (yai). The direct translation would be fibre, bond, connection. Like twigs in a nest, we are all contributing towards this Couchsurfing Connection.
My Story
My own story with Couchsurfing began in Seattle. You can still see Simson Chantha's reference(my first time) on my profile. I had very recently started a new account at the nudge of a family friend studying in Windsor for a semester. He had planned out a whole west coast trip. We started in Vancouver but had our first Couchsurfing host in Seattle. Afterwards, we found another host in Morro Bay, whom we graced for a night. It was difficult to find hosts in San Francisco but we found two in LA. One accepted us for one night but invited us to the Couchsurfing Meetup Group in Long Beach during our stay with him. There we met another host who was willing to take us in for a few nights. It was perfect.
In Windsor, I hosted three couchsurfers. They were from France, Italy, and Miami respectively. Only two left references. Afterwards, I had a handful of experiences with CS in Europe. When I first moved to Tübingen, Germany, I stayed with a host before finding a dorm. I wasn't hosting during my time in Tübingen. I travelled in Europe using CS a handful of times, and sometimes using it on my travel partner's account.
The Hatyai part of my journey with Couchsurfing yielded the most activity. It was here that I hosted dozens of travellers. When I first moved here there were few others hosting and after I moved I realized that I was among a very few number of hosts indeed. My reference count shot up while most other hosts' remained the same. I connected with many souls and eventually a subtle change in my approach to hosting led the way to joint projects.
I changed my current mission to mention the fact that couchsurfers had helped me to make my dreams come true in the past. The current mission suggests that new guests can also be a part of the fun. Since then, my collaboration with couchsurfing guests rose high into the sky. Most commonly, I make dance activism videos and record the voices of couchsurfers speaking in their own language. Usually we just do one of the two but sometimes also both. Feel free to explore previous posts in this blog to see various videos in which couchsurfers grace the frame. Also in this post about my independently released album End of Year Exams, I talk about a few tracks I made that feature the voices of different couchsurfers. Guess which languages they're using!
I am thrilled that my use of Couchsurfing has evolved to become a platform for dreams coming true. I challenge all couchsurfers reading this to ask what it would take for a similar change to happen in your own usage of CS. I appreciate all of the collaborations that were born through CS. And actually I still have many more videos waiting to be produced. It's just a matter of time before more and more videos surface on the blog.
Expansion.
Expansion is my vision for the Couchsurfing project. Everybody is a co-creator, a participant in the organization. Hosts and travellers remain organized. And through effective communication there is an expansion share, much like the Exp.Share in Pokemon games - the victor Pokemon in a battle would have part of his experience points distributed among the other Pokemon in the party. That's part of why I like to listen to the stories of couchsurfers. I'm curious about their travels and encounters with other surfers. Each of these stories provide a part of the Couchsurfing togetherness-network. In Thai there is a word for what I'm trying to describe: ใย (yai). The direct translation would be fibre, bond, connection. Like twigs in a nest, we are all contributing towards this Couchsurfing Connection.
My Story
My own story with Couchsurfing began in Seattle. You can still see Simson Chantha's reference(my first time) on my profile. I had very recently started a new account at the nudge of a family friend studying in Windsor for a semester. He had planned out a whole west coast trip. We started in Vancouver but had our first Couchsurfing host in Seattle. Afterwards, we found another host in Morro Bay, whom we graced for a night. It was difficult to find hosts in San Francisco but we found two in LA. One accepted us for one night but invited us to the Couchsurfing Meetup Group in Long Beach during our stay with him. There we met another host who was willing to take us in for a few nights. It was perfect.
In Windsor, I hosted three couchsurfers. They were from France, Italy, and Miami respectively. Only two left references. Afterwards, I had a handful of experiences with CS in Europe. When I first moved to Tübingen, Germany, I stayed with a host before finding a dorm. I wasn't hosting during my time in Tübingen. I travelled in Europe using CS a handful of times, and sometimes using it on my travel partner's account.
The Hatyai part of my journey with Couchsurfing yielded the most activity. It was here that I hosted dozens of travellers. When I first moved here there were few others hosting and after I moved I realized that I was among a very few number of hosts indeed. My reference count shot up while most other hosts' remained the same. I connected with many souls and eventually a subtle change in my approach to hosting led the way to joint projects.
I changed my current mission to mention the fact that couchsurfers had helped me to make my dreams come true in the past. The current mission suggests that new guests can also be a part of the fun. Since then, my collaboration with couchsurfing guests rose high into the sky. Most commonly, I make dance activism videos and record the voices of couchsurfers speaking in their own language. Usually we just do one of the two but sometimes also both. Feel free to explore previous posts in this blog to see various videos in which couchsurfers grace the frame. Also in this post about my independently released album End of Year Exams, I talk about a few tracks I made that feature the voices of different couchsurfers. Guess which languages they're using!
I am thrilled that my use of Couchsurfing has evolved to become a platform for dreams coming true. I challenge all couchsurfers reading this to ask what it would take for a similar change to happen in your own usage of CS. I appreciate all of the collaborations that were born through CS. And actually I still have many more videos waiting to be produced. It's just a matter of time before more and more videos surface on the blog.
This photo was taken right after the recent CS Game Night. Arul and Sara are in the back and Ina and I are in the front. Mike was also there but he left early. Ina is an Indonesian couchsurfer who recently moved to Hatyai. Sara was a traveller from Malaysia.
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