I'm lying in someone else's flat, sipping someone else's wine, using someone else's laptop. This is the result of the wonder that is Couchsurfing.org. You make a profile, select your destination and then choose a person to stay with from the thousands of inhabitants on the site. They ask nothing in return except your company; an opportunity to share cultures, stories and life lessons. Perfect. Human generosity and kindness condensed into one website. I left th...

I'm lying in someone else's flat, sipping someone else's wine, using someone else's laptop. This is the result of the wonder that is Couchsurfing.org. You make a profile, select your destination and then choose a person to stay with from the thousands of inhabitants on the site. They ask nothing in return except your company; an opportunity to share cultures, stories and life lessons. Perfect. Human generosity and kindness condensed into one website. I left th...

Community is a powerful thing; a group of people in unity through love for one another. They share not only the material possesions of this world, but themselves too. Each person is accepted regardless of talents, quirks, failures or successes. Linda had allowed me into her community, I had been with her for just two weeks, but it felt like a lifetime. Her family and given me a home; a bed to sleep in, plentiful food, comfort and shelter, warmth and care. In exc...

Do you know what a carrot seed looks like? Its size, shape and colour? Well, it's about as big as an ant, if not smaller, and yet from this mere spec a great, vibrant vegetable comes to life. Once nestled into the ground, watered regularly and well tended to, a green shoot appears. This grows with further care into the famed orange vegetable; said to aid ones night vision, a delicious accompaniment with Humus and a key ingredient to carrot and coriander soup. To ...

Expectations and assumptions are often, if not always, incorrect. When preparing for our trip to Russia, we expected a cold reception from the locals, with hold-ups at the border lasting for hours through exhaustive interrogation, searching and distrust. When told we were camping in a field, we assumed this would be a lonely patch of grass, with some form of foliage for a toilet. When we thought of the church we were visiting, we expected a small, traditonal cong...