My 1st Couchsurfers in China.

(recent pic)

For those of you who dont know about couchsurfing.com, Ill explain. CS-ing is a way for travelers to stay over night at another persons house on a couch, or bed, usually for free. To be a good CS-er though, you will buy some food, do the dishes, or clean up for your host. The website couchsurfing.com allows people to set up profiles where we tell about ourselves, the places we live, and the house/apt we live in. So you would set up a profile and when you want to travel you search people in the cities you will visit asking if they can host you for a few nights. Its pretty easy to find someone if there are multiple CSers in the target city. Everyone on CSing is super nice and really helpful. There is a lot of trust that goes along with going to a strangers house and staying the night, or visa versa. If schedules dont match up sometimes the host will give the CSers an extra key to the house and free rein. After you meet a CSer or 'surf' someones couch you will leave a comment on that persons profile about your experience with them at their house. This is where CSing shows its magic. If someone had a bad experience with another person they will leave bad feedback and warn others not to host for that person. You can also see what percentage of replies to requests someone sent, showing you how committed they are to CSing. By reading peoples profiles and comments you know who is good and who is bad. Everyone that Ive met that is on CSing, other than one, has been awesome. Actually some of the best fun Ive had in China have been with random CSers that my friends have hosted. We know we are all in the same boat and have been taught, 'do onto others as you would have them do onto you' so it works out pretty good.

My first experience with CSing was when Michelles friend from Japan, who she met in China came to NYC with a couple of his friends. They stayed with us for a couple nights and we had tons of fun. I wasnt a member of CSing.com yet though, so Michelle set it up and gave him our number. My first 'real' experience here in China with this project was a couple days ago. I got a request from two Chinese girls who were meeting each other in Guilin and were going to travel around this area for a while. They hadnt seen each other in a year and were really excited to come. They cant speak that good of English but communicating wasnt too bad. One girl was from a small village where she was a teacher for 10 6-7yr olds. She was the only teacher and taught all subjects to them. The students lived at the school and she cooked and cleaned for them as well. She told me that there is no road to this village, only a small trail! Pretty wild. She lives in the mountain region of northwestern China called Sichuan province. All the mountains are snow capped and soo beautiful they told me. I am always welcome she said. The other girl is from Hunan which is more central China to the East of Guilin's province. Guilin is kinda in the middle of their cities/villages. The other girl is a student studying educational management, whatever that is. She is also a gem of a person. As Ive said before Chinese people are very generous and helpful, now think of Chinese CSers... What an awesome combination. There train rides were 44hrs for one and 26 hrs for the other girl!! Crazy.. One of the girls arrived around mid-day before her friend so we hung out and had some tea together until I had to go to work. I gave her a key to my place and showed her around, offered a hot shower, use of the Internet, and whatever she wanted from the fridge. Her friend arrived while I was at work so when I came home they both were there catching up laughing, it was nice to come home to that. We talked and planned our adventure the following day. I had a couple of tickets to some of the tourist attractions in Guilin so we used them to go climb a couple mountains and see a bird sanctuary. There was a bird that says 'Ni Hao' (hello) and then says 'please take my photo' -in Chinese. I didnt know the 2nd part but they started laughing and filled me in. I actually got this bird saying it on video too! It was pretty chilly this day but we walked and climbed around the mountains for hours. They are big into photography and had a really nice Nikon DSLR so we were fooling around taking hundreds of pics between the 3 of us. After the mountain climbing we went to Reed Flute Cave which is beautiful. Its a huge cave that takes about 30 mins to walk through if your hauling ass, but taking your time taking pics it will take hour and a half. They light up all the stalactites and stalagmites with crazy colors so it gives the cave a cool magical feel. There is also some pools of water around that the lights and shadows of the stalactites reflect off of and that makes the best pictures. It was really warm and humid in the cave, which was nice since it was cold outside. After the cave we took a bus to downtown and ate lunch at my fav rice place. They liked it. Then we walked around the city center and the lakes by the pagodas near the river. We sat and talked for a while by the lake taking pics and stuff. They really are sweet innocent Chinese girls. They dont drink of smoke and probably havent had sex before. One girl is 23 and the other is 25 and really traditional. They stayed two nights before they headed off to Yangshuo and Xing ping. They are coming back through Guilin before they go to Long Shen rice terraces so I told them they could leave their big backpacks at my place and pich them up whenever they come back. They loved that idea bc they each had a smaller bag anyway and didnt want to lug that shit around for two days if they didnt have to. They left early Friday morning so I didnt see them off, but they left me a sweet thank you note under my key, which was heart warming.

The following night some of us went to Joys bar for a night out. I met some Filipino dancers there a night before and they told me to come find them there so I did. They were dancing on stage when we walked in singing that 'Kiss me' song that was out in US a couple yrs ago. It was funny bc their faces lit up when we walked in and they started blowing kisses at me with the song, all the Chinese ppl would look back at me and I would just nod with the 'ohh yea' look on my face.. Before they got done singing and I would go talk to them some random hot Chinese girl comes up to me asking if I remember her.. Of course I dont bc they all kinda look the same in the club and Im usually lit up anyway. So we talked and it seemed like she wanted to hang out for a while so we played the dice drinking game for a while until she, I think drank too much and wanted to go back to her friends bc she was uncomfortable being drunk around me/us. She handed me her phone number already written out before she kissed me on the cheek and walked off. Michelle ended up talking to the Filipino's and they got her phone number, which was clutch. Two scores in one night and I didnt have to do shit! Damn. We will see where all that goes though. I usually dont call when a girl gives me her number but this one is the hottest yet so maybe it will be different. Ill keep ya posted! PEACE