Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

It’s amazing how small the world has become since the onset of the Internet, and especially Facebook. At any given time I have friends living or visiting in tens of different countries around the world, on every continent. If there’s an earthquake in Indonesia, I can immediately check if my friend in Jakarta has updated her Facebook status saying that she is okay. Or if there’s a huge snowstorm going on in Australia, I can check my Aussie friends’ statuses to see if they are making snow angels. And sometimes I like to take a little imaginary around-the-world trip just by looking at my friends’ Facebook statuses:

-Amy should have been leaving for Egypt today!

-Laurie is two hours away from vacation and a nice 18 hour drive to FL!

-Amit is getting ready to party in Beirut!

-Ange is packing for Strasbourg .

-Amanda will be going away for the weekend… Going to Hangzhou!

-Henna is home in Finland!

–Gemi is 宅居在家

-Katja is stoked about jetting of to London in only three days time, weehay!!

-Tepa is doing some AWESOME diving in Solomon Islands! And yeah.. LOVIN it! =)

-Laura is “Finland Finland here I come” sooooon…….

-Kathryn is waiting for a phone call from sunny Perth…

-Zara and 10 days to Cuba!

-Ed is wondering why he’s come to Madurai.

-Ross is enjoying Sweden.

-George: Last Weekend in Paris !!

-Jordan is ready to go to Florida for the weekend.

-Mark is enjoying a Bintang in Luanbajo, Flores.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

So where does your status take you?

Free accommodation, new friends, cultural experiences, delicious food, interesting languages, fun parties… The Couchsurfing Project is all that and more, at least according to the members of the New York Couchsurfing community.

While it’s sometimes difficult to explain the core idea behind the movement, the Couchsurfing.com website explains that it is “a worldwide network for making connections between travelers and the local communities they visit.” That means that when you travel to other countries as a Couchsurfer, you can stay with local residents there rather than staying at a hotel.There are currently nearly 850,000 members (and their couches!) to choose from.

Many travelers and backpackers prefer to Couchsurf rather than to stay at hostels, and not only because it saves you money. Many feel that Couchsurfing guarantees you a more authentic travel experience as you will live with local people and take part in their everyday lives.

“Everyone raves about it,” said Vivianna Neder, 25, from Flushing. Since she only joined Couchsurfing recently, she hasn’t “surfed” with other members yet, or had anyone stay with her. But then that is not all there is to Couchsurfing. Couchsurfers also organize activities and form social groups in the cities they live in. The New York Couchsurfing community is one of the most active ones in the world, with over 8,000 members and 51 groups.

“I’ve pretty much made a whole new groups of friends that I always hang out with now,” Neder said. “That’s all I do, I hang out with Couchsurfers,” she said, laughing.

As you can see, Couchsurfers come in all shapes and sizes, not to mention ages. Though the average age on the site is 27, and 85 percent of the people are under 34 years old, there are still nearly 120,000 members who are over 35. And a total of 183 people who are between 80 and 89 years old! There are members in more than 200 countries and on every continent.

Like many things in life, Couchsurfing is what you make of it and it’s an individual experience. Here, seven Couchsurfers who recently got together for dinner in Queens in New York explain what Couchsurfing means to them.

Since The Couchsurfing Project was started five years ago by traveler Casey Fenton, there have been over two million positive experiences, a whopping 99.791 percent of all member experiences. While some people are scared to give Couchsurfing a try due to security issues, the current members say to go for it.

“Open your mind to experience it,” encouraged Laura Johnston, 32, who is originally from Australia but now lives in Sunnyside, Queens. “Three times I have had Couchsurfers, and I am not dead yet, so it can’t be that bad,” she said and laughed.

So what are you waiting for? The surf’s up!

Here you will see Couchsurfing in action.

When I tell people that I just spent five months/eight months/a year traveling, I almost always get the same response: “How on earth did you have money to do that??”

That question kind of irritates me. Traveling is one of the cheapest things you can do. Come on, what else can you for a month and only spend $500 doing it? Pay rent, maybe.

But traveling is much more fun than paying rent, that’s for sure.

And with the way I travel, $500 a month is almost streching it. I could get by with less if I had to. That’s because when I travel, most of the time I go couchsurfing –that means I stay with local people in their houses (for free!) and get an amazing experience as a bonus.

For me, couchsurfing is such a natural thing to do that I find it amazing when people travel without utilizing the service, or worse, without ever having heard of it! Come on people, it is the greatest invention ever! I have met some really cool people through couchsurfing, and I have visited local households all over the world, from Jakarta to Santiago de Chile, from Rio de Janeiro to Buenos Aires. Those are also my favorite travel memories. I don’t remember most of the hotels I’ve stayed in, but I will always remember the Vietnamese family in Hanoi who hosted me for four days and drove me around the city with their motorbike. When I travel, I want to see how the locals live. And that is what couchsufing is all about.

So the idea between couchsurfing is that members around the world open up their houses for strangers (or more accurately, for friends they haven’t met yet!). And then anyone within the community can ask to go visit them! Most guests only stay for a couple of nights in one household, so it’s not a terrible strain on the host. If you want to stay with someone, you just email them and then they will decide if they want to host you or not.

(more…)

Now that graduate school is starting to get really hard core with beat memos and election stories and broadcast projects due one after another, I often find myself missing my worry-free traveling days. Between January 2006 and May 2008 I spent a total of 18 months traveling around Australia, Asia and South America. Ahh, those were the days. Not a worry (or an assignment deadline) in the world.

But then, reading excerpts from my travel blog makes me remember that life on the road wasn’t always fun and games. Here’s my blog entry from Jan. 24, 2007 when I was traveling around Indonesia. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Most painful trip of my life…

Oh my dear lord…what a week. I think it’s safe to say this week has been one of the most demanding weeks of my life, in so many ways. It’s been demanding both physically and mentally and now I’m “knackered” as the Brits would say… or tired as shit, as the Yankees would put it! I think I prefer the latter…hah. But it feels SO great to be back with civilization (at least somewhat… I’m in Mataram, the capital of Lombok… granted, it’s no New York but it still beats Eastern Indonesia!!! You’ll find out soon enough why, just keep reading…)

Anyways, so about a week ago my travel buddy Zoe and I decided to part ways for 1.5 weeks since I wanted to go see the Komodo dragons and Zoe didn’t feel like trekking all the way out to Komodo Island just see a few lizards. So we went our own ways from Mataram (the same place I have returned to now), and we are supposed to meet up in Bali again tomorrow. Just so you know, the Komodo Island is situated waaaay far from Lombok and Bali. It ended up taking me about 30 hours one-way traveling with buses, ferries and a sailing boat. AND then I still had to come back the same way… just got back this morning after another night spent in the bus. THANK GOD I’M BACK HERE!! I have officially never been this sweaty in my life… coz traveling here is so much more hard core than traveling in other countries I’ve been to. Here the heat is unforgiving and the air is filled with so much dust and you are being hassled 24/7 to buy something and/or to get “transport” somewhere. Or sometimes people just want to say “hello misses! hello mister!” (sometimes “mister” is the only English word they know, so they use that for everyone..). Either way, you don’t get a moment alone in this country and it’s especially tough when you travel on your own. (more…)