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i just updated our profile on couch surfing and thought i'd post it here as a gentle prod to those of you still on the fence about visiting:

i'm a professor de langue anglais in ecole primare, and am in the midst of fulfilling my life-long goal of living in france. my fiancé is in midst of fulfilling his life-long goal of programming in the closest to solitude as he's likely to find. content as cats we are with our chocolate, wine, and bread. want to stop in? if we are not hosting other travelers or traveling ourselves, you might be able to find a spot on our clic-clac. it sleeps two comfortably (well, relatively comfortably).

*****

for those of you who don't know, couch surfing is a great site that allows people to connect to, well, couch surf. it's developing friendster aspects but it started before all that in the spirit of egalitarian travel. last year we stayed with a nice woman in tokyo for three days who we with met through there. on a related note, i'd also recommend servas, a more formal hospitality program that has been around since the 60s. we spent several days with servas hosts in ise-shima, japan and it was one our most connecting and profound travel experiences.

i traveled alone at the end of october to nearby béziers and stayed with servas hosts yvette and claude. both are artists, but most remarkable are claude's abstracts, which due to a handicap in both arms are painted with a brush held in his teeth. see him in action here.