I want to write about my couch surfing experience in California, although I really want to write about my rabbits. Guess I’ll have to save the rabbits for tomorrow.
I have six rabbits… Alright, I’ll have to post another one.
I have stayed at over 20 different strangers’ houses in the past year, both as an official and unofficial couch surfer.
Why unofficial? I met with locals and became friends, either they invited me or I asked, without using the Couchsurfing website.
If you haven’t heard of Couchsurfing, it is a great website and community to meet local people and ask them to host you while you’re traveling. All for free. I have benefited from it so much as a poor high school graduate. Yes, I started couch surfing solo in the U.S. when I was 18.
Have I had a bad experience?
I don’t know about others. But I have never stayed with a person who was not hospitable, helpful, and interesting.
But are there bad people out there?
I’m sure there are.
That’s why if you are smart like me, you would look through their profile as carefully as you can and read all their reviews. Be picky! I can usually tell instinctually whether the person I’ll be staying with is going to kill me or not. Besides, you can always ask them to meet you in a public place first.
I’ve stayed all over the place in the Los Angeles area, such as Long Beach, Hollywood (I once lived on Hollywood hill right near the Hollywood sign for a week), Santa Monica, Alhambra, and Culver City, just to name a few. I’ve stayed in San Francisco (and am still there), San Jose, Oakland, and Berkeley. I haven’t couch surfed for quite a while now, but I’ve always wanted to write about my hosts and my story with them.
The first person I stayed with in Long Beach, was the biggest surprise to me and the most unforgettable. It was my first time coming to the U.S. after all. It was on December 21st, 2013. I was so excited being on an airplane for the first time in my life. I remember I was all jittery when the plane started moving and really trying to listen carefully to the safety instructions while people sitting next to me were just collapsed in their seats reading on their devices. I was saying to myself ‘Come on people, this is exciting! We are flying!’
After 13 hours of agonizing flight over the pacific ocean, over continents, over everything. I was, of course, still excited.
My host came all the way from Long Beach to pick me up at LAX airport. I was actually very touched when I got through customs and saw her right there, standing in the crowd with a large sheet of paper that read YIYA. I did not expect to see her so soon – LAX is a big airport. I felt at home immediately.
I could not have asked for a better host for my very first couch surfing experience in California.
It turned out we became instant friends and are still in touch today. She took me to Disneyland on Christmas Eve, and I joined her daily morning walk along the beach. She even surprised me a month ago by coming to visit, and we hiked up to Twin Peaks in San Francisco.
She is also my first transgender friend. I did not know that until I came back to Long Beach and stayed with another host, who told me.
We enjoyed the company of each other so much that she cried when we had to say goodbye.
My next host “Mr. Beer” came pick me up soon after.
He’s such a gentleman! That was my first impression.
And I was right, he was respectful and helpful during my stay. We went ice-skating, played ping-pong, had dinner and drink with a concert at Culver Hotel. The only thing I did not appreciate much was that I had too much easy access to alcohol. The smell of alcohol still brings me back to those memories today.
One thing I do not understand is that smoking marijuana is considered almost popular in the U.S.. Before I came to California, I did not even know what it smelled like. It’s taken very seriously in China.
I carpooled to San Francisco after couch surfing in Los Angeles for two months with about ten hosts. My favorite memory was watching the sun going down over the beach, the clouds and the sky turning all purple. It was astonishing!
As a person who did not grow up by the ocean, it was a luxury for me to live by so many beautiful beaches. I appreciated it even more because the weather was always warm and sunny when my hometown would have probably been engulfed in a snowstorm.
I never moved from San Francisco since I arrived, even though I was planning to. I almost did.
I have found that it is not a place that keeps me, but rather, the people.
Despite the good reputation of San Francisco, my first impression of the City was terrible. Homeless people, filthy trash, stinky smells everywhere – welcome to the Tenderloin – the notorious ghetto adjacent to the posh Union Square shopping district in San Francisco (I did not know that). It happened to be where I had to stay for the first few days of my visit.
On the first day, after I already felt somewhat disappointed, somebody got shot right by the Powell subway station where I was waiting for a train with another host. We waited and waited, but all the trains just passed right by us and none of them stopped. The crowd started filling up the station very quickly. ‘What the heck is going on?’ I was thinking to myself, ‘Would this city please stop being so weird?’
Nope. It never did. It just became weirder and weirder. After somebody told us what had happened at the station, I shuddered. I think I regretted coming here. I thought I was going to get shot, finally, after two months of peaceful beach life. Gun shots in America had been all over the news in China, one of the reasons my parents were so against me coming here alone.
The thought of getting shot kept popping into my mind whenever I was walking on the street in downtown San Francisco for the first few days. Everybody looked suspicious to me.
I switched to fight-or-flight mode.
However, I had to calm down after only a few days. Everybody I met was extremely friendly and nice. My perception started to change drastically after I had stayed in a few different areas.
One of the hosts I stayed with lived on the corner of Geary Boulevard and Polk Street, where I volunteered at a homeless shelter named Next Door. It was actually next door, right across the street from where I lived. It was interesting serving food to homeless people – not everybody there enjoyed the food or appreciated us. But we did not help for the thank-yous, we helped because we wanted to. There are so many more places where people constantly need volunteers, this is the least we could do.
It felt great to give. I didn’t receive anything but I received something at the same time. My soul was satisfied. It felt better than actually receive something material.
I greeted and conversed with the homeless people hanging out in front of the shelter every time I walked by. There were two women I saw quite often, they were especially friendly towards me and told me that they were actually studying in college, but due to some sort of problems in their families they ended up in the homeless shelter. I felt sorry for them, and hope life is treating them well. I liked them.
I also tried to live on the street in Berkeley for a few weeks – not because I absolutely couldn’t find anywhere to live, but because I sort of wanted to. I wanted to see what it would be like to live on the street. There were already so many people living that way – at least I wouldn’t be alone – that was what I thought.
And I opened a whole new world and broadened my horizons by doing that.
I could say luckily but proudly that it was an unprecedented experience – in a good way.
Of course, it wasn’t a typically pleasant experience sleeping on the cold hard ground. Most of the nights were actually freezing despite of the warm sunny daytime disguise. When I said sleep, I meant really half-awake. It’s pretty normal to be awakened by the cold or the traffic. I hated that feeling. I feel so much compassion for homeless people – that is the normal life for many of them.
I could take a pretty good guess that one of the main reasons causing people to live on the street is family problems.
I’m willing to bet $100 that a person with a supportive, understanding, loving, and integrated family is not living on the street.
From my observation, the people living on the street are normally some kind of addicts. A good number of them are talented artists. A few have emotion issues. Few are harmful. Uncannily, some are “normal” people just like you and me.
All of them are human beings.
They might have chosen that way of living, but I’d like to mention that it is not a convenient lifestyle – certainly not the easiest. It is not convenient to haven’t a place to stay even inside; it is not convenient to get waken up constantly at night by the cold, it is not convenient having to use public bathrooms for one’s whole life; it is not convenient having to wait in line for that one free meal each and every day. It is, in fact, terrible.
Although I have to say Berkeley is a great city to be homeless in. The people were nice and accommodating. Five people that I met randomly offered me a place to stay after getting to know me for a while.
Food Not Bombs is an extraordinary group that serves free vegetarian food to anybody who’s hungry. They serve at People’s Park in Berkeley in the afternoon, Monday through Friday at 2:30.
My last (and current) host is the reason that kept me here. San Francisco is a great city, but I was not sure I could stay for any longer than a mere few months had it not been the people I met here along the way.
I can write all day about my experience with each host. But I don’t plan to – I would have to write for 20 days.
Long story short, I had a wonderful, adventuresome, awesome, and life changing year in 2014. Although I have not been couch surfing for a long time, I surely miss it and want to get back to the great community at some point. I appreciate every single person from the bottom of my heart who helped me in any way on this road, who gave me a chance to get to know them and to share in their cultures and stories.
I hope to one day return the incredible favor and become a host myself.
I’m fortunate that I managed to stay in two very expensive cities in the United States for nearly two years, for nothing. Thanks to all these awesome people who are willing to share their space with strangers and welcome them home with a warm and open heart.
I am not a bum, however, nor do I aspire to be one. That’s not the way I want to live my life. It was but my experiment to show you by my very own experiences that there are always possibilities in life. It doesn’t matter if you are poor or broken. Life doesn’t recognize people that way. Life only cares if someone tried or not. You can make it possible by asking for what you want.
