Urban Camping: Where do you live?

Urban Camping

In a foreign country at the end of my marriage, I traveled nomadically for 11 months staying in 24 places throughout Holland, Portugal, Canada, USA, Brazil and Argentina before buying a home.

It made such an impression on me that I intentionally set out on a second nomadic trip to further explore the concepts of mobility, simplicity, and perspective. While doing my graduate degree, I camped in 30 places in 55 weeks. Now I host urban nomads through the Couchsurfing Project.

24 August 2005

Where do you live?

I was house-sitting Nienke's Rotterdam apartment while she was in Australia for 1 month.

As I walked up to her door, two young neighborhood girls, whom I had never met, jumped up and down as they giggled and repeatedly asked me, "Where do you live? Where do you live? Where do you live?"

I had no idea how to answer that question so I just ignored them.

Technorati tag: urban camping

1 Comments:

Anonymous said...: so there are others like me. I want to email you , but cannot locate your email on this site. Iw ill do a google search. But there are other s like me. many. I honestly didn't know. I am now in Paris housesitting. I left Portland, Oregon last september for a three month trip with not much money and a lot of trepidation. now I have been traveling for over a year and made new families and communities all over from the Acores where I lived for four months to the Sahara desert. I now have homes. I am a writer, a poet working on several projects. I didn't realize until I saw "The List" how many other writers live like this. It has been challenging in some ways to work on the go in new homes constantly and balance that with really engaging. When people ask me as they do often and did the other night at a soiree. "Are you working? on vacation? a student?" I just laugh and say, "um no not really. um I am sort of a gypsy, a wanderer, a nomad, a poet." and you know they often say, "oh. okay"

Amanda
my email is trafficlotus@gmail.com; Tuesday, 25 September, 2007

Post a Comment

<< Home

About Me

Name: Jennifer Metz

Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands

Thinking outside the box
by getting out of my box.

I want mobility:
Get-up-and-go in the global village. Navigation to other vantage points. What does the world look like from there? Is there room to move? Or am I tied down to my stuff?

I want simplicity:
Real needs and wants are fewer than they sometimes seem. 'Accumulation' is as inevitable as death and taxes. Can I prune back the attention-stealing stuff to give space to the useful and meaningful things?

I want perspective:
Understanding of how multi-faceted life is. Consideration of options. Is the world getting smaller? Or is MY WORLD getting smaller? How many viewpoints have I seen so far? Is there a 'road less traveled' or a million billion different roads? Can I 'get out of the woods' and look for multiple angles?