Here's an opportunity for you to travel for free!

[Winston]

For those of you on a tight budget or can't afford to go abroad, here is an opportunity through Couchsurfing.com to travel and experience foreign cultures for free:

An email I got in my Couchsurfing account:

"CouchSurfing is Hiring All Across the World
CouchSurfing is hiring all across the world, and you can join us! Where do you want to go? CouchSurfing has flown its full-time volunteers from the coconut-tree shaded beaches of the Andaman sea to the glacier carved rock-faces six-thousand meters above Alaska. What do you want to experience? CouchSurfing's career-level staff has watched humpback whales from the sea, bathed in a river with elephants, and swam with dolphins. Who do you want to meet? CouchSurfing's US headquarters is blocks from University of California, Berkeley, which has been home to twenty Nobel Prize winners.

Are you a highly trained professional seeking to escape your cubicle and change the world? CouchSurfing has career openings today in several fields. As a full-time volunteer, CouchSurfing will provide all of your basic needs, including housing, food, and amazing experiences. But we know that's not enough for a sharp mind and deep heart such as yours. You have rare talents that always need tougher challenges. You want to pour all of your energy into a project you believe in. You want to be inspired by an amazing team of colleagues who are doing the same.

CouchSurfing expects intense output from its volunteers, and it gives just as much back. Our guiding principles include continuous personal development of our personnel, meaningful personal connections between our volunteers, and keeping the fun in everything we do.

The CouchSurfing career path starts with full-time unpaid volunteering. However, long-term CS volunteers get to travel the world, all expenses paid, and experience new cultures intimately by living at one of our global offices. Want to live by the famous red spires of San Francisco's Golden Gate bridge? Or would you rather open your laptop in a palm-thatched hut near Chiang Mai? Or maybe you want to improve your Spanish in South America.

If you're ready to spend several months to a lifetime helping people around the world host travelers and surf couches, then visit our new CouchSurfing Careers web pages to learn more.

Apply today for one of these full-time positions:

* Administrative Coordinator
* Carpenter & Handy-person
* Database Administrator
* Events & Outreach Coordinator
* Gardener / Landscaper
* Human Resources & Personnel Coordinator
* IT Assistant
* Marketing Coordinator
* Member Communications Coordinator
* Safety Systems & Strategy Coordinator
* System Administrator
* Web Developer"

W: One of the links above goes to here for more info:

http://www.couchsurfing.com/careers.html

"Travel the World on Us
You know the traveler's catch-22: When you have the freedom to travel, you don't have the money. Yet when you're earning the money, you can't take time off from your job. Most people who have to travel for work never see much more than the inside of hotel rooms and conference centers. At CouchSurfing, discovering new local cultures through travel is not only an option for your time-off, it's required and included in your compensation package. Experiencing local cultures and experiencing the CS community as a surfer and host is essential for all staff members. That's why every full-time staff member has the opportunity to live abroad for several months of each year at one of our amazing Collective locations while maintaining a home and life in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our staff has been all across the globe at previous Collectives including Montreal in Canada, Nelson in New Zealand, Rotterdam in Holland, Pai in Thailand, and Alaska in the United States.

The CS Career Path
All CS team members begin as volunteers. CouchSurfing provides full-time volunteers and employees with free housing and meals. We also reward staff members for staying with us by providing travel tickets, travel expense reimbursements, and eventually paid salaries. CS is going to be around for generations to enjoy, so we want our staff to become part of our family and to make CS their career. Our long-term full-time positions require a renewable three month commitment. First time volunteers cover their own travel to Base Camp or the Collective, CS covers meals and housing. If we both want to continue for a second three month commitment, CS offers monthly reimbursement for your part of your travel expenses, transportation to a Collective, as well as meals and housing. With each additional three month commitment, CS offers a larger monthly travel reimbursement. Those with a minimum of 12 months volunteering with CS full-time are eligible to become a salaried employee.

Temporary Opportunities

CouchSurfing also offers many short-term positions for those who can volunteer on-site for 1-12 weeks. Spend your vacation giving back to the CS community and living with the CS staff at Base Camp or a Collective. These roles change often as our needs change, so check back often.

Remote Opportunities

CouchSurfing's expert volunteer teams all contain several remote team members. Remote participants work from their homes around the world in their free time. Many of them have existing careers and many are traveling nomads. If you can make a commitment of a few hours each week, these roles may be right for you."

W: More links for further info are at the page above.

The only thing is, that these folks are lovey dovey humanitarian hippie type folks, so you've got to fit in with them and impress them. They are pretty much the same as the backpackers and Lonely Planet type crowd - eternally optimistic, always happy folks, yet very anti-sex and never talk about it, as though they have no sexual desires. So, they are wonderful people, kind, warm, and like me, very much against the lifestyle of corporate America, and very anti-materialistic, but very anti-sex as well and very anti-negativity too.

I never understood that about these Lonely Planet/backpackers. Why are they so anti-sex? Do they not have any sexual desires? Or is the humanitarian type soul just very different than those of horny lustful men who love beautiful women?

Any idea?

There is also an unspoken rule among their kind that you should never say anything negative about other people or cultures, even if it's true, as if eternal positiveness and optimism are mandatory. But why would they want to turn a blind eye to the truth?