Couch Surfing

I recently joined the community of Couch Surfers! Check it out, if you're interested: www.couchsurfing.com. It's this really fascinating way of networking with people all over the world. Whether you are hosting or traveling, you get the opportunity to learn about cultures and make new friends.
Basically,how it works:
Once you sign up and become a member, you have to create a profile (much like a facebook profile) including interests, location, travel experiences, etc. If you are interested in traveling somewhere particular, you search that city and dates that you need and find someone with an available couch. You can crash on their couch and then move on to your next city and next couch. Hopefully, through this experience, your host will be able to share with you some of the best places the city has to offer and give you good recommendations; they might even be able to show you around a little. You have also made a contact. Everyone has specific guidelines and needs on their profiles--that way you know ahead of time the max amount of nights you can stay, the availability they have to hang out, things like that.
After my first round of travel days are over, I think it would be great to host, too. All you need is a couch, and you can give travelers a great experience and make some friends.
I'm pretty excited about getting started with it. It just seems overall like a really ingenius system that provides users with experience and unity that they could get no other way. Life is all about learning and growing, and I think most importantly about experiencing these things through human beings. Traveling the world with the help of strangers-turned-friends gives a different perspective on the places you are visiting: you can see it from an insider's perspective, you meet real people from the community, and discover quite often--that despite all the trivial and superficial differences, the people of the world all are fundamentally alike in ways that you might not expect.
To wrap it up:
I'm excited about this new endeavor and hope to utilize this community to the fullest while I am traveling the rest of my life!