The following is an excerpt from my summer journal in 2011, and describes a moment from the first hour of meeting Ana & Pranav, my newest friends and couchsurfing hosts:
I offered Ana Stanić surfing lessons if she were ever to ever visit California, and she smiled sheepishly: “I do not know how that would turn out,” she responded. “I am not so good at sports. When I moved to Norway, I found out about a whole new category of things called ‘winter sports,’ which I also suck at.”
“Yes, but you are good at bowling,” countered Pranav, Ana’s Quebecois colleague from Oslo.
“True!” Ana’s face lit up. “The first time I went bowling, I was very excited. I had shorts and a sports bra and everything!”
Pranav imitated her bowling style, miming a boulder being hurled skyward and crashing violently to the earth, rolling at glacial speeds towards the pins.
Ana giggled, and covered her face with her hands.