A Look at CouchSurfing.com

          When I first heard about this website and before even clicking on the link, I honestly though this would be a site about a couch catalog or to think in a more ludicrous sense, videos of people surfing down hills or stairs on couches. I thought that second thought was more interesting than the first in all honesty, but once I entered the domain, the site turned out to be completely different from my thoughts. Turns out, this site is actually about people opening up their homes for travelers to stay a night in a room, most likely an extra room in the home no one uses. Now, I've heard of some pretty far out ideas before, but although people starting up their homes as local hostels for tourists sounds somewhat beneficial for a few extra dollars, it definitely is not the safest idea. After all, not everyone on the Internet is a considerably nice person and you may end up spending the night with someone who is a total creep. I don't have much experience with this site or have ever participated in anything going on with it, but it could be heavily assumed that a situation like this could arise.

          Not only is this site used for people who are travelling to certain locations to find a place to rest for the night, tourists could find about events, parties, or other occasions going on rather than just staying the night somewhere. For instance, one could host a party at their home and anyone could go, which in my opinion sounds like an awful idea. I do not think I would want dozens of random strangers from around the world in my house messing it up or have the chance to steal my possessions.  Although, I'm not a stranger to building relationships on the Internet, but this is rather a situation where you've had no experience talking to this person via a Messenger, phone call, or even a Web Camera conversation. All I'm saying is, this doesn't sound like the most cognitive or conscious idea to waltz over to someone's home that you have never had contact with before and spend the night there.

          Overall, yeah, this site could be used to meet people all around the world or even find new and exciting ways to tour a city or country, but in all honesty this doesn't seem to be the best way to go about meeting people, it sounds a bit too dangerous for my tastes, especially with out of the country travel.