This is my first guest post. As you will recall, mum and I host wwoofers to help us around the garden. We are hosting a lovely young girl from Lucerne in Switzerland called Merle Link, who is leaving tomorrow for the Coromandel. Merle is planning to study to become a primary school teacher. She is an extremely talented singer who performs at weddings back home (check out her YouTube channel). She asked if she can perform at mine if I ever get married in the future and I said yes without any reservations. She is truly amazing. I've asked Merle to provide her perspective on travelling in New Zealand and her vision for the future. My name is Merle (yes it is hard to say that in English) I’m 19 years old and I’m from Switzerland. I’ve just finished school this summer and have a break of six months before I have to do a course for the university I want to go to. My mom travelled to New Zealand when she was about my age and she’s still talking about it so much she always showed me the pictures when I was younger and I fell in love with them so I decided to go see that beautiful place myself. I booked my flight around April this year and then started to plan how I want to travel and where this journey should lead me to. My brother travelled to New Zealand two years ago and he did WWOOF-ing he told me that he met some really nice people and that he learned a lot in that time. So I just found myself searching the page and immediately liking the idea of living with someone, helping them work and have a different perspective than just as a normal tourist. Because I knew that I would land in Auckland I searched for places near the city there were a few different ones and I read through their profiles and I liked the one from Anita’s garden immediately. I liked it a lot that there were many informations about them and the garden so I asked them if I could work and live with them for a week and the messages were really nice and I felt even more excited to go there than before. I’ve helped them to plant seedlings and I helped Anita with her blog. I feel like my English really improved just from talking to them a lot and they were so nice. Now that my stay here is coming to an end I feel sad but I feel also excited for the next three months of my journey. In the first month I’ll be travelling around on the north island my next stop is Coromandel and after that I’ll go to Tauranga and then the next almost two months I’ll travel around on the south island and I’m really looking forward to see Milford Sound. I’ll leave New Zealand on the 21 of December and I know even now that I’ll miss it really bad. Now that I’ve told you something about my journey I’m going to tell you something about my person. As I wrote I am 19 years old and for some people that might be really young to travel alone but I feel confident and glad that I am able to do that. When you think back to the time when you were 19 do you remember how it felt to realize that you’re an adult? That life is getting serious and you have to make decisions that will be important for your career or just have a huge influence in who you will be as a person? So yes I am young and I feel like that I’ve made the decision to travel alone for three month in a place that is so far away from my home will strengthen my personality and yes it kind of scares me but at the same time I am so full of happiness that I can do that on my own. When I get back home I’ll have to make a course to go to university and it takes six month until I’m done with that course. After the course university will start in September and then three years later I will be a primary teacher I’ll teach my own classes and I’ll have a huge responsibility. If I don’t take a year off I would never be able to do a journey like that again. And even if it wouldn’t have such a great influence in my personality. Hopefully this journey will make me more confident and open to foreign things I think that should be the purpose of a journey like that, it should change something in who you are and maybe change your way to look at things. To travel is really expensive but in Switzerland the salaries are really high so I’ve earned a lot of money in a short time. As a singer I had the opportunity to sing on weddings and I think it is one of the best ways to earn money with something you love doing. Because there were only three weddings this year I had to find something else to earn some money with and there was a possibility that my school offered that you could clean the schoolhouse one week in the vacations and that’s the way I got all the money together all by myself and I’m really proud to say that because I think not many people at my age are able to say that. I took a few pictures from the garden because photography is another thing that I really like doing and here are some of them: And here’s a picture from me if you’re interested in what I look like: And last but not least pictures of Lucerne where I’m living:
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Since January this year, Mum and I have been hosting WWOOFers at Anita’s Garden. WWOOF is an international organisation which operates in many countries around the world. It stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms. The concept is relatively simple. Travellers, both foreigners and nationals, are provided with accommodation and meals by hosts in exchange for 4-6 hours of assistance outdoors each day. The work undertaken by travellers is voluntary in nature. The idea is for hosts to teach wwoofers about organic principles and sustainable living. The organisation also promotes the concept of a cultural exchange, whereby hosts and volunteers can learn from one another on a variety of levels.
As many of you will know, we do not live on a farm, but rather an urban property in Auckland. Prior to joining WWOOF New Zealand (http://www.wwoof.co.nz/), I enquired whether owners of urban properties qualified to become hosts so long as they were committed to producing food in accordance with organic principles. Fortunately for us, WWOOF NZ was extremely supportive of the concept of an organic urban homestead and encouraged us to register as hosts. With section sizes decreasing globally, the organisation felt that it would be good for volunteers to see how a large quantity of food could be produced in a relatively small space. Since joining WWOOF, we have hosted seven sets of wwoofers from the following countries: France, the United States of America, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada. For the next two months, we will be welcoming two further French pairs and also two individual travellers from Slovakia. So far, we have been very impressed by the way the scheme operates and by the calibre of the volunteers who have stayed with us. Each wwoofer, in his or her own way, has contributed tremendously to the development of Anita’s Garden and left a lasting imprint on our lives. We really enjoy working together as a team and find that we can accomplish so much more than if we worked on our own. We also have a lot more fun in Anita’s Garden! Both mum and I take our responsibility as educators very seriously. We do our best to ensure that wwoofers leave Anita’s Garden having learnt a lot about gardening and acquired new skills. As wwoofers have often spent time volunteering at other properties in New Zealand, we have found that we have also learned a lot from wwoofers and their own experiences. Wwoofers have continually reminded us that we should feel very grateful for the fact that we can grow edibles year round, which is not possible during the more temperate winters in Northern America and Europe for the most part. For this reason, quite a few wwoofers were in awe of our lemon tree, which we found amusing as it is a pretty standard feature in most New Zealand gardens. We all love gathering around the table for lunch and dinner each day, which are both prepared by mum and draw upon as much fresh produce from Anita’s Garden as possible. We have had some very interesting conversations with wwoofers during our meals, as well as lots of laughter. Back in February, we were even spoiled by a couple from the United States who cooked for us, making homemade sushi twice and also a delicious Thai curry. About a month ago, we registered as hosts with a similar organisation called HelpX (http://www.helpx.net/index.asp). The main difference between WWOOF and HelpX is that the former focuses on the production of organic food and the involvement of wwoofers in those activities, whereas the assistance provided by volunteers through HelpX can be more general in nature. As mentioned above, two French pairs will be staying with us after we return home from our holiday tomorrow. These volunteers were booked through HelpX. Through these experiences, it will be interesting to compare and contrast the two organisations. In particular, I am curious as to whether there are any differences in expectations on both the part of both hosts and volunteers. If any of you have been either a volunteer or host via WWOOF or HelpX, I would be most interested to hear from you. In which country did you either volunteer or host a volunteer? What was your experience like? |
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