If you know anyone who dreams of traveling but thinks they can’t afford it I thought I’d share a bit about how two of my kids are currently gallivanting across Europe for 4-6 months on pretty small budgets. Between a bit of solo exploring, they stay with local hosts and exchange their time and skills for free room, board and interesting adventures through a program found at workaway.info/ There are no age limits and endless opportunities worldwide if you know anyone who may be interested in some budget friendly cross-cultural adventures. Both girls would be happy to answer questions about their experiences. Ali Alaethea Sanders left in March and has been doing a theme of horsemanship through Europe to enrich her training and riding skills. So far she’s met some wonderful people and stayed in gorgeous equine settings in Spain, France and Italy, and is currently in London. For the past 6 years Ali’s been passionate about finding good horses in bad situations, most on their way to Mexican slaughter houses. She loves, trains and tests them until they’re ready to be matched up with new homes. She’s gotten to host, nurture and find homes for 33 unique and beautiful horses that have each taught her something new and left hoof prints on all our hearts. She combined this love with a dream of traveling and has had a great time while working her buns off learning new riding and training skills, being the resident equine photographer, leading hacks, as well as scooping lots of good old exotic foreign horse poop. She’s loved experiencing different cultures and has made some close friends with fellow work away travelers and her wonderful hosts. Ali’s had some fun brief excursions to Barcelona, Paris, Venice, Rome and Florence staying in hostels. Her train and air travel misadventures have definitely been new experiences. She’s also now convinced that Italy has these little gremlins that sneak in during the night to shrink your pants – it couldn’t possibly be all that gelato and pasta. She’s having some R & R staying with a friend in London before heading for jaunts into Scotland and Ireland. Feel free to go check out her photo albums. Mandie Rambling Mandie left mid-May and packed in some really amazing experiences with her first host in County Donegal, Ireland. Check out her blog post - “A Terrorist for a Tour Guide” about her fascinating time with her host. ramblingmandie/terrorist-for-tour-guide/ . Also look for a great post about a very special private music session she was privileged to experience there, as well as many other fun posts. Mandie is currently having a blast living on top of a mountain on the gorgeous Greek island of Skopelos where her host runs a stand up paddle boarding business touring around the Greek Islands. She’s helping with tours to earn her keep and doing some freelance web design to earn a little cash along the way. She’s heading to Serbia this week and then Croatia. Mandie is also exploring the possibility of arranging travel tours for women who are a little nervous about traveling alone but want to go for it and get out of their comfort zone. Mandie’s theme for her own trip is - Traveling out of my comfort zone & into adventure. She’s writing a really fun blog -ramblingmandie/ that has some excellent posts on her adventures and some great reflections on what she’s learning about herself and life as she travels. (I loved today’s post!) Please feel free to go in and sign up for her blog, like her FB page and share any posts that you enjoy! (I have tried twelve ways from Sunday to get a link to her blog on here but will just try and see if I can post it separately.) The girls will meet up and spend a few weeks in Ireland having some fun together before heading back to the states at the end of August. Then we will once again have five children living in five different states. Miss them all every day. As for this Mum here at home Ive had a great many opportunities to practice the fine art of ~ “How to not freak out when you have beautiful daughters, traveling alone around Europe without cell phone service and they don’t respond for days to your many messages, asking hows it going - but meaning are you still alive ……….” Some days I confess to being a total failure at this practice. I really am thrilled any time my kids get to have new experiences and opportunities to learn about the world and themselves. ramblingmandie/
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 00:32:14 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015