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Published: October 9th 2016
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#Week 3
This week has been very different from the “normal” weeks that I’ve had so far. The week started off by adding four new members to our awesome group of workawayers! Somehow all four new members happened to come from the United Kingdom. This means a lot of new accents are added to the house. To welcome everybody we started the week with a nice dinner at Ruby’s Diner. Ruby’s is a restaurant which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Their menu varies from the most amazing burgers to milkshakes in all flavours thinkable! The whole diner is designed as if it were in the 1960’s. All the employees wear either pants and a blouse or an oldschool dress, all in the same colors. The whole setting of the diner gave me a very happy feeling and made me feel as if I really lived in the 1960’s for that hour.
The dinner on Thursday was perfect to begin with, but now it was really time to get to work! From Friday evening until Sunday afternoon, the ranch organizes the Model Horse Rally. This is an event where the kids learn how to take good care of a horse
and how to show at real competitions. They all bring their own small model horse and take care of it for the whole weekend. Their learn how to work in teams, how to ride a dressage test and a jumping course and a lot about time management. This weekend is not only about learning, but also about having a great time with their new friends!
For the rally, me and the other workers have been getting the whole ranch and setting for the rally ready. Some horses had to be moved to create some more space for the showjumping and dressage arena. When everything was set up and ready the rally was ready to begin. In my beautiful self-painted green team leader shirt I was all ready to go! I started by playing some games to get to know each other with the kids and other leaders. After that, I was in charge of one of the stations. In this rally the kids were divided in six teams and they all had to go trough a few stations, including making barns, tack and banners. I was the one who was in charge of making banners. This was a great
station for me, since I had plenty of time to have some conversations with all the kids. Where they came from, how they liked it here, etc. It was also interesting how I could use some of my teacher skills in this station, for example keeping all of the kids busy with making the banners and coming up with their team names. When all was ready for the competitions the next day, all the leaders and children had a nice dinner together and played games in the main arena at the barn. After playing games and eating smores by the campfire, it was time for the kids to return to their tents and have a good night of sleep before the big day. At this point, I also really needed some sleep.
The next morning started like every other: wake up at 7, muck out all the stables and give every horse water. After this we had a nice big breakfast with all the kids. Now that everybody had eaten, the competition could begin! I got assigned a group of 3 girls who all had to complete 6 tasks, and I was the one to make sure they would
get there on time. The afternoon was amazing! It was so nice to see the kids doing so well and enjoying themselves so much!
When the rally and the prizegiving were over, we decided to go swimming at Reese’s house, since it had been incredibly hot that day. Reese is one of the girls who spends a lot of her time on the ranch, riding the horses and helping out, mostly during the summer. She lives a few minutes away from the ranch, in a beautiful house in the hills of Fallbrook. We had a nice swim in the pool and all watched the sun go down behind the hills. It was the perfect ending to a very busy, but amazing weekend!
After the Model Horse Rally, Crystal had decided that all of the workers deserved a nice day off at the beach! We went to Oceanside by car and we would take a bus back to Temecula in the afternoon. Unfortunately, it was only very hot at the ranch and very cloudy and cold by the ocean. There was not a lot of swimming for us that day, but we did take some amazing pictures and explored
oceanside! We got amazing icecream at Coldstone and the local frozen yoghurt shop and for dinner we decided to take a long stoll along the beach to eat at a small Fish-and-Chips restaurant. When we were walking trough oceanside, I noticed that a lot of the shops were targeting marines and guys in the military. I saw for example, shops where they could get their uniforms repared and special barbershops (a lot actually).
The rest of this week was mainly quiet, working with the horses, doing the daily chores and just having a lot of fun with the whole group! I have to say that I love the work that I’m doing on the ranch right now. It is very rewarding work since the horses are very happy about everything I do. Also, I love being around the people and animals on this ranch. Every morning when I wake up at 6:45 A.M and do chores on top of the hill, like mucking out certain paddocks or watering horses up there, I have this lovely view of the sun coming up behind the hills, and it just gives me a happy feeling. I never want to leave this beautiful
place!
I hoped you liked this week’s blog, I will write again next week!
Love, Anouk
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