16 NOs and one YES

---

Before leaving Denmark, we had talked about how we were going to travel, and we had come across this world wide volunteering platform, Workaway. You live in someone’s house, help out with whatever they need help with 3 to 5 hours a day, and in exchange you get to stay there, and depending on the work required, maybe also food. We agreed that we wanted to spend part of our stay volunteering like this, and getting Ollie and Alba active in doing something locally. Anyone can sign up and we looked at the many possibilities of work ranging from garden work, working with animals, painting, building, cooking, shopping, babysitting etc. We contacted at few people in November to set something up, but as we arrived in NZ just two weeks before Christmas, not many people were hosting at that time, as they had family staying, or maybe there were going away themselves. So a bit of a tough start with 5 rejections. As we got closer to New year’s we tried writing to more people, always checking that they had checked to “can host families” box, and wrote to another 10 or so people.

Still, everyone was busy! And we thought of just leaving it. By now we were almost halfway into our trip. But one evening I got a bit stubborn, removed all the filters and found this Kiwi/Danish family who needed general help around the house. They had three children, 8, 7 and 1. The two eldest were home-schooled, and everything sounded like such a good match, that I contacted them, even though they said they had room for one person. Luckily, Michelle saw all the same potential that I did, and really needed help for two particular weeks, that fitted into our schedule. On top of that, there was a summer sport school in the local community Centre for one of the weeks, and we got Ollie and Alba signed up. So now we’ll have the closest to “everyday life” that we’ll have on this trip.

We’re super excited to see how this will go, and we’re also talking of setting something similar up in Denmark, and get some help in our crazy wild garden, and maybe to finish some of the inside painting work on the house.

---