And it is here! Again, we are standing at the door of the new hosts and we have mixed feelings. We don´t know if we will understand each other, etc … but once you decide for volunteering, then the uncertain feelings of it are an integral part – at least for us. In the end, it turned out that we had a lucky hand again. We were greeted by a smiling Jess with little Stevie in hand, and later we met Warren. We are in the same age and little Stevie is around 10 months old.
Our hosts Jess and Warren
Great admiration that they decided to buy an old station hall a few years ago and completely renovated it into a family house. For your idea, it is not quite a typical house, but I have to say that I like this style of living, and if it suits someone, why not 🙂 Behind the entrance hall is a huge hall, where there is a living room, dining room, Children’s corner. A bathroom, kitchen and one small room (which is our for this time) are separated. Upstairs have a bedroom. And because there is still room for improvement, our help is good for them.
Handyman, housewife & nanny
In the beginning, we were supposed to paint the entrance hall, which reminded us a bit of Asia, where we painted about 30 rooms in total, but every experience is useful in volunteering. Furthermore, Martin renovated the wooden table (and because everything was done in the same room, I had to clean and vacuum everything from the dust). Martin installed new linoleum and light in the hall, repaired the cabinet, replaced the broken fluorescent lamp, put paintings on the wall, etc. On the contrary, I hold the position of a housewife so it is typical for me washing and cleaning dishes, kitchen help, bathroom cleaning, vacuuming, making the bed, ironing, laundry, sewing, etc.
Sometimes, I´m here like a nanny, so if necessary, I care about little Stevie. I feed her or when we go shopping, I hold her. The biggest trust for me was when one time, Jess asked me if we could care about little Stevie for about 20 minutes in the evening because the wanted to go out for a drink. For a lot of people, it may be something unimaginable that they would entrust their child to someone else (for example, if they know the person only for one week), but I have to say that they have a lot of confidence here and they are very willing to help if you don’t know, what to do.
As a feedback, I have to thank Stevie for the fact that, as her parents speak slowly to her and show and describe a lot of things for her, it is an excellent practice of English and learning new vocabulary.
And one more thing to conclude: we had a deal of volunteering for 2 weeks, but Jess and Warren asked us if we have any plans because they were very happy with us. And because we didn´t have plans for the next days, we decided to accept their offer and stay here until August 19.
