Betty

Germany
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Profile information

Travel information
I am currently
At home
My next destination:
Bolivia - from May 2024 until May 2024
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Description
Hey there! I am Betty from Berlin, Germany. No I am not a city girl; I was raised on the countryside which is where my heart still is and I will be moving back there one day. I am new to Workawaying and curious for new adventures! In the past I spent a year abroad in the US and spent a couple of summers there. Before getting all settled in life like buying a house, family and all that grown-up kind of stuff I decided I want to discover another piece of earth without any obligations at home. So now I am very lucky and excited to be able to do a sabatical of 10 months. During that period of time I want to experience Latin America starting in Costa Rica in January and see where things are going from there. I am so ready for my new adventure!!! I am hoping to meet great people - and also animals, improve my Spanish skills and to find that inner peace everyone is talking about. :)
Interests
Yoga / Wellness
Vegetarian or vegan
Team sports
Sustainability
Self development
Politics / Social justice
Photography
Plant care
Pets
Nature
Outdoor activities
Music
Mountain
Languages
LGBTQ
History
Hiking
Fitness
Gardening
Farming

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Languages
Languages spoken
German: Fluent
English: Fluent
Spanish: Beginner
More details about my language interests
I am very interested in language exchange. My aim is to speak Spanish on a pretty good level when I come back home in November. I've learned Spanish for 7 years in school but everyone knows: If you don't use it, you will loose it. So I got a lot of catching up to do especially on the actively speaking part. Also I am always happy to teach my mother tongue German.
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Skills and knowledge I'd like to share or learn
I'm interested in:
Gardening
General Maintenance
Eco Projects
Hospitality/Tourism
Teaching
Some knowledge of:
DIY and building projects
Creating/ Cooking family meals
Life at a Farmstay
Helping around the house
Charity Work
Able to teach about:
Animal Care
More details about your skills
- teamworker
- proactive in doing things and open for new experiences
- well organized
- working with animals fullfills my heart
- have always had cats and dogs and also horses for a long time (have been horsebackriding for 10 years and all the hard work that goes with having horses)
- experiences in beekeeping
- good in crafts and building stuff (my parents pretty much build their own house over my entire life time, so I learned a lot from them since I rolled up my sleeves quite a few times for that house also)
- I am easy to talk to and pretty uncomplicated
Age
27
What else ...
Open for new adventures and experiences!
Some more information
- Smoker
- Driver's licence
- Allergies
- Special dietary requirements
  Vegetarian

Feedback

19 Feb 2024

Left by Workawayer (Betty) for host (Join us at our hostel in ...)

This workaway was just amazing! I could not have asked for a better stay: the communication with the host is exceptionally good, the work schedule can be arranged flexible depending on what you prefer and Cristina and Sander make sure that it is a good balance between work and time off to do amazing stuff. I enjoyed the work because this hostel is… read more

(Excellent )

19 Feb 2024

Left by host (Join us at our hostel in ...) for Workawayer (Betty)

Betty is honestly a bad ass. Anytime I mentioned an extra project she could do it was done and it was done well. She did landscaping, sanding, painting, a really good job cleaning. She really cared for the hostel and she was so trust worthy that we even left the hostel for a couple days in her hands. We never do that. But we knew she would handle… read more

(Excellent )

19 Feb 2024

Left by Workawayer (Betty) for host (Help us with horses and ...)

This was an overall good workaway experience. The food was good, the pool after work was really nice, the lookout from the room is awesome as were all the animals around. To me, the soul of this place is the cook, Montserrat. She is the sweetest person and was very patient helping me to improve my Spanish. Besides those positive aspects there are… read more three things I want to point out you might want to consider before staying here:
1) Be aware that this is NOT this "family-like/everyone's eating together/cultural exchange" kind of workaway. It's a plain and more serious exchange of work for food/accommodation. Here they have the opinion that you are just a workawayer and you are treated that way too. If you are looking for being in close contact with the host and want to feel those special "participating vibes" this is not your place. Markus is a nice and quiet person who always kept his distance to me which I respected.
2) On the one hand most of the time I didn't have enough work to fill 5 hours so often I artificially had to kill time (and even when working with the horses there was time left). If you are not experienced with horses and are not creative enough to know how to keep them busy this time killing might be a little annoying for you. On the other hand when there was a horseback riding tour (which you usually don't join) you just sit around 2 to 3 hours and wait for the horses to return to finish them. This I found very unfortunate because then you are bonded much longer than those 5 hours which you don't get credit for and weren't even really productive. Don't get me wrong, working longer is usually not a problem for me and no credit too but there has to be an actual purpose. For the host I recommend expanding the workawayer's chores or officially cutting back on hours (or creating a climate were proactive work is being promoted, considering pt. 3).
3) During my stay there were many expectations which were very detailed. When I arrived I got a sheet with more than 40 hints or rules workawayers have to follow. Some of these rules apparently derive from bad experiences with workawayers who - unfortunately - most hosts had to deal with. For those bad experiences I feel sorry but in this case I felt like the host didn't even give me the chance to do it right. If you forget one of those rules you get miscredit for it (much later and not directed at you personally). And even for things you just possibly can't know you get miscredit because you just should have known. Maybe it's because of the bad experiences in their workawaying-past but it felt like they were expecting me to do wrong and it is impossible to please their expectations. This led to me sometimes feeling very overcautious to do something wrong which made me feel uncomfortable. This setting caused me not being
proactive like I usually really am.
I recommend a personal instruction to the hacienda and how things are operated (where all the fences are, how the garbage system, the ice machine and the stable works,...). That way it is just much more memorable than just reading it from a sheet which bullet points you obviously can't all remember (and it's not even complete).

Overall I think the host's communication needs to be improved! For example, the roles of each team member and their responsibilities were not clear to me in the beginning which led to quite a few misunderstandings. Also the host postponed my stay by 3 days only a couple days before my original arrival which costed me a bunch of money for finding a place to stay on such a short notice.
I think those improvements from the host's side are easy to work on but also neccessary to have an excellent exchange between the workawayer and host again. I am positive that there will be many more awesome people having a great stay at this place as long as you are not that kind of workawayer who prefers stays in family-like-settings and are able to do your own thing.

(Good )

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