The cheap-ass networking
My favourite, by far. This network has a small sign up fee, but it opens up a whole world of 'free' traveling. Here, you really get the chance to challenge yourself. While couchsurfing is usually limited to about 2 nights, most workaway hosts like you to stay for weeks if not months, but are also happy to have you for just a week. Here, you are gifted a chance to really relocate yourself. Not only physically, buy spiritually, too. Often when people travel, or even move abroad for a certain time, they just move their life at home to a different place. Nothing really changes, except the surroundings. And then they return back home, and especially those that were trying to find solutions to their problems in that trip will be left disappointed. An experience like workaway gives you much more than that. You will find yourself in a totally different living situation, as challenging as you choose to, helping a stranger with whatever they need, around 5 hours a day, and then having a lot of free time on your hands to figure out who the heck you are, what you like to do all by yourself, meet a lot of new people and look into their lives, think about how much of what you actually want in yours.
Just the heads up with workaway. I've been in a few quite uncomfortable situations now and can advise the following. Try to avoid hosts that fall into these criteria:
>50 years and living alone
Expats, especially single expats
This might sound ridiculous to you right now, but by making those experiences I came to the beautiful realization that we humans are made for company. For Loving. For family. Not solitude. Many hosts in this group might absorb their frustration on you and also the lack of communication and love could all be forced on while you are there to fill the whole. I have been through really really uncomfortable situations. The expat thing is the following. A lot of expats won't stop bitching about their new home. Nothing is good enough for them. Why don't you move back to where you come from then?! Drives me nuts. And then, it kind of makes sense, if you travel somewhere, try to stay with a local! That is the true experience!
Workaway means you volunteer in exchange for room and board. There is a bunch of similar sites out there, such as HelpX and Woofing, but I have found workaway the best so far as far as variety and host activity go!
This family on the left helped us after a long night of driving through Ontario and let us in just around midnight. We enjoyed a nice breakfast together. On the right, you see a man who built a house mostly from Scrap, on New Orleans roperty.
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