Hello fellow adventurers! Glad to be sharing how our volunteer/cultural exchange experience CHANGED OUR LIVES!!! Have you ever had a dream you think will probably never actually happen but ended up manifesting in the most crazy way possible but ended up being the best thing you ever did?!
WORKAWAY was always a dream like that for us, but we never saw how we’d be able to afford to quit work to volunteer and travel. I kept telling my husband while we still lived in Sweden, how amazing it would be to help others and in return learn a new trade and experience a new place. At the time, we were already in the words of his green card process so it seemed like something that could maybe take place when we moved to America.
As life would have it, I had an unexpected surgery just 6 weeks before our move to California and I realized I wouldn’t be able to work OR volunteer for quite sometime and that dream faded away. Those dreams though, are still buried in our hearts and usually have a clever if not unconventional way of working out. Things didn’t pan out for us as we had hoped in California and we were almost homeless and suddenly it became the perfect time to try Workaway!
Another dream of ours had always been to try our hands at the wedding/b&b business (ever since having our own wedding at a historic one) and we found a rustic venue in the Georgia mountains looking for volunteer couples, and we jumped at the opportunity!
We packed up our bags and drove across America from California to Georgia and spent out springtime in the Blue Ridge Mountains helping on the farm and at the weddings and staying at a cozy cottage on the property. The owners of Mountain Laurel Farm treated us like family and we will always have that experience close to our hearts.
It was hard work but the most rewarding thing we had ever done! Where else can you live and work where it’s a win-win situation? After a slight detour in our “Volunteer Year” of working for an inn in Virginia where we got taken advantage of and ended up nearly homeless AGAIN, we of course turned to Workaway!
We headed north when we found innkeeper hosts at a Scottish themed B&B in Mystic, Connecticut! For as long as we had been married, I had told Jonas how we really ought to explore New England because I feel like it’s the place in America that would suite us most as an international couple. So, volunteering in Mystic was another dream come true!
Our time at Brigadoon was so lovely and we still go to visit the lovely couple there as often as we can, even spent my 30th birthday with them and their new Workawayer as they really became our home/family away from home!
From there we spent a few weeks at our last host in Connecticut Roseledge B&B took us in and we got to experience real rural New England farm life before we moved to New York where we started our next adventure. We are every grateful to the innkeepers that took us into their homes! 
It was hard work and many a day we felt completed overwhelmed, but the connections we made with other like minded people was like nothing we had ever felt! We felt like we finally found our tribe of people. Those who look at the world as a place to help and love your fellow man. That feeling has got us ever dreaming of our next volunteer adventure. Workaway helped us find homes away from home when we had none and we hope to some day repay the favor.
Have you ever done any volunteer work? Would you do a cultural exchange program like Workaway?
Bye For Now,
-Lindsay & Jonas
