Hello!
My name's Maggie, I'm sixteen years old--I'll be seventeen when I go on my exchange though--I'm a junior in high school and I intend to graduate early, if not a year than at least a semester. I'm going to be volunteering at a rehabilitation center for injured or abandoned animals in Kwazulu-Natal, helping little hurt animals get healthy again, at the same time loving them so much that they won't even notice they don't have a real mommy. I am so excited about this that I just...can't even express it in words. I'm going to be there for ten weeks, this coming summer. I might go back for my gap year, but I'm also considering other volunteering programs. It's also possible that I won't be going to South Africa--if I don't raise the money, I'll be going on the much cheaper volunteer program. Must people reading this are probably familiar with WWOOF, which is what I'll be using to go to either Ireland or France; I don't know if you are aware of Helpx, another group just like WWOOF, just not on farms. With that my options are France or Scotland. Scotland was always my first choice, after South Africa, of course, but WWOOF in the UK doesn't allow you to go if you aren't eighteen and don't have a guardian with you. But all of that doesn't matter because I'm going to get the money for South Africa!^^
I suppose you can already tell that my blog is going to be a little different from the other exchange blogs; I'm not going with Rotary or AFS or any other student exchange program, because I'm not doing a real student exchange. I'm traveling to South Africa to be a volunteer, to help animals, to learn a new language, to soak myself in a new culture. Although...there are gap year volunteer programs with AFS, so I guess it won't be all that different.
So...What have I done/what do I intend to do/what led me here?
I originally wanted to do an student exchange of an academic year in Japan, but I was nowhere near able to raise all the money for it--somewhere around just under $20,000--so I decided to wait until college and go with some program from that college, where I wouldn't have to pay anything extra other than my usual tuition. But I still wanted to go abroad, I still wanted to see the world now. Why should I decide not to go until college just because I can't go with that group? So I decided to look at volunteer programs, programs like WWOOF, where you get free food and board in return for your work, and all you have to pay is a membership fee of around thirty dollars and your airplane ticket. I was disappointed though, because I couldn't go to Scotland with WWOOF, and I've had a deep love for Scotland for about as long as my love for Japan; if you knew me, you'd know that was a long time. I was willing to settle for France--until I checked out Helpx, which doesn't have any REAL restrictions, but generally the rule is eighteen and up, so that's still shaky. And then I found travellersworldwide.com , which let me check out a bunch of volunteer exchanges with more than reasonable prices. So I decided that if I could afford it, I'd go with it. If not, there would always be WWOOF or Helpx. Luckily, these programs don't 'deny' you. And with the rehabilitation center, because there is a program fee, there is also a deposit. That deposit is refundable if they can't place you; unlike AFS. And with WWOOF and Helpx, you place yourself, so you really do have control over where you end up, unlike every other program I know of.
I have gotten a job, I'll probably be starting next week, I'm preparing for quite a few car/dog washes so that I can raise money, and I'm forgoing christmas presents in exchange for donations for my trip. If anyone would like to donate to my trip after reading this, you can either click on the ads up here, when I set that up xD, or you can send me an email and we'll figure it out, assuming you want to give an actual donation, rather than a small percentage of something. Either will be immensely helpful^^
I'm very excited and I hope people are actually reading this xDD
Comments are always welcome and highly valued.
Maggie!
