ready… jet… go!!

I’m a strong believer in living for the moment. It’s great being spontaneous sometimes.

I say sometimes, because as much it’s a word attached to my name, there will come a time (most probably when I get married) when I will have to give up my cherished spontaneity.

But until then, I’m still very much young, free and living with a curious travel passion so I intend to make the most of it with no regrets (if possible)!

Now you know I’m a spontaneous character, I can reveal I booked my ticket to Brazil this afternoon! I had to do before I changed my mind- and the price for the ticket seemed to be going up every few minutes (apparently a tick the website plays).

So, its done.

Ready, set, go…

Well, not quite. This is where I’ve probably leaped before I can crawl. I still haven’t sorted out an organisation to volunteer with. Or accommodation. I have a month but I know time will fly by.

Yesterday, I got a message from someone responding to my post about volunteering in Brazil.

‘Just want to answer your post about volunteering.
My sister are in amazonas, is a ONG there, and she get free food and also a local host, free langauge classes, free tours in the jungle, capoeira and also dance lessons for free, she working in a opublic school and also in a animalcenter monday to friday, weekends she are with outher volunteers and also the hostfamily, she have been there 3 month now, great people she told me, maybe something for u’

Well of course I jumped at the chance of possibly volunteering in the Amazon! So I found the website and filled out the application. They got back to me right away. Two positions available- to teach english, the other to work at the animal centre. Seemed too good to be true. No alarm bells were ringing yet but…

I mean it was just a few things that made me wonder if if was a legit organisation. They specifically asked that they didn’t want volunteers with volunteer visa… Hmm.

Also they said they could offer discount fares for volunteers. Sounds great. How can I get the discount? ‘Send us the money via westen union’… I’ve got pretty good gut instincts so alarm bells were going off! I don’t like the idea that I could have possibly got scammed in my early attempt to research voluntary work. So, I’m trying not to let this set me back. After all still don’t know if they aren’t a legit organisation…. BTW don’t websites of organisations end in .org? Anyway!

I just want to offer my skills to an organisation and using my time (off from my studies!!) in a productive way by volunteering. Am I asking too much?

Never-the-less I’m staying positive that something great will come out of this trip!

Then I can return to my studies nextspring/summer term feeling like me again…