Area: Midi Pyrenees

Over spring, we will be needing help with (lots of) mowing, cleaning, taking down wallpaper, getting the bicycles back into working order, sanding and varnishing garden furniture, sewing, cooking... We don't usually contact Workawayers ourselves, please contact us if you're interested in staying with us for a couple of weeks. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- We're a family of five: Patricia, 45, French-German, translator, Pascal, French, 51, water treatment engineer, Kilian, 20, Adrien, 17, and Caroline, 16. We live in an old farmhouse in the countryside, 35 kms South of Toulouse, between Toulouse and the Pyrenees. We have a "gîte", a rental, which is rented out by the week and usually needs to be cleaned on Saturdays. We are also renovating the house we live in and can always use a hand. Our family language is French, but the five of us are also more or less fluent in English and German. We live 4 kms from the town (10.000 inhabitants) and the railway station, you can borrow a bicycle or get a ride when we drive into town. We have both travelled extensively (Europe, North America, Africa and a little Asia and Oz/NZ) and lived in different countries. As a family we spent two years living in Dakar, Senegal. We like the idea of a cultural exchange and will gladly provide a bedroom, breakfast, lunch as well as a family dinner against some help with painting, gardening, building, cleaning... We have two cats (Starsky & Hutch) and sometimes also chickens. Pascal smokes in the house, so we do of course accept smokers. But we don't want you to smoke in the bedrooms. We'd rather not accept families with babies or toddlers, because our house is not adapted to accommodate young children, but we have no problem with hosting couples, groups of friends, families with older kids, cats, dogs, horses... We also have lots of space for camper-vans or tents, if you travel with those. We ski, so if you like skiing, we'll be going to Ax-Bonascre (in the Pyrénées) all winter, about once a week if the weather permits. Things you should definitely know: (seriously, read this!) Auterive, our town, is boring. There is absolutely nothing going on here, really. No bars or nice cafés, just the market on Friday mornings. And there is no way of getting back here from Toulouse after 9pm. If you have your own car, you can have great day-trips or drive into Toulouse. If not, you might find yourself stuck here or need to find Couchsurfing hosts in Toulouse if you want to party there (apparently it's rather easy to find those Couchsurfing hosts, though). Here, all you can do is run or cycle... or swim and lie in the sun in summer. Our kids are good kids, but they're teens, they're mostly in their rooms with their headphones on (you know what I mean). You are very welcome to spend the week-ends here and we will of course provide the food and spend some time with you, but consider yourself warned: it might be boring! We are not a traditional French family. We don't have 3-course meals twice a day, we're anything but "chic" and we will very probably fall into English as soon as you get here... (Also we made our first workawayer eat horsemeat tartare :) - but he volunteered!) But we do have cheese and wine every night, we also know a large variety of people and we will take you along if we see them while you're here. I'll drive you to the station or into town and pick you up and I will do my best to try and speak French with you if that's what you want. We will talk about French and world politics and economics and culture, Pascal will share his very French way of finding everything better here, I will explain (and diss!) the French school system, we will make you listen to French music... Last but not least, because it is important: Pascal is very thorough when it comes to work. Some would say he's unnecessarily fussy. He will indeed make you sand that wall a third time for those two little specks and he will make you take out the built-in closet to paint behind it. :)

Area: Pampas

We would like to receive people who enjoy countryside life. We are mostly sheep breeders. Long term visitors, couples or families are prefered.

Area: Andalucia

I'm a single British guy with a large house in the heart of Cazorla, a busy little white town set in beautiful mountains. With the help of workawayers the house has been converted into a rental home and an owner's apartment. There isn't much to do now so I'm only accepting workawayers in November, March and April - in winter it's too cold to heat all the house, and in summer I hope to be earning money from renting the house. The work isn't so exciting - preparing the house for rental, some DIY, cutting firewood - but you don't come to Cazorla for the work, you come for the lovely town and the beautiful countryside. I think all my visitors have left with great memories of the area.