Francesco & Simona

Travel information

We are currently

Description

We are Francesco and Simona, a couple of 28 year olds from Northern Italy.
Francesco has a degree in Sport Science and has been working for about 5 years in a gym, teaching private and small group classes to sedentary adults; in addition, in the last 2 years he has also been teaching Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Simona has a degree in Foreign languages and literatures and has been working for about 4 years as an ‘English as a foreign language’ teacher to both kids and adults; in the last 2 years and a half she has been experimenting with storytelling as a way to make her lessons more engaging and creative.

We both like what we do, but we also like working outdoors and doing things with our hands as we feel it balances nicely the intellectual and indoor nature of our jobs - so in 2022 and 2023 we spent a few mornings a week volunteering for the local environmental association, learning some skills related to gardening and forestry; at the end of March 2022 we started restoring their didactic garden, that used to host activities for the environmental education of kids of the nearby nursery- and pre-schools. The project was well-received, so at the beginning of February 2023 we started to expand it - building a lot more raised beds (using recycled lumber), pruning the many fruit trees and establishing a tree nursery (see photos). Now, in 2024, we are working more hours so we don't have as much time to dedicate to volunteering, but we are doing some gardening at home (since we finally have a garden of our own) and volunteering roughly 2 Sundays per months with the environmental association, for the upkeep of the local woods.

In the summer of 2022 we spent 4 weeks Workawaying in the French Dordogne, and really liked the experience - so we repeated it in the summer of 2023, first spending 3 weeks in the Spanish Asturias at a rewilding project and then staying 2 weeks in that same place in the Dordogne - this time housesitting for 2 weeks, while the owners were on holiday, managing their house, their 50 animals and their AirBnB business. We then went back to the Dordogne for another round of housesitting during the Christmas holidays.
Our goal for the next few years is to keep accruing experience in many areas DIY and self-sufficiency while we continue to hone our crafts and expand our businesses, to eventually get a place of our own and restore it.

Among our hobbies, outside of what we have already mentioned, are reading and writing, hiking and exploring.

Interests

Languages spoken

English: Fluent
Italian: Fluent

Skills and knowledge we'd like to share or learn

We're interested in:  

Eco Projects

Gardening

DIY and building projects

Animal Care

Life at a Farmstay

General Maintenance

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Some knowledge of:  

Babysitting and creative play

Helping around the house

Creating/ Cooking family meals

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Able to teach about:  

Languages

Teaching

More details about your skills

We have some basic gardening experience thanks to our volunteering with the local environmental organization: we've been doing light forestry work to upkeep the local woods - restoring paths, cutting brambles, transplanting trees where others have fallen, etc - and some basic horticulture, doing things like sowing, weeding, watering, digging, raking, building raised beds; so, we have experience using tools like sickle, pickaxe, pitchfork and wheelbarrow, spade and shovel.

Through the same association we also had the opportunity to get wood from wind-fallen chestnuts and black locusts that were bucked up to clear the trails, which Francesco processed into firewood for his brother’s woodstove - so we have some experience in this area too.

In our 4-week Workaway stay in the Dordogne we did many different kinds of jobs: we took care of animals (dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, goats and sheep), painted and hung a gate (digging the hole via pickaxe and hammer drill), learned how to use a chainsaw and cut lots of firewood with it, prepared kindling for the winter, cooked some lunches and dinners, planted trees and shrubs, learned how to make concrete and many more things.

In addition to this, we have the skills related to our jobs as teachers of physical training and of language learning; also, Francesco is a martial artist (he has been practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu since late 2017) and Simona is a dancer.

Age

28 & 27

What else ...

You can check out our business websites, which we designed by ourselves:
www.allenamentofunzionalemonza.it
www.simonasstories.com

Francesco has an Instagram page, which he uses to share some of his thoughts on adventure, physical training and manual skills:
https://www.instagram.com/droptheashes/

Simona has a Facebook page where she shares infos on her work as well as some thoughts:
https://www.facebook.com/simonasstories/

She is also the co-creator and co-host of a storytelling podcast called 'A cornucopia of tales and tellers'. If you are interested, you can give it a listen here:
https://open.spotify.com/show/24DiK5T4BUFGsVtEx3clEW

Some more information

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  Smoker

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  Driver's licence

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  Allergies

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  Special dietary requirements
  Simona is a lacto-ovo vegetarian, Francesco doesn't eat dairy products