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Olá! We are Astrid (half German, half Brazilian) and Norbert (half German, half Romanian) with our children Thiago (4 years old) and Malaika (2,5 years old).
We are very much looking forward to meeting you and to welcome you in our family!
Norbert and I lived in many different countries over the last 10 years, including Tanzania and Kenya. We have travelled the world for a year in East and South Africa and Latin America. 6 months ago, we moved to Ferragudo in Algarve / Portugal.
For the first time in our lives, it felt impossible to leave such a magical place. We therefore decided to settle in for the next 20 years. We bought a big house just 3 km from the beach, with pool in the garden and 3 apartments that can be for guests and are hoping to move in over Christmas.
When we traveled more, we loved to stay in local houses and particularly shared houses as we love meeting new people and learning about their lives and points of view. For us this was always the best part of traveling and we are happy to continue having this type of experience through workaway.
We are looking for people (couples are very welcome) , who can help us with housekeeping tasks, cooking, spending time with the kids and helping with the renovation of the house. In general we would like you to stay at least 3 to 4 weeks but we prefer longer if it works for both parties.
We are open minded and flexible and we love talking about subjects such as consciousness, peaceful parenting, music, sports and traveling.
We are happy to share our lives with other people around the world.
Charity Work
Art Projects
Language practice
Help with Eco Projects
Teaching
Gardening
DIY and building projects
Babysitting and creative play
Creating/ Cooking family meals
Help around the house
General Maintenance
Help with Computers/ Internet
This project could involve children. For more information see our guidelines and tips here.
We are very open-minded and always happy to share our experiences in traveling, peaceful parenting, start ups, consciousness and living life with joy. We think that sharing a house with other people is always a huge learning experience and incredibly enriching. In addition, we can offer help with language exchange.
We are already so much looking forward to welcoming new people into our family.
We love it when the workawayers who come to us feel like family and are part of our little "tribe".
We are ideally looking for a young and dynamic couple or an individual who enjoy family life and would like to come live with us for a few weeks or even longer if it works out for everyone.
There are several areas were we could picture your support:
1. Help with house and kids:
The help needed is basically support with cooking, housework such as cleaning, laundry, etc. and being with the kids. Our ideal workawayers are two people who one loves cooking and preparing delicious and healthy food for the family and themselves, the other one enjoys keeping the house tidy and clean, and when all this is done or while it is being done, enjoy spending time and playing with the kids.
It is very important for us that you have a respectful approach towards kids and people in general. We don't believe in authoritarian parenting, punishments or rewards, .... instead we practice a peaceful parenting approach, setting loving and empathic limits, learning from natural consequences, explaining our points of views, and treating each other with kindness, love and respect.
We need you to share this point of view and would appreciate if you have experience being with little kids. In case of doubts how to handle a specific situation, please feel always free to ask, so that we can find a way everyone feels comfortable with.
2. Help with garden:
As we are moving into a new house, there will be lots of improvements to be done in the garden. We would love to be more self-sustainable and create a vertical veggie garden, plant more fruit trees and decorate it with beautiful flowers. As we never has a garden before, we would be immensely grateful to learn from you!
3. Renovations:
As the house as well as the 3 apartments in the garden are old Portuguese style, we will need to renovate and decorate it. We have ideas but are happy to get your design ideas, in case this is what you have been doing during the last years! We would like to offer a Shabby Chic course for re-designing our old furnitures in case you are interested or create some furnitures from pallets. If you are talented in these areas or eager to learn and experiment, we are looking for you!
Most important for us is that everyone feels comfortable in our house, so all kinds of tasks are flexible, and please always communicate if there is anything that you would like to change.
You will have lots of free time to relax at the beach or explore the area and do hiking, water sports, discover beautiful cities such as Portimao, or small villages like Alvor, Silves and Carvoeiro, or come with us to spend time with amazing, lovely families. We are happy for you to use our bikes, our kayak, SUP or snorkelling equipment.
We would love you to be flexible, energetic and positive, peaceful and patient with the kids, independent and proactive.
Regarding food:
As described above, we'd love you to cook for all of us and are looking forward to trying new tastes. We buy all the ingredients and together we can make a meal plan for the week. We like healthy food: we eat lots of fruits and vegetables + some proteins like fish or sometimes some meat, not too much carbohydrates.
At the moment we'd prefer English native speaking workawayers so that our kids can have more contact with this language as their main languages are German and Portuguese. If English is not your mother tongue, as long as you have a very good level in either English, Spanish, Portuguese or German, please contact us anyway. :-)
Languages spoken
German: Fluent
English: Fluent
Spanish: Fluent
Portuguese: Fluent
Romanian: Fluent
French: Intermediate
Swahili (Kiswahili): Beginner
This host offers a language exchange
Our kids grow up with Portuguese, Germany and English. It would be great for them to see that there are even more languages out there! An exchange of languages is always welcome!
We have a huge (old) house and 3 apartments in the garden for guests. Depending on when you come, you can either stay in our guest room or in one of the apartments overlooking the pool. However, we will be in the process of renovating around January to March 2021, so we will need to discuss with each workawayers on available options. The tourist apartments have a private bathroom, the guest room in our house will need to share the bathroom with our kids.
Ferragudo itself is a small fishing village. There is an incredible community of open and like minded people and wonderful friends for us and our children. We also love the amount of activities that are organized for both our children and parents. It feels like PARADISE here! Good weather, delicious food and wonderful people!
If you are an outdoor enthusiasts like we are, this is the perfect place to be. Within a radius of 3 km around our house in Ferragudo, you will find: beautiful beaches and a beautiful river, and therefore all activities related to water (Kayaking, SUP, Surfing, Kiting, snorkelling). There are beautiful walking tracks and tracks for Mountain-bikes along the coast. Portimao, the second largest city in the Algarve, is on the other side of the Arade River, crossing a beautiful bridge and offers all kinds of sport and art clubs as well as a beautiful harbour front for walks. We had not yet the chance to explore, but if you are divers as we are, some of the best dive spots are just 30 min away. You can easily arrive at Alvor, another beautiful fishing village around the corner, to go sky diving, parachuting or hop on a small plane to Lissabon (return ticket 75 Euros). There are mountains to be explored 40 minutes from our house as well as unlimited nature parks.
We are looking froward to meeting you!
Important: I am realising that people are sending mass mails to me as a host without having read my profile. I will therefore decline anyone who will not start his or her request by saying : "Jambo Astrid", which is the way people say Hello in East Africa, where I spent 6 years of my life. I hope you understand. Thanks.
Internet access
Limited internet access
We have pets
We are smokers
Can host families
We are working from home too so there is unlimited internet connection and space for you to work from. Despite office space there is also a pool area in case you need some creative breaks... :-)
There is a big parking area just in front of the house. Depending on size of the camper van, there is also a bit of space inside.
I don't have pets but we do love them. As long as they are well behaved they are welcome to stay with us.
More than two
Maximum 4-5 hours a day, 5 days a week