Julie
& Antoine

France
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Travel information
We are currently
Travelling
Activities we are interested in:
We are currently in Vietnam, on our way from France to Asia only by land, with our backpacks.
Description
Hello! 🌸

We are a Julie and Antoine, 28 and 29 years old, a French couple eager to learn more about other cultures (way of living, history, literature, food...). We met 10 years ago in our natal region, Normandy, and after living and working in several regions of France, we quit our jobs and homes to visit the world.

We are currently on a two-years trip around the world.
In 2024, we traveled in Central America for one year, from Mexico to Panama. It was a very enriching trip, which helped us to know more who we are and who we want to be.
During this trip, we volunteered in Guatemala in a dog shelter for 5 weeks. It was the most amazing part of our trip, even if it was very challenging. We loved taking care of puppies, older dogs, and to put them to adoption. Animal well-being is very important to us.
After a Christmas break in France with our families, we are back on the road, and in 2025, we are travelling from France to Japan and Thailand without using planes for ecological reasons, and we would like to spend the summer volunteering.

We are both calm, very curious, and adaptable (even more now thanks to the travel). During our volunteering in Guatemala we lived with 15 dogs/puppies, sometimes they had to sleep in our room, and we learnt to live sometimes without water, sometimes without electricity (and sometimes both). And we overcame a very dangerous virus which made the dogs sick, we became veterinarians even without wanting to. We are (nearly) ready for everything!

We can speak French, English and Spanish, and we are learning Chinese (Julie) and Japanese (Antoine). We are ready to learn a new language to adapt to a new culture.
Interests
Vegetarian or vegan
Culture
Movies & TV
Sustainability
Cooking & food
Art & design
Books
History
Music
Languages
Animals
Hiking
Nature
Languages
Languages spoken
English: Fluent
Spanish: Fluent
French: Fluent
Japanese: Beginner
Chinese (Mandarin): Beginner
More details about my language interests
We love learning languages, and we would be more than happy to teach French and/or English. We think they are two important languages that allow a new openness to the world. Julie has a licence in English, as she studied English for 3 years in University. Antoine did not study English as much but he speaks English very well.
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Skills and knowledge we'd like to share or learn
We're interested in:
Eco Projects
Art Projects
Life at a Farmstay
House sitting
Gardening
DIY and building projects
Some knowledge of:
Charity Work
Teaching
Babysitting and creative play
Creating/ Cooking family meals
Hospitality/Tourism
Helping around the house
Able to teach about:
Languages
Animal Care
Helping with Computers/ Internet
More details about your skills
Julie has a literary background. She studied humanities (languages, history, geography...) and cultural management. Thus, she speaks a very good English and has a good general knowledge. During one summer in France, she was a guide in a museum, and feels at ease to speak and teach to small groups. After, she worked in museums and cultural structures to do office work (communication, partnerships, and patronage). Furthermore, she manages two Instagram accounts (one personal @antoineetjulie, and one promoting low-carbon travels @alibi.voyages), so she knows about social media.

Antoine has a scientific background as he studied maths, physics, and materials science. In France, he was a welding engineer and has a very practical mind. He loves to do odd jobs with his father who can do everything with his hands, that is how he created a hen house during our volunteering in Guatemala.
He is calm and he can handle very stressful situations, such as when he had to perform an intramuscular injection to a very small puppy in Guatemala... with no electricity (Julie had to use the light of her phone to light him up).

In addition to our academic and work background, we think our main quality is curiosity. We volunteered for 5 weeks in a dog shelter in Guatemala without much knowledge about dogs, but we learnt very quickly and adapted to a new environment and a new work routine, very different to the ones we were used to.
Age
28 & 29
What else ...
We do not have ONE big passion, but we love to discover about everything we can. For example, Antoine has been learning embroidery for two months, has been practising stretching for a year, and is currently learning Japanese at the same time. Julie has been learning Chinese for two years and ice skating for a year.

We both love culture: we read, watch movies and watch series a lot. We think that this is another way to discover a culture and to access to multiple points of view.
Some more information
- Smoker
- Driver's licence
- Allergies
- Special dietary requirements
  Julie is a vegetarian.

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5 Aug 2025

Left by Workawayer () for host (Welcoming dog lovers at ...)

Natsuko is a very hard working person for her dogs. Her love language is food, so she will order smoothies and lunch everyday online, and offer to order more when you work extra hours. Her house is nice and big, the volunteer’s room is very nice and has A/C, and is located in a nice neighbourhood very close to a 7 Eleven and to a local market… read more where you can buy every grocery you need.

However, after having worked two weeks with her, we decided to end our volunteering. As written on the announcement, you are expected to work 5h30 a day. During the first 4 days, we worked more because we had to learn how to run her place without her. 5 days after we arrived, Natsuko went to Japan with a dog so we had to run the shelter with a friend of hers for three days. During this time, we worked happily from 7am to 9pm (14h/day). Still, she thought after two weeks that it wasn’t enough.

Even if Natsuko seemed stressed during the first days, we thought that she was stressed because she was going to Japan, but her stress continued after she came back and the situation began to worsen afterwards.

Natsuko gives a lot of oral information. Before we came she sent us a Whatsapp message with the timetable to follow, but no other information was written down, nor on phone messages, nor in her house. Because we have been taught a lot in a short period of time, we decided to create our own schedule and to write everything down because it is a lot to remember if you want to do well. We asked Natsuko to read it and to correct it but she never took time to do it in 10 days. As she doesn’t know what we wrote on the schedule, she repeated the same orders over and over, which is both annoying and infantilizing. Even if you have already done one of the tasks, she will not check that you have done it but she will remind you that you have to do it.

On the first days, she was very stressed by the schedule, and even when she was away, she would text us to respect the schedule as if we were not doing our best. After she came back, some changes took place, and it was stressful as we still had no information written down.

Communication is very very complicated with Natsuko. She talks a lot about herself and the dogs, but does not seem to care about you, and most importantly, about how you feel. She is so stressed that she doesn’t listen to what you have to say, and assumes a lot of things that didn’t happen, just because she fears that it could happen.

When we felt the tensions between her and us were growing, we sent her a message to make things calmer. She replied, stressing us even more, being unrespectful, and telling us that our message was “extra work” for her. So you can’t talk to her about her management or the way she talks to you. You’re one of the good volunteers as long as you do not talk and just listen, but once you start telling her how you feel she will start to get angry. She only started to get kinder and softer after we told her that we would leave. So we know she can be nice, but she was just not nice during our stay.

On the day the tensions skyrocketed and we decided to leave… there was NO DOG FOOD inside her house and she was obliged to order some at the last moment. Having food for your dogs should be your n°1 priority when you run a shelter. We feel that Natsuko is just very very overwhelmed at the moment. She is probably not a bad person, but she needs help and needs to be more respectful to the volunteers.

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