Laissé par l'hôte pour le workawayer ()
Alice and Hannah arrived in Melle on this Tuesday afternoon. Gilles spent his precious time /as we have a lot to do/picking them up and driving over here. They then met Eva, got to their room and had a rest till dinner. All 3 having pretty poor French we thought to remediate to it as from the following day i.e. Wednesday. As they felt tired that
… read more day, the asked for a rest instead which was fine with me. After all the lessons are in their own interest and gave e a rest too.
Together with Gian we had prepared the room with deep cleaning, so that they should feel happy in a nicely made up and comfortable room / Now I am wondering whether they have stripped the bed and hoovered their room and bringing back their teacups before leaving , or if they consider that this is the hosts job?/.
This morning, Thursday, when we saw that they were running late for breakfast and work at 10.30, I sent Gian, our very motivated workawayer over in order to get them. He came back with a note, that said that they had left: After one days work only. It is true that it was hot on Wednesday, where they had ...like all others ....to work outside for 3;5 hrs ::: but the rest late aternoon and after the rest, was spent inside window cleaning, nice and cool!!. They were happy to sleep till 10 o clock after arriving,which was, I believe appreciated after a longer journey, but //did not enjoy working in the peak of the sun ... here I must mention that still at 20 hrs it is a peak on a very hot day ...and we are not in the habit of having people work at night, especially under rain.
I understand now hosts only taking workawayers as from a certain age onwards only.
Alice was more vif then Hannah, whom we found to be extremely slow but we would have given it a chance. Otherwise they were rather obliging towards our instructions and seemed willing. Honesty though would have been appreciated, as with us one can talk and see if something needs changing.
They don t realize they have taken the place of 2 other people, I refused for them. They don t realize this is WORKaway and not Holiday or Culture away, though the 3 aspects together make a whole...and we see to it that it stays that way. It is normal to get work done within a certain period of time.
As for the cultural side I had proposed Thursday, to go to Melle s local market, to mingle with local people...gilles would have driven them..... and as from Sunday onwards a 3 days stay was programmed as a big break during those 2 weeks to enjoy yet more culture as well as seaside pleasures together or seperate with the 3rd workawayer. I wonder if they have stripped the bed and hoovered the room ... or if the also seem to think that is up to the host, ......before sneaking out [redacted]. Not a very proper behaviour or nice attitude to have !!
To be good enough to prepare for and having to wash and iron the bedsheets after 2 nights only without THEM having the guts to tell us into our face, that this wasnot what they had imagined and 5 hrs being too hard or too much/ even when split up... [redacted]... I wish them to better read profiles , and can assure them that they won t find many hosts holding hands .. we have no time for that , for spending hours on lecturing about culture, ... culture needs to be lived and experienced and is talked about at the evening meal and explored during outings and not during working hours.
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We are quite disappointed about their lack of reading, enthusiasme and conception of reality.
it is stated in our profile, that work includes an intensive property clean up... if one doesn t know what that might involve, too bad.
However, I realize how lucky we have been in the past and a hearty thank you to all those ex workawayers who not only put THEIR needs first, but understood what help really meant and were happy to do so !!
Bon voyage; GIRLS [redacted]
Nevertheless, We thought them to be very nice, polite and joyful...this being said, this is not enough for us hosting people.
We shall no longer be hosting immature youngsters in the future, on the outlook for the fun factor from the very first day and may therefore either partly refer back to local people or raise the age factor to at least 23 yrs- at least we won t have the hustle of picking up, preparing rooms or food, suffering moods and hence have more time also to ourselves.