Making Contacts

So now that my approval is official, I started sending out contacts to host farms in Scotland, Italy, Greece, and Fiji. I have also started collecting a host list for Australia and New Zealand.

There are some things I would really like to do, some places I would really like to go, and some things I really want to do in specific places. I know I want to pick grapes in Italy, olives in France, work with sheep in New Zealand, and cattle in Australia. I have already mentioned that in Fiji I would like to pig hunt, but that would be a one day event (hopefully), so what to do there? Anything near the water would suffice. I want to go to Scotland and be as deep in the Highlands as possible. A farm would be ideal, but I've seen some hostels, campgrounds, and restaurants that would serve the same purpose of letting me live there for a month or so. I would really like to work with goats and goat cheese making, horse riding, and sustainable farming projects, but not really too picky where those things happen.

I've also started looking into visas. I have read that Australia needs a visa to do a working holiday, but I'm not sure what actually qualifies as a working holiday. I'm in contact with globalvisas.com to sift through the wordage. It seems that working holidays are really about having a job and making money, and volunteering for accommodation and meals is an exception...? We'll find out.

And it looks like I am doing this just in the nick of time. Many of these working holiday visas are for 18-30 year olds. Just under the wire. I am predicting I will be in either New Zealand or Australia for my 30th birthday. I have this little dream that I would be so involved and into whatever it is that I'm doing that I wouldn't even know what the date was until a few days later.

When do I start my count down? The day I leave Bethel? The day I would have returned to school in August? I guess I'm on vacation as soon as the last day of school is over, but I'll still get a paycheck until August... Maybe August 1. I might not leave on that exact date, but somewhere close to there I would be heading back to Alaska.

143 days and counting, God willing.