Highlights: The highlight of my volunteer experience was going on night hikes to look at the stars. Our project leaders were friendly, helpful and overall amazing! Another highlight was bonding with the other 7 people I worked with that were from both Canada and the USA.
I felt the work we did was rewarding and I had a lot of fun doing it with the friends I made. I really enjoyed our project leader taking us around the island on hikes and at low tide. We got to walk on the ocean floor and we looked at the different species that we found and of course took lots of pictures.
I also liked that we had the freedom to pick from a list of volunteer tasks that needed to be accomplished. This allowed us to really tailor the projects to our groups interests.
Morning: We had an early start usually 8:30. Our project leader made us oatmeal every morning and we always had fresh kiwi to eat (the best kiwi are the golden kiwi). We would do various volunteer projects on the island I volunteered on such as tree planting, trail maintenance, weeding of invasive species or working in the nursery. We would have morning “tea” (meaning morning snack) around 10:00 and then we would break for lunch around 12-12:30.
Afternoon: Our project leaders bought various food items for us and we made our lunches individually. Usually they were sandwhiches and we always had fresh fruit including kiwi. Since it was the winter tea and hot chocolate or Milo were a must!
Our afternoon volunteer project would change to a different task; we would never be doing the same project all day. It was nice I enjoyed the variety. Sometimes we would end early and our project leader would take us on a small informational hike or we would walk along the beach (sometimes we would do this in the morning instead it depended on what we wanted to do).
Evening: We would end around 4:30 each day and we had free time. Usually we would all have a snack or some tea/Milo/Hot chocolate and sit around the fire. Half of us would make a communal supper that we all shared and the other half would do the dishes. There was no internet or T.V on the island we stayed at.
After supper and dishes were done, we played board games, card games or wrote in our travel journals about the activities of the day. It was amazing not having any technology it allowed my group to get to know each other and become really close.