Volunteer travel started at 18, a small luxury

"What do you call a volunteer trip? It's just a working night change. It's very literary."

"You ARE TO MAKE MONEY IS NOT SWEET OR IDLE IN a panic, on the rush to give others when cheap small work!"

"It's not safe for a girl to be out there. If you're almost 20, stop hanging around. Go home and do something."

The above three sentences are from my mother last week, my mother yesterday, and my mother today. Because I finally confessed to her that I had squandered my vacation without an internship, a part-time job, or a game.

But this confession came a little late, more than a year after my first volunteer trip. The so-called volunteer travel is to exchange labor for board and lodging, so that I can have a long journey at the lowest cost.

I am a junior this year, and my major is cultural industry management, which focuses on the demonstration of creativity and practice. Since I entered the school, the instructor has earnestly advised us to take more advantage of vacations to participate in management competitions, product planning, and various "challenge cups".

They say holidays are the king of promotion and curve overtaking. Most of my peers hold several valuable certificates or even have an internship to prepare for their future jobs. Even my cousin, who just finished the college entrance examination, shares her circle of friends with her driver's license. My mom's right. I'm a fun-loving kid who's about to finish college and come back just hanging around.

But if you think about it, the first domino I fell on my volunteer trip was the desire to "do something".

D the winter vacation of the first semester of my freshman year, when my family was celebrating in the winter months, I saw that my high school classmate and university alumnus was still in the school. Combined with the spatial dynamics, I learned that she did not go home during the Spring Festival, but stayed at school as a part-time tutor. Stimulated by that classmate, I also began to send resumes around at the beginning of the big, but with a freshman's white paper experience, the job search results can only be nothing.

In a sleepy morning class, I found a link to a volunteer travel account and sent it to the dorm group for my roommates to check. "Is this a liar? Roommate A said, "Even if it's true, it's not worth it, working for someone else for nothing." This was actually my initial idea, but I decided to give it a try. There seemed to be something about this moment that prompted me to add the store manager' WeChat.

So I didn't go home that summer. I won a "get out of here" gold medal by taking a summer job at the school library. In fact, on the second day after the exam, I was already lying on the roof of Dali looking at the moon, with the Cangshan Mountain at my back, the night clouds billow around me, and a sea under my feet.

Starting out on my own for the first time, I was well prepared for this unknown journey. Cost, time, security, social... I put together a list of related issues and tackled them one by one.

That holiday I did not ask my parents for living expenses, one is to hide out, two is in the heart fel that this is my own fun, not their responsibility. The exchange of labor for board and lodging had reduced the travel budget to a minimum, and the biggest expense was the cost of travel. I chose the cheapest green train.

During that time, the most frequent words in the major search engines were "safety tips for women living alone" and so on. If I had to walk at night, I would call my friends and put them on speakerphone. Send voice messages to her friend every day, and tell her to call the police.

From the moment I set foot in Dali, I also kept a profile of all of them, which I had learned from my professor of social work. It was a method of gathering information involved in "fieldwork," which I used to coat my own security, and questions I couldn't answer on the exam paper that I applied to my travels. When I talk to people and do things, I will leave audio and video records, regularly collate useful information, pay attention to each other's living region, professional background, interests and hobbies, to avoid too much self-exposure.

When I was working in homestay, I often met foreign guests with similar appearance. This simple "portrait" also helped me in social communication. It was also convenient for me to remember each person's name and appearance in a short time, so that I always had several like-minded friends on the tour route later.

In summer, Dali met all my travel dreams. The weather was pleasant, the mountains and the sea were fascinating, and the restaurant where I stopped was a warm and humorous host. I often played and sang by myself with my guitar in the restaurant bar, surrounded by guests and neighbors. What I did was not much different from what I had discussed before. I did miscellaneous work in homestay, including three meals and board, less than 5 hours a day, and the rest of the time was at my disposal. In my early 18's, I don't think there can be a more novel, unique, and free experience.

But maybe the late rebellious period is not bold enough, resulting in the escape plan is not thorough enough, I "free home gold medal" deadline only applied for a month, had to be reluctant to go home.

The volunteer travel made me even more impatient for the long vacation. In my sophomore year, facing another long vacation, I chose Weizhou Island in Beihai, Guangxi Province as the destination. As an inland kid who had never seen Jiang River for several times, I was able to spend a month at the seaside.

The third volunteer trip was a little more special. Due to the epidemic restrictions, I chose a small temple on the recommendation of a volunteer friend and visited it every weekend and every mini-holiday. Compared with "travel", it has a stronger meaning of "volunteer". All you need to do is to help others burn incense and keep the yard clean.

The sense of separation between the two living conditions on the hill and the hill, inside and outside the temple, is particularly strong when eating. The master once quipped, "You are a man who lives in his meals." Every vegetarian meal in the temple is highly prized by me. At lunch, two different sizes of white porcelain bowls, one filled with clean meals, one filled with soup, do not bother to find the next meal play, do not speak to others. A simple meal becomes particularly special when you focus on it. Your taste is awakened by the fresh fruits and vegetables in season and the simple cooking methods. The original taste of food that you have neglected for a long time comes back to your memory, and you can't help eating more than half a bowl.

Perhaps the temple is not very unusual, watching the friends can not stop curiosity to ask me whether there are monks in the temple? How are they connected? Others envied my previous volunteer trips and asked me if there was a pit. I answered them one by one, but when I sent out the invitation to go to the mountain together, some people said that their minor courses were piled up in the holiday, and they could not spare the time. Some people are busy participating in competitions and contacting tutors to lay the foundation for the postgraduate entrance exam. Some people say, "Fuck no.

So this summer vacation in July, I started my fourth volunteer trip alone. My mother warned me that this would be the last time.

Instead of searching for a shop owner the way I did before, I screened a good coffee shop on the Internet and directly added the owner's wechat. It also happened that she wanted to be a temple volunteer before, so she agreed to my request after reading my moments of sharing.

This time my destination is Xi 'an. Unfortunately, I was never able to go to the city wall to blow the evening breeze. There was an occasional epidemic in Xi 'an, and all restaurants were banned. No matter how delicious the coffee was, it could not attract customers. The shift the manager gave me was four days off and three days off, and the rest time was set by me. She taught me how to open a shop and how to make drinks. I learned so fast that I spent most of the month sitting in the shop staring at passers-by in a daze. The rest of the time was spent in bookstores and food markets.

At the market, I could watch vendors and other shoppers engage in a battle of quotation and experience over whether Kung Pao chicken should be served with legs or breasts. At a bookstore, I could spend an afternoon in a secondhand bookstand with a knowledgeable owner who knew every author, every genre and was willing to answer my silly questions. These are the moments when I can feel the human touch in the air.

When I was doing volunteer work, the idea of going to another country just to clock in a place gradually dissipated. I just wanted to spend a month in a strange city. I don't seek to live like a local. Most of the time, I go from street to street, browsing the vegetable market, hanging out at used book stands, and chatting with new friends. But it's the freewheeling chic and the splurging on good times that makes my trip more luxurious.

Through my volunteer travel, there is also a "forget the year". When I first met her at the reception desk of Dali B&B, she was carrying a melon, and I have been calling her melon ever since. Within a week, she and I were inseparable. This is my best friend since the volunteer travel, the most appreciated, the most yearning to be close to a friend.

Unlike me, Melo uses travel as a gap between quitting his job and his next one. She is an associate professor of law in a university. She has a cool personality. She is less than 40 years old, but her resume is very wonderful. She loved cycling and swimming, and was never afraid to get dark or hurt. She took me to eat a lot of delicious food but refused to accept my AA.

To me, she occupies the absolute intellectual plateau, but she is often imperceptibly downward compatible in conversation, telling me, for example, that the act of being invisible to friends and family is the same as a legal "negative list."

After meeting in Dali, Melo became my "positive list". Although it was only a short month since we met, our friendship gradually became closer through dinner dates, bike rides and small talk. On her last ride at Erhai Lake, she said, "The best part of this trip is receiving your homemade surprise receipts and hand-drawn memory albums." A legal beauty who's been through a lot of battles, but still impressed by my little gesture.

As an older, single and high-quality woman, Melo has all the looks I want to be, but she doesn't seem to care. I look at the castle peak as the castle peak looks at me. She admires my youthful potential and tells me not to belittle myself because of the current predicament.

See my friends in the circle of romantic love, friends envy also often issue a question: "Have this time how not much to accumulate a bit of work experience? Or a certificate or something." This perplexity is very realistic. On Weizhou Island, I also regretted that I had not memorized the words and brushed the question bank when I was enjoying the seaside barbecue. I wasted my time when my peers were competing against time. Especially in the evening when no one is around and the boats are coming back with loads of fish, this is the rare leisure time of the day for islanders, and when everyone is happy, I feel a little at a loss.

Melo asked me what I was going to do and I told him what I was going to do. Instead of worrying about where you are going and setting up a lot of imaginary puzzles for yourself, look at the cards you have at your hand, such as getting scholarships to fund your travel, and building followers by sharing your travel experiences online. Melo approves of my hobby and gives me advice. Now that I have taken the first step in writing, I can simply put everything I see and hear into words. She will be my loyal reader.

My journey began as a volunteer, continued on a budget, and ended alone, but each time it was a new beginning, unlocking a new identity. Life is vast, and it will be unfinished.