The phrase ‘slow travel’ doesn’t refer to the speed you plan to travel at, but when you do slow your pace, you are more likely to connect with people and your surroundings. A-Way to Work offers exactly the right environment to achieve this.
Slow travel is bringing us back to the origins of why we travel. It offers the opportunity and the mindset to fully immerse yourself in your experience. It’s a chance to lose yourself in a new place, and a new cultural experience. Its all about the quality of your experience rather than the quantity of your experiences while you travel.
What do you want out of your travels?
Make Connections
Slow travel highlights connection: to local people, cultures, food, and music. Think of your trip as a chance to educate yourself and to experience an emotional impact, in the present and in the future.
Instead of losing yourself in a guidebook, look up and around and get to know the people in the area you are traveling in. We suggest learning a little bit of the local language before arriving so you can ask simple questions of the locals.
Its good to make friends wherever you go. It makes the experience more fun. You never know where these connections may lead. Its possible to make friends for life and stay in touch with them for many years.
These connections can offer new opportunities for travel, creative partnerships, and professional opportunities.
By participating in an A-Way to Work placement it provides you with instant connections with locals, and with introductions to a wider circle in their communities.
Go Easy On The Environment
Slow travel encourages you to be a more mindful and responsible traveller – get around by walking, cycling, or using local/public transportation. Slow travellers tend to consume fewer local resources and contribute less to over-tourism, namely by traveling off the beaten path to less popular destinations.
Bicycle tours are one of the best ways to immerse yourself in the local culture, giving you a nice balance of being up-close with a destination, with the locals, and with yourself.
If you’re craving a more authentic experience, one that leaves you with a feeling that you truly got to know a place, focus on the things locals do everyday, things that excite them and give them joy! Its these elements that you will remember for a lifetime.
We encourage our participants to plan to stay as long as possible in their work placement to learn how locals meet their environmental challenges and discover solutions to the various issues they face.
Get Ready To Grow
Travelling isn’t always simple or easy. You need a certain level of confidence that things will work out, or that you will figure them out. You may encounter language barriers or differences in cultural customs. Embrace these feelings of discomfort and use your trip to grow and learn more about the people around you. These moments can teach you lessons that you will carry with you for the rest of your life.
Avoid seeking out the ordinary while travelling. One if the big benefits of slow traveling is seeing, experiencing, or even participating in local traditions, customs, and rites of passage.
A-Way to Work host families will include you in all these things while you are living and working with them. It’s a built-in opportunity to achieve a richer, more connective, and authentic travel experience.
Fingerprints
By travelling slowly, you can find something that leaves a fingerprint on your soul. Since its really about slowing the pace and spending more time in one place your adventure can make you feel something.
Slowing down and digging your toes in means you can go a little deeper, take in the scents, and notice the details. You can tap into your inner journey as well as your outer one.
More connection, more understanding, more appreciation.
