"Being a guest volunteer in Coleg Elidyr in 2009"
Coleg is a great place. I am doing my German civilian service here in Wales and I thoroughly enjoy it. It is a good opportunity to meet other guest volunteers in your age from all around the world, connected through very interesting work. I like it that our tasks differ quite much, every week entails new challenges.
I am very happy with my week and my timetable, during the lessons I work in the forestry, in metalwork, woodcarving, green woodwork and I go swimming with the students. But most of the work during the week is done in the house. I am living with 6 students in a house, we used to be 4 guest volunteers, but now we are, fortunately, 6 volunteers living in "Ty Iori". Three qualified senior staff members are employed in our house, they are very professional, take the full responsibility and are the shift leaders. We all work together, including students of course, to run the house as convenient as possible, that includes three meals a day together with everybody. On weekends everybody cleans the house, we cook together and sometimes we do outings, in the last two terms we headed for the forest for walks, went to Swansea on the beach, went out to public shows, went shopping.
One of my favourite lesson is forestry, we saw firewood logs with the students, plant trees, cut hedges and trees, deliver firewood, learn about trees, weed beds, care about trees around Coleg and have lovely teabreaks in the shed.
As enjoyable as the time is, it is exhausting. When the first flush of enthusiasm is over, you will enjoy your off-times really a lot. One day a week you have a day-off. On that day you can use the guest volunteer car to do whatever you like, we are seven guest volunteers on my day off, and we organised ourselves and went to Cardiff, Swansea, the Brecon Beacons, several trekking tours and the beach. And of course you have a "evening-off" and a "morning-off" every week, which means you do not have to wake up and make breakfast with the students, and you do not have to join the evening activity (Pub, Music-night, DVD-night, youthclub,.) once a week. And in between the guest volunteers have other off-times like weekend-4-hour-off, lunchtime-off, rest hour, No-lesson,. During the week you are somewhat stuck in Coleg, so I borrow a mountain-bike from time to time and drive off the Coleg through these most beautiful hills around, drive along rivers, streams and brooks, climb on hills, along waterfalls, sheep and hamlets. Many guest volunteers go jogging, which is a utterly delightful activity, it frees your mind, in order to be fresh & fit the following morning. And last but not least I have to mention the perfectly dark sky in the night, in case the weather is good, we can see a vast number of stars, the milky way is beautiful, it is worth to take binoculars with you!
Moritz Greif from Germany
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Guest volunteers needed from August 2009.