Blogs, Participant Stories

Leona and 7 friends write from Winthrop, WA where they work

Hi Apex, we all are doing great.

(Leona is participating in the Work & Travel program with Self-Arranged Job, it’s her 5th summer in America) The flight wasn’t bad but quite long and the meal was terrible :P. We flew from Vienna to New York with one transfer in London. We spent one night in the hotel at the airport and the next morning we continued on flight to Seattle.

We didn’t go to down town of New York City because we are going to stop there for a few days before we will fly back home.

Our supervisor was picked up us at the airport in Seattle and drive us to Winthrop, the small town in which we are living and working now. We all are working as housekeepers in 4 diamond hotel. The hotel is 12 miles far from our house. Our employer lent us car so we can get to the work and we can also use the car to go anywhere we want when we have a day off.

We usually work since 8 a.m. till 4 p.m. 5 days a week. Sometimes we have a some extra working hours in laundry. But this year unfortunately it is not as many overtime hours as last year. The employer offers a lot of employee benefits like horseback riding, bicycle rental or boat rental, everything for free, so we have always something to do when we have some free time.

In these days here is already 8 of us from Czech Republic. Me, Hanka D., Alexandra and Vasek are living in a house together with Jakub and Monika. The two other girls, Hanka K. and Marketa are living in apartment by the lake close to the hotel.

Jakub, Monika Hanka K. and Marketa were arrive later so me and Vasek went to Seattle to pick them up. Our employer paid a hotel in Seattle for us so we didn’t have to drive to Seattle and back in one day which was great because it is about 4 hours of drive each way. In Seattle we had some time so we went to Viretta Park on the shore of Washington Lake where is the Kurt Cobain memorial right next to the house where he used to live. On the opposite side of the lake there was suppose to be a residence of Bill Gates but it was too far so we couldn’t see it.

So that is in short how we are doing here so far…

Here is my picasa album link:  http://picasaweb.google.com/Leuskaa/SummerWT2011?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCIfK84bLufnX_AE&feat=directlink

Have a great day :)
Leona, Hanka D. Vasek and Alexandra

(This is Leona’s 5th summer in America through APEX Foundation. She participated in Work and Travel USA with Job Placement during the first and second summer and now is participating in the Work & Travel program with Self-Arranged Job for the 3nd time. Her brother and a number of her friends participated through us too.)