I spent a couple hundreds of bucks on airfare to travel more than thousands miles across the globe to make my heart glow. I paid another few hundred dollars to pay the program fees to shine my heart. I hopped on the plane last Monday, December 3rd with hopes of improving someone’s life or creating a peace. Within 24 hours, I was inside Cezanne’s paintings, and was living like a French once again. Cezanne painted several paintings of Mount Saint-Victoire, and I was literally right in front of this mountain.
I arrived a day early so that I could relax before the next two big and hard weeks. By the following day, I was at the farm with a workcamp leader, workcamp leader’s son, and two other young volunteer ladies who were from Korea.

Everyday, when I was writing in my journal, I tried to summon up the morals of the day. What did I do that made my heart glimmer? On the first day, I went grocery shopping with the workcamp leader to get food for us for a week and also toured around the Trets village. Well, since it was the first day, I figured that this day was just an exception to not working at all. Then, on Friday, we, the volunteers, were turned into Cinderellas. Yes, that was the moral of the day – how to live like a Cinderella. We were cleaning the house. To be more specific, we were mopping and vacuuming the floors, dusting every little spots, and scrubbing the walls and furnitures. How was this house cleaning making a difference for this workcamp leader? It was so that she could have free maid service so that she could sit in her bedroom, use her computer, and puff cigarettes!

She was also just nasty as hell to me with my cleaning the kitchen! When I asked the leader if I should clean certain particular spots a few times so that I’m not cleaning something that she didn’t want me to clean, she was disturbed and told me that I didn’t have common sense. Then, I decided because she didn’t like my asking her to verify if I should clean something, I would make my own choice. So, I cleaned the pan from the oven, and she got upset and told me that I shouldn’t have cleaned it. This scenerio is a perfect example of why I had a reason to ask to verify what I should clean!

That afternoon and Saturday morning, we cut vegetables for a party on Saturday night. When I was cutting the vegetables, I was unintentionally cutting the vegatables incorrectly. The leader showed me how to cut the vegetables correctly, and I tried, but I cut them incorrectly again unintentionally. She said to me “Look,” and I said, “I am looking”‘ and she replied to me in a disturbing voice, “No! You’re not looking!” I tried to cut the vegetable again correctly, but I cutted it again incorrectly, and she said “Look!” again, and I said, “Yes, I am looking and please give me a chance to try. I need to practice,” and then, she replied to me in a disturbing tone of voice, “No! You’re not looking! You must get it correct!” This situation was upsetting because I was trying really hard to cut them correctly, and the leader’s asking to master the cutting within minutes was just not possible.

We also cooked food for the party on Saturday morning. That Saturday night, at the party, the leader told us that we were going to be served last because she wasn’t sure if she had enough food. The Korean volunteers got very disturbed that they made the decision to take the milk and hot chocolate mix and took it to our room. I was very disturbed too because we paid hundreds of dollars to come help the leader, and we spent a good several hours cleaning the house, cutting vegetables, and cooking the food for the party. Thus, we felt like that we were not as important as each guest who donated only 35 euros to come to the party to have fun. While I understand that the guests should have priority as they donated money to help save the farm, we, the international volunteers, still made a big contribution by preparing for the party and also doing other chores.

On Sundays in France is a complete shut-down and rest day. The towns throughout the country are in complete silence. Garage doors cover the store façades, lights are completely out, and there’s almost nobody on the streets. So, it was certainly a low energy mode day for all of us volunteers as we certainly slept in and just stayed in bed all day.

Then, on Tuesday, I vacuumed a room. When I was vacuuming, the leader grabbed the vacuum from me and told me to vacuum a particular section. So, I assumed that she did not want me to vacuum the area that I was previously vacuuming. When I was done vacuuming the area, I asked the leader what else I could do, and she said “Your brain is sleeping!” and told me that I need to vacuum the area where I was first vacuuming. Again, this was not he nicest way to speak to me as I was trying really hard to follow her unclear instructions.

So, right after that moment, I just thought, “This is it! I’m not working for this malicious woman!” How can this woman not appreciate my doing work for her when I PAID to work for her? If she’s getting FREE workers, she better treat them kindly and say thank you every second of the day and not bicker over little things that I unintentionally did incorrectly! This was all slave labor work, and in six days, I still have not done a single meaningful job!

Anyways, the next day, when I told the leader that I was leaving the next day, she threw a FIT! “I’m always going to be sad and not smile often! My grandmother is very sick and the farm is closing in January! Don’t you realize your leaving is creating lots of problems!” While she certainly had the right to be angry, it was not acceptable for her to yell at me. She was treating me like I was a child,”Would you speak this way to another adult?”
She replied “Yes.”
“Well, I feel like you’re speaking to a child,” I told her.
Several times throughout her constant demanding, I told her that I wanted to stop the argument and be left alone as the argument was not going to accomplish anything. Every time I asked to be left alone, she said that she did not want to stop, and during most of the time, I did not speak a word as I did not want to make the argument worse, and I was leaving the following day anyway.