After flying to Buffalo for about 7 hours, I travelled 3 hours forward in time. Sounds like I'm a timetraveller now haha. I arrived in Buffalo at 11 am. I met Coleen at the airport and she drove me to the ranch in Otto, about 1.5 hours away from Buffalo. As I arrived I met the other workawayers at the ranch. They were all German. Two 20 year old guys who travelled together and an 18 year old girl. It was fun to have people of my age around. At all the places I visited I was most of the time the youngest and the rest was already over 26. I didn't have any problems with that though. I can get along pretty well with people older than me. Age doesn't really matter anyways after a certain age. But it was still fun to not be by far the youngest.

I was very tired the first day at the ranch as I didn't get to sleep much that night in the plane, so I basically napped the whole afternoon. In the evening I went out with the others to do the evening chores. They told me about their daily routine and showed me what to do. In the morning we had to put the halters on of the 17 horses in the barn and let them out in the pastures. Then we muck the stalls, put shavings in them, fill the waterbuckets, put grain in the stalls for the evening -same for the hay-, put grain in buckets for the next morning, clean the hallway, feed the chickens and collect the eggs. Every morning one of us feeds the horses at around 6 am, then goes to sleep for about an hour and gets up again at 8 am to start the morning chores. The first two weeks we gave the horses hay in the morning too so we had to drive the tractor around with the hay. I really like driving the tractor :) Now the horses can just eat grass in their pastures as all the plants have been growing quickly these weeks. Every couple days we have to fill the buckets in two of the pastures too but there are no hoses around so we have to fill two barrels with water, drive them to the pasture and empty them there. Sometimes we have to help with other things like grooming horses or fixing fences. In the evening we take the horses back in to the barn.

In the afternoon or whenever we have free time we can do a lot of things. We can go canoeing in the lake or whenever it's hot we can swim in it. We can go fishing (haven't done that yet but others did), horseriding, play ball with the dogs, play baseball, take a walk to the river etc. There's so much to do here on this giant piece of property. And if we don't want to be outside we can just relax in our apartment, play a game, watch TV or bake something. In the apartment we have a living room with a kitchen, a bathroom, two bedrooms and another room. We have three beds. When I arrived we were with 4 people so I slept on the bedcouch in the living room for the first 6 days. The second day an Australian couple arrived but they slept in their RV. They only stayed for a week.

The first days were cold and rainy. It was about 6 degrees outside and everything was wet and muddy. After 5 days the weather got way better, it was dry and the temperature went up to 18 degrees. The ground quickly dried. Sometimes it rained in between the sunny days. The second week it totally became summer and we had some incredibly hot days. It got 28 degrees and those were perfect days to go outside and to swim in the lake. I expected the water to be way colder but it wasn't really that bad! I completely got that summer feeling from these days and I loved it so much! We went trailriding a couple of times and we took several walks to the creek. The first week we also went bowling and we visited Buffalo to watch a baseball game. After one week at the ranch the boys left too. Only me and Liva are left now but we still have as much fun. We get along pretty well and it's fun to learn each others languages. We both realize how similar German and Dutch is! Sometimes when we can't come up with the English word we just say the word in our own languages and most of the time we understand it then. It's nice to have that extra language to support the understanding of one and another.

We also went to a reining competition and took a bet at a horserace. I actually won 5 dollars yayy. Joe and Coleen took us out to eat every once in a while. A few days later we spent the day at Niagara falls and we dicided to go to Canada to see the falls as they are way more beautiful from up there. I didn’t plan on going to Canada but now I can cross that from my list too! J The weather couldn’t be better that day. It was 28 degrees and there was no cloud in the sky. We took a lot of beautiful pictures as we walked along the falls. This was one of those moments which made me so happy. As we were walking I just realized everything that was going on. Here I am walking along one of the World Wonders in Canada, feeling the warm sunlight on my skin and enjoying this moment with a great friend I made at the ranch. A rush of happiness ran through my body and I had a smile on my face the entire day.

When we were done looking at the falls from up we went to see the falls from the boat. We all got those cute red raincoats and we surely needed it. When we approached the falls waterdrops were pouring on us. The bright sun shining through the mist made a beautiful almost 360 rainbow. I’d never seen anything like this before.

With a beautiful smokey eye that the mist had created from my not waterproof eyeliner, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe to end the day with a giant ice cream and nice cocktail. Yes I was finally not underaged anymore in Canada. This was just one of those days I’ll never forget. It just made me so happy!

Furthermore we went to see the Amish community. The ranch is basically located in between all the Amish people. It was fun to see how these people live. It’s so entirely different from modern lifestyle. The Amish don’t use modern technology. They don’t use electricity and cars. They drive around with horses and carriages. All the men have a so called pispotkapsel and they always wear those hats. All the women are wearing headscarfs. Their clothing is always blue and green I believe. The Amish can be a bit weird around strangers –not amish people- who they call ‘the Englishmen’. I think it’s a weird way of living but it’s also kind of fascinating. Their shops are really nice. They have a toyshop for instance with all hand made wooden toys or a bakery with delicious candy and cookies.

The ranch was still always a nice place to be at. I was never bored. At beautiful days we went to go horse riding or swimming again. Two days ago we actually went swimming with two Haflingers and it was so much fun!! I think I could do that all day. It feels so nice to be this close to nature. Sitting on a horse bareback with just a bikini and riding bridleless. The horses really enjoyed swimming too. That feeling to sit on a swimming horse is just so much fun. The water in the pond actually has a very nice temperature now. The hot days really helped to warm it up. Yesterday evening we went night swimming. The water was nice anyways. Man those kind of things make me so happy. Just do something kinda crazy and it will be so much fun. Now this is my last whole day at the ranch. I’m gonna miss it so much. I think on this trip I’ve never felt more relaxed as now. The whole atmosphere here is so friendly and relaxed. You don’t have to worry about time at all. I think I could easily stay here for a year. I indeed found another home here in America and I’m so gonna miss it.

Tomorrow I’m flying to New York City. I planned on going there by myself but Liva was actually leaving almost the same day to go to NYC. SoI changed my hostel so that we could stay in NYC together. How much fun is that! I’m glad I don’t have to leave everything yet from this ranch. I still have just a couple of days left in NYC and then I will fly back home again. My real home in The Netherlands.