(upbeat music)
- Good morning everybody, my name is Madison.
I am currently in Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
I teach English online and for the past three months
I have been country hopping around Europe.
Today I'm going to show you what my life is like
here in the Balkans and tell you
a little bit more about what I do.
So, I'm currently traveling with my best friend,
when I first came to Europe, I did a month solo
and then she came and met me.
We do most of our housing in house sits,
but while we were in the Balkans,
there really wasn't any house sit options,
so we've been staying at Airbnb's.
We try to get Airbnb's that are two bedrooms,
it's pretty cheap here, so we're able to do it
for about 20-ish dollars a night.
But, I will show you around our apartment here in Bosnia.
Here's the outside patio area of our Airbnb
here in Mostar, we have some fruit out here,
which I'm not sure if we're allowed to eat it or not,
so we haven't but it's quite tempting.
Here is the bathroom, super basic.
Toilet, shower, sink, nothing too special.
We were lucky and got a really adorable
place this time and I think this place was 22 Euro.
Has a basic kitchen, huge TV,
really adorable furniture.
And this one is two bedrooms, this is the room
I've been staying in and really comfortable bed.
The second bedroom is back there and my friend
is back there getting ready right now, so I won't show you.
But, I also wanted to show you my little teaching area,
and this is where I've been teaching this week.
When you're traveling and staying in Airbnb's,
you don't really know exactly what it's gonna look like
before you get there, so we kinda just
have to make it work every time.
So, this week I have been teaching on the floor
and my friend has been teaching sitting on her bed
and that's just kinda how it works.
So, today's actually our last day in the Balkans,
tomorrow we are flying to Ireland
which we're very excited about.
And so, this past week we've been in Mostar,
the week before that we spent in Tivat in Montenegro.
And then the week before that, we spent
a little over a week in Croatia
between Zadar and Dubrovnik.
Please ask any questions that you have
and I will get to them later today.
I'm also gonna show you guys around the city
and talk a little bit more about the expenses
and how I'm able to do all of this.
So, please ask some questions.
Great questions, so I work only for VIPKID.
There's a ton of online English companies
that you can work for that are supposed
to all be great, but I personally chose VIPKID,
it just seemed to be the most flexible
and easiest for what I needed.
(people chatting)
Right now, we are at a coffee shop
getting some traditional Bosnian coffee
and I wanted to introduce you to my friend.
- Hi, I'm Mary-Rose, Madison and I met
studying abroad in college.
- And now she's stuck with me traveling forever.
- Forever.
- Third time or fifth time is not first anymore
and that is why I take this cream
and I place it into your cup, because this cream
shares the property of that first sip,
when it goes away, it tends to never come back.
And now, you can say it's time to pour.
And we can say the coffee has been served.
You have some fresh, clean water
which you can use to cleanse your pallette
before, during or after your coffee experience.
You have some Turkish Delight, which is like
a little bit of a dessert, something very
traditional to have with the coffee.
In this pot, there is a second time for you to pour.
Now, as you're pouring for the second time,
obviously the coffee grounds are still inside.
So know not to get the grounds into your cup
then into your mouth, what you should do,
you should observe the stream of the coffee
as you're pouring it out of the pot into the cup.
And the stream should be brown but transparent,
the moment it becomes dark or muddy, that's when you stop
because the coffee grounds start coming in.
My coffee does not have any milk, sugar, cream,
pumpkin spice, caramel sauce, none of that stuff.
It's only pure black coffee and I would urge you
to try it that way.
- I'm doing all of my traveling on tourist Visas,
I was in the Schengen area for two months,
now leaving it for 90 days, going to the Balkans,
Ireland and England and then come January,
I'll be able to go back in for another 90 days.
Also, I forgot to include my Instagram handle
on the first video, so my Instagram is Follow.Mads
also, feel free to message me any questions there.
So apparently, there's a diving club here in Mostar
and a lot of the men who live here are a part of it
and we think that they're going to dive.
You can see here, they're standing there,
getting ready to go, that looks terrifying.
I got a couple questions about stable wifi for teaching.
Most of the places we stay have pretty decent wifi,
we try to talk to the host, whether it be an Airbnb
or a house sit and if I'm worried about it,
I'll have them run like a wifi speed test.
I also bring an ethernet cord with me,
so I can always plug in to make sure
it's more stable for teaching.
And I have also use a, buying a sim card
in each country I've been to.
So, in the EU, if you buy a sim card in one country,
you can use it in all the other European Union countries
without getting any extra roaming fees.
That has worked for every country I've been to
except for Montenegro and Bosnia.
And in these countries, it's really, really affordable
and everything's really cheap here,
so I just bought a sim card in each place
and it was like five Euro each
and it covered me well through the week.
(chatter)
(cheers)
(splash)
I've been getting a lot of questions about money
and I will break down my monthly expenses
in a little bit, but I just wanted to explain
that I personally about break even.
I came to Europe with some money saved
and just the way that I am as a person,
I'm not super careful with money and I like,
have been changing locations every single week,
which gets really expensive with transportation.
It's definitely possible to save money.
I really don't work really more than 15 hours,
15 or 20 hours a week, it's totally possible
to work way more than that with VIPKID
and to save more money and just spend less.
The main way that I'm able to only work that many hours
a week and still afford to be in Europe
is through house sitting.
I use Trusted Housesitters and I spent a whole month
in Germany, a week in the Netherlands,
two weeks in the French Alps and then
tomorrow we head to Ireland, we have about
a month and a half in Ireland using Trusted Housesitters
and then most of the month of December,
we're gonna be in London using Trusted Housesitters.
So, for all of those, the housing is completely free,
the only housing we've been paying for is just
Airbnb's like in between and then in the Balkans,
since there isn't really any house sits,
we spend about $100 a week each on housing.
This is a great question, the answer is absolutely.
Teaching with VIPKID is all about getting momentum
and if you stop teaching for a week,
which I stopped teaching for three weeks
I had family come, that totally messed up my bookings.
(chatter)
(prayer chant)
I got a question about solo travel,
so I spent the first month traveling solo,
I was in the Netherlands and Germany.
I absolutely loved it, I really like to just spend
time alone and do my own thing,
so it was really great, but I also
really, really appreciate traveling with a friend,
because it's like an extra layer of safety
and also like sometimes, you just wanna share
the really cool things you do with somebody,
so it allows that.
We also got a question about making friends.
- One way I like to make friends is
I like to go on walking tours
and then meet people that way
and once you meet one person,
I feel like it's easier to meet more and then make friends.
- Yeah and like we've, even been hopping like,
country hopping every week, it really seems
like we're meeting new people every time.
And of course, meeting people through Instagram
is like, so easy these days.
So, we also have a whole load of internet friends, too.
All right, it is time for me to sign off.
We have a very early bus to catch
to make it to our flight tomorrow.
Thank you guys so much for watching,
I hope that you learned a lot.
If you have any more questions about my travel
in the Balkans or house sitting or teaching online,
please feel free to message me on my personal account,
I'd be happy to help you guys in any way that you need.
Again, thank you for watching
and I hope that you all have a good night.
(upbeat music)