Rotary Home Exchange

When you visit the Rotary Club in your new home town, the Club grants you immediate acceptance, offering friendly insider advice about favorite local attractions and restaurants. This often leads to invitations to social gatherings and activities outside the regular Club meetings. Besides participating in local projects, we’ve been invited to dinner parties, country horseraces, hiking, beach parties, waterskiing, golf, concerts and on and on. One group even gave my husband a surprise birthday party! It’s easy to get started. Register with Home Exchange.com and pay the yearly fee of around $50. Post a description & pictures of your home. You can then peruse homes in the area where you will be traveling, or wait for a “hit” from someone wanting to come to your home. Then if the timing works, you begin trading a series of “dating” emails and / or phone calls to work out the dates and details.

 

It can be a simultaneous trade - or not. It can include a car or a boat - or not. It can include cleaning service or not. We have even included our wonderful dog in the trade. Be sure that you feel compatible with the pictures your potential home trader posts. We look for rooms without a lot of clutter and we don’t worry about trading for a home that is smaller than ours. We have only traded “up” once, but location and personal connections are much more important to us. You are never obligated to have anyone in your home that you do not feel perfectly comfortable with, so don’t be afraid to cut it off negotiations if it does not “feel” right. Be prepared to expand your horizons and say “yes” when invited to participate in a local project or outing. Keep the connections you make, but don’t be surprised if your new friends show up in your driveway years later, after losing your e-mail address. What a fun surprise!

 

Traveling this way is so much more than just site-seeing. You are able to connect to a place and the people on a much deeper level. You are building a world community of Rotary.