Today we found something interesting that could be appealing to many of our readers now that we are about to change seasons. What if you could enjoy the sun in any season? Does this get your attention? Well, today, a user has posted an offer in several of the forum topics under the title “Enjoy the sun in any season“, and we thought it might just be a good thing to give it a gentle push by posting the details in our blog as well.

Ner is a user from Roquetas de Mar in Almeria (Spain), an area described as warm in the winter and hot in the summer. If you are wondering why would someone leave warm paradise to spend the winter elsewhere, well, Ner wants to stay for at least three months in an English speaking country to learn English, so if you have a home to exchange where Ner can practice English on a daily basis, don’t hesitate to get in touch. You could be spending part of the winter in an apartment near Playa Serena beach:

Image: one of Ner house’s photos in HomeForHome.

The expectation built up during the weeks before Christmas, seems too much for one day. It is just not enough to celebrate properly! That is probably one of the reasons why in the United Kingdom there is Boxing Day on December 26th. There is enough holiday spirit for one more day, so if you want three days of celebration around Christmas, you should use HomeForHome to swap houses with someone in Britain.

What is Boxing Day?

The day after Christmas is celebrated as Boxing Day, and it is a bank holiday as well. Actually, this year the two bank holidays, Christmas and Boxing Day will be observed the 27th and 28th, respectively because when they fall on a weekend, they are moved to the next Monday. Boxing Day does not have a clear origin, but there were many customs in the past that involved boxes to be opened the day after Christmas:

– Boxes were used to collect leftovers from Christmas dinner and sometimes gifts that would be given to servants who were given the day off to spend it with their families on the 26th.

– Service workers were given boxes with gifts in the first working day after Christmas as a way of saying thanks for the good service provided throughout the year.

– Sailors used to carry a box on board and put money into it as an offering to assure a safe return. When the ship ended its journey the box was given to a church and the priest opened it during Christmas to give the money to the poor.

– It is said that in the middle ages, servants used to save money in boxes that were opened during Christmas to use the savings.

– Churches used to have boxes that received goods and gifts from people attending the Christmas Mass. These boxes were opened the 26th and the contents shared with the poor.

Boxing Day is a family day and many people choose to play board games as part of the family tradition. Several sports have special matches scheduled for Boxing Day, for example the football Premier League, so watching sports is another preferred activity. This day is also used to find after-Christmas sales and exchange gifts, so it is a busy day in shopping areas.

There are other countries were Boxing Day is celebrated: Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Also, there are countries that have  other celebrations on December 26th, like Germany or South Africa, but we will leave them for another post. With our international home exchange portal, you can discover these festivities next year.

HomeForHome users probably have several Christmas stories that include house swapping. That is probably due to the fact that around Christmas most people decide to travel. Sometimes because there is a special traditional event or family gathering waiting for them elsewhere, or just for fun. With many people taking days off work and children being freed from school duties, the holiday season is one of the busiest times at airports, ports, railways, highways, roads and even streets!

Another common thing that happens during the holiday season is that TV channels go to the storage shell labelled “Christmas” and put in the “air” a long list of films with plots that revolve around this time of the year. To our knowledge there are not many films that combine Christmas and house swapping, but at least there is one that does, and not only a home exchange but an international home exchange takes place. This film is “The Holiday”.

In “The Holiday”, two single broken-hearted ladies decide to spend their Christmas in the farthest location possible to get away from their recently ended relationships and they choose to arrange a home swap using the Internet. Their international home exchange details:

– Two weeks.

– California, USA for Surrey, England.

– Luxurious mansion for cosy cottage.

– Warm weather for snowy days.

In “The Holiday” the swap turns out to be a successful one, what does a holiday home swap need to include to be your perfect one?

Do not let the title confuse you, we are still on Holiday Season week, but it is a good time to play with numbers! 2010 has been a great year for HomeForHome and as we are about to turn over the page and move on to 2011, we want to share our joy with you because we have reached 20100 registered users. Hurrah!

Our wish list for 2011:

– More registered users taking advantage of our services: Having more users means there are more opportunities for everyone to find a good swap partner and that is exactly what we want. Our goal is to provide the tools for people with the same interest to connect and swap, the more people interacting the more chances they will find their perfect matches.

– More successful swaps arranged through our portal: If users agree to swap by sending exchange proposals and having the other party accept it through the portal, then they will have the chance to provide feedback and evaluate the experience after the exchange takes place. This means you will give others the chance to know beforehand if a user can be trusted or not. The concept of home exchange is built on trust so your experiences will be valuable to others and most of all to your swap partner!

– More suggestions from our users to keep a top quality service: Over the past year, our users have provided valuable feedback about our tools and features. Whether using the Contact form or the Forums, do not miss the change to speak up. Your opinion is very important to us.

Finally, our wish for you is that you find a good swap matching your 2011 travel plans. What are you wishing for the next swap year? Maybe there Santa can leave one more thing under your tree

Christmas is near and you probably have already planned your home swap for this special time as we recommended last year when the holiday season was near. However, we could not let this special time go by without bringing you a very special Christmas week (maybe weeks) at HomeForHome’s blog. There are tons of things to share about Christmas, and we had to find just a few interesting facts like a needle in a haystack!

Our first interesting fact is for those anxious ones that cannot wait to see what is under the Christmas tree. For them, nothing better than spending Christmas in one of the countries where December 25th arrives first. For them, we recommend a home exchange to New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, Tuvalu, Kiribati or even Australia. These are the first countries west of the International Date Line, so the change from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day takes place here first than anywhere else. Of course, if you have a boat you can actually be the very first to receive Christmas, all you have to do is set your course to longitude 180°. Well, move a little to the west of the 180th meridianbecause we do not really know what happens if you are on the exact International Date Line

On the other hand, if you want to be among the last to receive Christmas, you should travel to places such as Tahiti (French Polynesia), Hawaii (United States) or Samoa. Let us tell you, checking out this three destinations, it does not sound bad at all to be the last people saying goodbye to Christmas Eve. It may be worth the effort to be the last to open your presents

HomeForHome is a home exchange website, but we leave it to our users to take advantage of our services and innovate. Creativity is always welcomed. The only thing we do not admit is trying to take profit from our services (we do not allow any commercial deals and we ask our users to report people who really want to rent their place instead of a free home exchange). Do you want to hear about some creative ways to swap? Here we go with two ideas:

- Register your motor-home or your yacht. If it can be used as a home it can be registered for home exchange in HomeForHome (no funny interpretations, please - we are serious). A user may be interested in using your motor-home to take their home exchange journey to a whole new level.

- What about an hospitality exchange? Hospitality exchanges are a variation of home exchange when each swapper receives their partner as a guest in their home. This could be a particularly interesting choice for those who want to make new friends and re-discover the beauty of their home town. We have seen some of our users starting forum topics about receiving a child from another family in their home while their child stays with the other family to learn a foreign language, a very special student exchange. This could even be arranged to be non-simultaneous so the visitor has a friend of the same age to show them around. Hospitality exchanges could also be a great idea for retired people or first-time travellers that are not confident about travelling to a whole different country on their own and would rather have some company. As for home exchange, hospitality exchange is not for everyone, some people may be thrilled by the idea of receiving people from a different culture in their home but this may be too much for others.

Image from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Back in April we suggested Aquariums could be great places to list as nearby attractions to add to your HomeForHome home description, and we mentioned a few well known aquariums from around the globe. Well, as the 2010 FIFA World Cup is coming to an end, there’s an aquarium that has drawn the attention of the world to one of its inhabitants: Paul the “Psychic Octopus”.

Image by Allie_Caulfield (flickr)

Paul is a common octopus living in SEA LIFE Oberhausen (in April we mentioned SEA LIFE Berlin but we really didn’t know about this famous creature). Paul seems to have the ability to predict the winner of football matches. Yes, you read correctly, the octopus can tell ahead which team will be victorious. This is how it works: Two plastic containers are presented to Paul, both have food inside and the only difference between them is the flag shown in the front. The tentacled psychic takes a moment and then decides to go for one of the containers to have his lunch and the container’s flag is taken as the flag of the winner. If you are thinking “he’s probably trained to choose the German flag” you are not correct, his last prediction was that Spain would beat Germany in the semi-final and he got it right.

A few facts about Paul:

1. Paul is British, he was born in Weymouth SEA LIFE Park and moved to his current home in 2006.
2. He is also known as das Krakenorakel (German), el Pulpo Paul (Spanish) and the Oracle Octopus.
3. He became a celebrity after predicting correctly the result of all of Germany’s matches in the current edition of the FIFA World Cup.
4. He seems to have improved his “technique” because in 2008 during the UEFA European Championship he failed in two predictions out of the six he made, but during the 2010 FIFA World Cup he made no mistakes.
5. He is a media and Internet sensation, he has made it to appear in the BBC, CNN, and thousands of TV channels worldwide. He is in the top ten trends in Twitter and has both fan and enemy pages in Facebook, the last mainly from defeated teams.

Do you want to meet Paul?

If you are interested in meeting Paul during your next home exchange vacation, you should probably hurry because apparently there are a few offers to buy the tentacled sensation and a few threatening cooking recipes in the countries that he didn’t select. Paul resides now in Oberhausen, a city in Nordrhein-Westfalen, also known for having the largest shopping mall in Germany: CentrO.  If you prefer to wait till the media forgets about Paul to arrange your home exchange, then a good time to visit him would be 5 -10 May 2011, during the 57th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.

During the weekend we will find out if his latest predictions were correct: he chose Germany as the winner of the third-place match and Spain as the World Cup winner in Sunday’s match against the Netherlands.

Jessica Watson got home. Who? Come on, you really don’t remember one of the girls sailing alone around the globe? We wrote about her and Abby Sunderland last month. Well, the good news is that Jessica completed the challenge, arriving at Sydney this weekend.

Her journey around the world took her through 23,000 nautical miles (something like 42,000 Km) in about 7 months, and she received quite a warm welcome when thousands were cheering her as she navigated through Sydney Harbour before disembarking at Sydney Opera House. Even more people followed her blog and website, plus there was a live TV broadcast in Australia. Well, given the Prime Minister was at her arrival it’s safe to say the girl is a celebrity now.

Image by Michal Marcol /FreeDigitalPhotos.net

She did it, 210 days of solo, non-stop, unassisted sailing. So, what are you going to do with your next 210 days? An option is to set route to that exciting destination you’ve always wanted to visit and have your dreamed trip! You may try it solo and non-stop if you want, but for sure you can use HomeForHome’s assistance to find a home exchange deal before embarking on your journey!

If you want to read more about Jessica’s trip, visit her official website: http://www.jessicawatson.com.au

And if you want more inspiration, then remember we have another teenage girl sailing around the world: Abby Sunderland. So, where is Abby now?

Image by jscreationzs /FreeDigitalPhotos.net

HomeForHome aims to become the largest home exchange network, and so far it’s going great! (or shall we say “growing great!”?). There are over 13,000 houses registered, from almost any place you can imagine. And this time we won’t miss it like we did when we reached 10,000 homes, as soon as we reach to 15,000 we’ll shout it up!

How does the HomeForHome picture looks like now?

Spain has taken the lead, with almost 5,000 houses registered!!! Wow, that’s a lot of swappers searching for “intercambios”. Second in offers is France, oh “la France” so beautiful, there are so many things worth seeing in France, Paris alone (note: with 750 swappers it has more offers than most countries!) probably has 10 “musts” for most travellers not to count its Mediterranean coast, the wines, the cheeses, the bread… Third, achieving the bronze medal (for now) is Italy with over 1,600 homes. Italy is another country with much to offer: Rome (116 offers), Milan, romantic Venice, and pizza everywhere. Following in number of offers are UK, Germany, USA, Canada, Australia and Argentina.

For exotic places where there are HomeForHome home exchangers: Madagascar, Uruguay, Barbados, Azerbaijan, the French Polynesia, Alaska! Many you probably didn’t think of till now, and many more you can discover using HomeForHome’s map search tool. Give it a try!

Image by Tim Seed /FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Something caught my eye today while surfing the web, GrindTV.com features a story about a teenage girl sailing solo around the world. Abby Sunderland is a 16 year old girl trying to sail around the world alone, nonstop and unassisted. But this is not all, there’s yet another girl trying to make the same quest: Jessica Watson, an Australian teenager only five months older than Sunderland, is expected to complete her nonstop circumnavigation attempt in late May. She has been sailing since October 2009.

What about that! They have the spirit and even if not this time, they will get their way around the world. But for those that don’t know how to sail, there are other ways to make a quest around the globe. With HomeForHome offering thousand of homes from all over the world, you can start your own “home exchange worldwide adventure” and solo or not, it does seem enticing.

If you want to be inspired by these young adventurers, visit their official websites and follow them as they sail around our world:

Abby Sunderland & Abby’s Blog - “It has been my dream since I was 13 years old and began single-handing, to one day sail solo around the world. I am 16 years old and this blog will contain the story of my attempt to become the world’s youngest solo circumnavigator.”

Official Jessica Watson Blog & Jessica Watson - “Inspired in her turn by Kay Cottee, the first woman to sail solo non-stop unassisted around the world and by Jesse Martin, the youngest person to do so, Jessica Watson has set her sights on shattering Jesse’s record.”