Why am I an AuPair?

Hello World!

I somehow always knew that I wanted to go far, far away after finishing school and almost nothing is as far away as Australia, so my destination was set. But what doing there?!

Work and Travel sounds great but at that stage it was no real option for me. I wanted to know, that I have an house where I live, food I can afford and all in all a save enviroment. And especially the “work”-part (farmwork) in it wasn’t and still isn’t the best thing I can imagine. And let’s be real, I came to Australia with the intention to not travel at all – stupid, I know!

Therefore I love kids and I already had experience working with these little monsters. Before I could overthink it, it was set: I’ll be an AuPair! And I don’t regret this decision at all, although I had some tough times.

I’ve found my first family with an organisation, which cost me a lot of time (collecting all the papers and so on) and also money. I was superduper excited and I was so damn sure that I’d found the perfect family. They lived in Adelaide, which was perfect cause one of my aunts lives there, had two boys and the mum seemed to be really nice via skype.

My perfect picture I’ve imagined in my head began to get tiny cracks as soon as I met the boys. I’ll save the whole dramatic story for another day, but it ended with me leaving after three month.

If you thought I gave up on being an AuPair you don’t know me well enough. It never popped up into my brain to leave Australia and fly back home. No matter what, I don’t give up and I wouldn’t leave with bad experiences. I activated my account again and I looked on “AuPairWorlds” for a new family. This time I knew what to look for, what question to ask and to be paitent.

I decided to travel meanwhile, so I wouldn’t need to stress about finding a family right now. In one week I had about ten Skype-interviews and my head started to spin an then I found them; the perfect family. It made click immediatly. We both agreed more or less during the interview to combine their craziness with mine and little spoiler: It’s the best craziness-combination the world has ever seen.

Since three month I am now in this family and from day one on I felt part of it. It couldn’t be any better and I am already so afraid of saying “Goodbye” at some stage, I could cry.

This family is the best reason why somebody should be an AuPair. There is so much love floating around here and even as an backpacker you’ll never really know what LIVING in Australia means. But no matter how nice the family is, you need to really want to work with kids, otherwise you’ll feel more trapped than anything else.

Even in my first family I learned so freakin’ much about myself, I wouldn’t miss that for the world cause I wouldn’t be the person I am right now without all that.

The moral of this experience is:

Never give up!

And: yes, there are some not-so-nice stories about being an AuPair, but therefore there are even more wonderful stories about being an AuPair and that’s what counts. You’ll get to hear about both sides on this blog eventually. And no matter how bad or good your time here is, one thing is for sure: you’ll learn the world about yourself and it adds to your growing character.

Your turn:

Do you have any experiences as as AuPair you wanna share with us?

What’s your opinion about AuPairs in general?

See you, Saskia xxx