Into the Unknown

Me at the Heineken brewery.

Amsterdam being all cute and Dutch

Rooftop view of Paris.

Florian,Fabio and my new friends in Paris!

View of Mount Blanc in Chamonix.

For the first time in a long time I find myself puzzled as to why I am choking back tears when I watch my Dad walk away from the closing doors of my train in Geneva. I have never felt like this when we have parted ways in the past. I get on the train and start to settle my baggage, trying look as nonchalant as possible, while tears stream down my face and a Taiwanese women looks at me with understanding eyes. A piece of home has been with me for a week and now I feel the weight of him leaving and the feeling of not knowing what lies ahead.

So I don’t like to brag, but I had a pretty amazing Christmas/New Years Break. For the first leg of my trip, I spent five days in Amsterdam with my dear friend Raquel. She is also an au pair and came here from Mexico. (Our friendship nickname is Tex-Mex. 'Cause I mean we had to, right?) Amsterdam at Christmastime is absolutely charming. To me, it felt like a city you could walk around (or bike around) in forever and never get bored. All the canals, tiny houses smushed together, and the cute Dutch people with their bikes, carrying flowers in their baskets. That is one thing I noticed right away is that EVERYBODY has a bike. It seemed like a more popular mode of transportation than a car. Another thing we noticed right away is just how odd the language is. I mean it's like nothing you have heard before. It sounds very close to German and extremely similar to Klingon. (Live long and prosper.) One of our best experiences was at the Heineken brewery! I LOVE going to breweries. I have only been to one other (Guinness factory in Dublin Ireland), so I don’t have much to compare it to, but I was really impressed by the whole tour. And the coolest part was this cute guy that worked at the bar who decided we needed 8 free beers each instead of 3. Needless to say, the walk back to the hostel was a little bit of a blur. The other touristy thing we did was go to the Van Gogh museum. Totally worth it and totally amazing. (And I got to walk around with my big Canon camera and an audio headset. Super nerd tourist status. Love it.) Seeing an original Van Gogh painting in real life is just beyond description. A few of them I could have stood in front of forever. The rest of our trip was pretty much filled with partying and meeting friendly people from all around the globe! That's another thing I absolutely love about this whole experience is the amazing people you meet. You know they would let you crash on their couch and feed you in a heartbeat, and if they showed up in Texas one day you would do the same for them. I absolutely love this mentality. It renews my faith in the human spirit.

For the second leg of my trip, I met up with my pops and his girlfriend in Paris. I have never in my life been so ecstatic to see my father. During the whole experience of living abroad you make new friends who know you but it hasn't been for very long, and they don’t even know the you that lives in the United States, so it's really just a breath of fresh air to be able to spend time with the person who knows you best. Paris was mostly filled with shopping, and I got to meet up with my friends Florian and Fabio for a night out and for New Years eve. I made some new girlfriends and once again found myself in awe of Paris. I also had one of the most “wow I’m really in France” moments when I took an epic journey by myself on the metro at 12:30 am on New Year's Eve. Needless to say, lots of drunks and lots of shouting “Bonne Anee!” which means “Happy New Year” in French. The next day we headed to Geneva and took a shuttle from there to a famous ski spot called Chamonix. There are very few moments in my life where I can say that my breath was taken away, but this was definitely one of them. The whole place is covered in snow and surrounded by the gorgeous alps. There is one point where a mountain touches Italy, Switzerland, and France! The little town was beyond adorable and was just what you would think a European ski town should look like. (This is coming from someone that has never skied in her life.) My Dad's girlfriend had also never skied before, so we had to take some lessons. Overall I like skiing, but I don’t think it's going to be my new favorite sport or anything. You have to think and do so many things at the same time, and the ski instructor talked to me in French, so it was quite a challenge. 

The New Year almost marks my halfway point of this French adventure, which also means I need to start thinking about my future and what my life will look like when I return to the U.S. So I'm finally being confronted with the problematic question that all 20-something postgraduates have to face: “What do I do now?” For those of you who don’t know me, I went to school in Arkansas for five years, left last summer, came back to Dallas for 10 days, and moved to France. So when I go back I am going back to a completely new life and most likely a new place. Thinking about this can be really scary. But I have to remember to take it one step at a time and not let my worries about my future ruin my experience here. After all, this is life and we only get one so we have to soak up every opportunity we have while we can.

"It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.”

Winston Churchill

The Art of Au Pairing

Line up! Yep everyone is here.

Somewhere deep down he loves me.

Little Picasso over here.

The art of au pairing isn’t hard to master...(Sorry I couldn’t resist. That's for all you poetry lovers out there.) I decided it would be appropriate to dedicate a post to my biggest priority here in France: taking care of children. I have to admit that I really had NO idea what I was getting myself into when I signed up to be an au pair. I have babysat a handful of times, but that was a long time ago, and this is completely different. When you're a part-time babysitter, you watch kids for 2 to 4 hours tops, and then you’re on your way. But with this gig, you are living with the family. You’re there for every tantrum, screaming fest, adorable moment, fight between the parents, and even the news that your host mom is pregnant. Before I start I have to say that deep down I absolutely adore both of the little boys I take care of, and I would do anything for them. That being said, they can be pretty terrible sometimes. I think the biggest challenge at first was the language barrier. For example, I remember one of my first weeks, the youngest boy (he’s three) had just woken up from a nap and wouldn’t stop crying and screaming. I am talking face red, screaming at the top of his lungs, kicking the wall by his bed so hard that his bed moved a foot type of crying. Every time I came up to him to try to calm him down, he started hitting me. He started screaming a phrase in French that I couldn’t understand and just kept repeating it. 15 minutes later, we make it downstairs, I wrestle (literally wrestle) with him to get his clothes on, and we are standing outside and invested in a screaming match where I'm trying desperately to convince him to come with me to pick up his older brother (who gets out of school in 5 minutes). At this moment, through his screaming, I can see the sheer frustration in his little tear-filled face and that he is so badly wanting to be understood as I am also on the verge of tears myself and wondering why I just completed five years of college to be fighting with a three year old. All of the sudden, I recognize the word “verre” which means glass. I stop everything to turn to him and say (in French), “You want a glass of water?” He immediately stops crying and sheepishly nods his head wiping the tears off his little, red cheeks. My life is now filled with ironically frustrating moments similar to this.

Things have vastly improved since my first weeks, including my French. The one thing I repeatedly have to make myself do when I get really frustrated with the boys is to take a deep breath, step back, and remember that I am talking with a child. It really is hard when you are not used to being with children, because they look at life in a completely different way than adults do. Things that really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things can be a matter of life and death in their eyes. Another thing I had to get used to was not taking what they say personally. One minute they say they hate you and you are the worst person in the world and literally 5 minutes later, they are in love with you. I think the most important lesson that I've learned (which has made me deeply appreciate my parents) is the fact that children really have no concept of how much you do for them. When I am with the boys and responsible for their lives, I think about myself the very last. Every little thing you do is for them. Whether it be washing their piece of kiwi because you accidentally got a SPECK of chocolate powder on it (in the midst of breakfast table madness), making sure not to wash one of their hands during bath time so their star stamp doesn’t come off, or walking all the way downstairs again to get the correct stuffed animal after struggling for thirty minutes just to get them into bed. After all these things, there is never a thank you. Kids simply don’t understand all that you do for them. I think this has been really important for me to go through, because it's made me realize and appreciate the different things that different people have done for me throughout my life.

When it is all said and done, there really is no art in raising or taking care of a child. I think the only thing you really can do is give them unconditional love and make them feel safe. Even though I have only been here for four and a half months, I already love these two boys as if they were my little brothers. I can’t imagine what it will be like after one year.

À bientôt!

(At the request of my host family I decided not to include any pictures of the boys.)