Hi there! ☺

In this post, I wanted to talk about my experience as an au pair. I got a lot of questions about it on my Instagram stories when I posted about it. 

First of all, for me, this was a very quick decision at the start of summer this year. I thought about it a few years ago, but never really got around to setting up a profile and actually doing it. For me, it all happened within two weeks. Keep in mind: You have to be prepared for anything and everything. 

I set up my profile on Au Pair World.  You just write a little about yourself, what do you like to do in your spare time, if you have any experiences with looking after or working with kids and why you want to be an au pair. It's also nice if you add some pictures of yourself so families know what you look like.

 Then you can contact the families through messages or wait for them to contact you.

I got contacted by my host family first and we started to get to know each other through texts first and then through video chat. I got quite a lot of messages from different families so I couldn't really keep up with responding to all of them. But I decided to stay with the first one that got in contact with me.

Everything seemed great when we were talking on the phone, so I didn't have any worries about it.

Like I said everything happened very quickly for me usually, people plan this month in advance, so I would recommend that you start planning this a few months before you would like to start.

Once you choose your host family and they choose you, you start planning all the other things that come with it. 

First, figure out if you need a working visa for the country that you are going to. You can get all the information about this on aupairworld.com. Then you need to get your plane ticket.

Sometimes the family will offer to pay for it or they give repay you all the expenses. In my case, I got none from my host family, which was okay, because I was hoping they might pay for my ticket when I decide to go home. Although I was planning on staying there longer than I did. 

However, they did not pay for any of my expenses, which I am not very pleased about and it would be very nice to at least pay for some of them. A lot of families would pay for some of your travel expenses, but it is totally up to them, keep that in mind. 

So when I got off the plane I was picked up by my host ''dad'', which was very nice of him, because my plane was delayed and I landed at midnight. When we got to the house the kids were asleep and he just showed me to my room so I could get some sleep.

The next day I got to meet the kids when they got back from their last day of school since I did arrive at the end of June. They seemed very nice at first, not just the kids but the whole family, which was very nice and I thought this would be great. 

I started working two days after I got there. Parents gave me some instructions on what the kids like to play with and other essential stuff like when to give them a bath and get them to bed, they also told me about parks and where I can take kids out to get some fresh air. I was looking after them three to four days a week, depending on parents work schedule.

At first, everything was great and the kids were fine, but after a few weeks they started to act up, they were not like their father described them to me character-wise. I understand that they are kids and their moods change a lot, but I was told that they are very easy to work with and they always listen and make no trouble. At first, it was like that, but, that started to change after a while. I don't wanna go to details of it, but they were very much spoilt.

When they did not get what they wanted they had massive tantrums. So that definitely threw me off quite a bit. 

So my advice to you is that you ask your host families a lot of questions about them, especially the kids and their lifestyle before you go and live with them. I asked a lot of questions but not enough.

 If I would do this again, I would make myself a list of questions or things that I want to know about and then make a pros and cons list. I think it would help a lot. Also, talk to as many families as possible and then you can compare them to each other and see which one would be the best fit for you. 

Next thing I want to talk about, is the fact that I lived in a very messy and dirty house. I would not mind if there were just toys everywhere like the parents said they were, but the entire house was a mess. Not just the toys, there were clothes everywhere from all family members, shoes, papers, dishes, food, .... everything was everywhere. I don't even wanna talk about the kitchen. I am one of those people who like to have at least semi-clean place, it doesn't have to be perfectly clean, but the things I have seen and circumstances I lived in were just too much.

So like I said be ready for everything because you can never know what waits for you.  

Don't get me wrong, not every host family is like that. You can get a really nice family that you will love to live with and work for. I met other au pairs here and they told me stories how they had very nice families, so not every family is like the one that I lived with. I am not saying that they were mean to me or anything like that. they were very nice, but there were a lot of things that bothered me and I could not live with. 

So I decided to leave them after three months. There were other things that I had to do back home like go to college, which was obviously my priority. 

It was a unique experience. I would do it again but in a different country, maybe with only one child (I had 2 this time around, two boys aged 5 and 7) and I would definitely ask a lot more questions and get to know them more before I'd go to live with them. 

Not every single thing was bad. I met a lot of new people, met new friends, I lived in a foreign country, got to see and explore new places which were also very cool and now I love the city that I worked in. It was an experience I will never forget, but unfortunately, it won't be the best one. 

Thank you for reading!