another au pair

After almost two full days of traveling I finally arrived at my destination. La Rochelle, France. Located approximately four hours by train to the South-West of Paris. Although it wasn’t exactly my final destination, it was where I was going to meet the people I’d be living with for the next year. Yet, I wasn’t as nervous as everyone expected me to be – maybe that’s what two days of traveling does to a person.

Standing at the train station with two year old Celeste on hip was my host dad. Upon first meeting I realised how truly French he was and how truly French I wasn’t. We did a little tour around the mainland then embarked upon the journey over the bridge to the magnificent Island of Ré. It’s quite a bizarre experience walking into a house you’ve never seen before, half the way across the world from the only place you've ever known and trying to imagine yourself ever feeling at home there.

The first month wasn’t the best company in the slightest; I missed my family, I missed my friends, I missed the ease of communication, I missed the familiarity of my life. But eventually I did start seeing myself making a new life here, however temporary it was going to be. I started meeting people and making memories I knew I would be able to keep for a lifetime. My host family was nothing but brilliant. The kids were tough but they were starting to understand who I was and why I was there. And before I knew it life became routine again.

Having said that, it was a mean experience. My life back home was school, sport, friends and family. In France, I had a social centre turned school which I went to for French lessons approximately four hours a week; as apposed to eight hours a day, five days a week. At home sport was engrained in my life, doing on average, 6 sports a year. Here I was lucky if the pool was open on a Monday at 10a.m. My friends were not familiar to me at all. Some of which didn’t or had trouble with speaking english. Something I’ve very much taken for granted my whole existence. And of course, from spending no longer than a week away from my family, suddenly they were three very long flights away.

I started learning how to own my life again and suddenly all the little wins I was accumulating were making the heartache and the change worth the extra (thousand) miles. Snowboarding for the first time in the French Alps probably also played a huge role in that.

By the time May rolled in, I had cemented two amazing, awesome, absolutely fabulous very best girl friends. Soon we were spending all our free time together, eating, drinking and laughing our way through La Rochelle. We took our friendship international a couple of times and I can say, hand on heart, that without these two crazy ladies my life would have well and truly sucked.

Not only had I grown attached to these girls, I was also growing so extremely close to my kids. All three of them have their own personality and all three of them came with their different idiosyncrasies and difficulties but I loved them (and still do) with my whole heart. When I spent my weeks away from them I would grow more and more excited in anticipation of the next time I would see their smiling faces.

Having weeks away from them meant I was doing something fantastic, traveling the world slowing accumulating more stamps in my freshly renewed Australian passport. Only having two prior overseas experiences under my belt I was itching to explore this wondrously huge world.