Back to Basics

Its official!  I have been living on the continent for over a year now!  Adam (my brother) can stick it!  He was placing bets at my leaving party that I would be home after 3 months.  Maybe it's slightly ironic that I did actually leave my first 'family' after 3 months...?  Yet I didn't go back home!  I found another way to continue my experience living across the pond with an amazing host family, who I am ever so grateful to be with.  It is a slightly odd feeling knowing that I have been away from home for so long though, but then again it's become kind of normal for me now.

I live in Switzerland and I have a job here, where I actually get paid and fail to save some of my pay each month (just like everyone else, right?).  I have a place in my 'family', where we talk about our days and help each other out when we can.  I also have plenty of friends (from both church and the many Au Pairs that surround Geneva) who I hang out with and send silly messages to just like I do with my friends back home.  I still get to meet so many new people and get to explore new places at the same time.  So for now this life continues for me, and it will still be that way for the next 4 or 5 months.  Which is fine by me.  It is a pretty good life by the way!

After a year of being an Au Pair having so many fantastic experiences, from the mundane things to the bigger adventures that I will never forget, I have built up a store of memories to take home.  But there are plenty more memories to be made seeing as I am back after my summer break.  That is the BIG news of this blog...I AM BACK!!  But I am back to basics, because I have to find new friends...AGAIN!

So I haven't been left completely desolate in the friends department.  Not everyone I have got to know here has disappeared to their own homelands over the summer (just like a lot of my really good friends did over Christmas time last year) but most of them did!  Yet again I had to get out there and meet new people, find some friends, communicate to those of my own age, find someone to hang out with so that I'm not such a loner on the weekend!  Where is a better place to do that then at Link!?

I've talked about Link before, but just as a recap it is an Au Pair group set up by a christian couple who saw that there was no support for all the young girls (and a few token boys) who flood to Geneva to work as Au Pairs every year.  Paul and Becky are their names, and they are always there to help as well as organising various activities every month where everyone can get together and meet new people, make friends, share our different cultures and even go on trips around Switzerland together!  They are pretty amazing for doing so much for us Au Pairs!

A couple of weeks ago I got together with a friend I had already connected with called Sarah from Utah (she goes to church too, but shes actually the sister and Au Pair replacement of Shelly).  We went to the first Link Au Pair Welcome meeting, which by the end of the night was the biggest gathering of Au Pairs at one of these meetings.  There were 75 young, fresh and either overly excited, anxious or just a bit mehhh people gathered together for the night of 'getting to know you' activities.  This is not even half of all the Au Pairs in the are, there are a LOT more out there!

The new Link Au Pairs (can you spot me?).........

I instantly hooked up with a bunch of English girls, what can I say, we were all just drawn to each other in the mass of American's, a couple of Australasian's, a South African and a whole load of natives from the continent!  There were so many people to meet and get to know that you didn't really get a chance to actually get to know many people, but it was good to swap a few names and know that I could get together and do something with a bunch of these pretty cool and interesting people.

The search for a few good core friends is on still!