Three months of France, and man has my hair grown! I know this latest post has been long over due!!! So long over due that I’m pretty sure I will be writing this still at the end of the week! I am also going to have to split everything up into several posts, just to make sense of everything I have to tell you! I have little adventures to share with photos galore, be prepared for your eyes to be blinded by more countryside photos and pretty lady friends of mine!!!! I shouldn’t make excuses for my lack of blogging, but I shall!!! Unreliable Internet, lost photos and a few highly up and down weeks has prevented me from keeping up with THE BLOG! Bare with me on this! A lot has happened, which I know most of you will be up to date with, but for those who are not in the know I will inform you briefly (or maybe not so briefly) and then fill you in on the adventures starting with my first un-reported adventure in the town of Nyon.
My three months of France ends here. Yes I am leaving. No I am not going home. Wish I were though for my back’s sake, it misses my bed! I have a NEW Au Pair job. At the end of this week I am moving to Switzerland!!!!!!! Whoop Whoop!!! It’s the place that I thought I was going to originally. So that Swiss leaving party I had with Swiss facts galore will have been worth it after all. Who really wants to be in France anyway? Not me!!! I would like to be somewhere a little different to the norm. The wonderfully clean and organized Swiss are perfect for me! Haha! This sounds like I am moving miles away! I will actually only be about a twenty-minute drive from where I currently am in a place called Vernier (not spelt like that!), Switzerland. It’s pretty much in Geneva. I will be the same distance away from my friends and my French School, but church may change, not that I have been going to one ward in particular since I’ve been here. I have turned into one of those annoying YSA ward hoppers…bad I know. Either way I will be going from the far mountain countryside, a five minute drive from Gex chapel to the out skirt region of the city, a five minute drive from Geneva chapel.
Your probably screaming ‘WHY THE CHANGE?!?!?’. Well hold your horses, and I shall do my best to explain. There have been many small things that have accumulated over the past month or so to make me feel unhappy and uncomfortable in my current host family’s home at times. Do you remember me telling you about the time I got locked out of the house one night after coming back from a friends? There was a BIG lack of apology the next day? That was probably the first thing to ring alarm bells. Everything up to this point had been fine, rosy even. I then found out that I was getting a pretty crappy deal compared to the other Au Pairs that I know in the same area. I know what I singed up for, but finding out that you work more hours, looking after more children than your fellow Au Pair peers do, for less money than they get, plus other befits I have been lacking does make you feel a bit bummed. Especially when you lack the time and money to do anything with them. I haven’t been able to do or see the things that I came out here to experience in the first place. Yes I am an Au pair for the duration of my time here. Being an Au Pair here allows me the opportunity to learn a new language and live in a different cultural setting. It also allows me to meet new people and gain new experiences that will enrich my life. The latter I have not yet been able to fulfill in a way I wanted to. This was the second alarm bell ringing rather loudly in my head! I thought very nervously of talking to the family for a couple of weeks about the situation to see if we could come to a compromise on some things. We talked, but nothing really much changed. Fair enough, we had an agreement when I came out here and I was fine to stick to that. So what did change was that I now actually work the hours I am supposed to (not the double time I was doing) and get paid for any overtime. That has suited me fine. Since that talk though things have gone down hill.
The holiday situation! I believe I have not talked of this. The family planned to go away for the half term week in October to see their family in Paris. They didn’t want me to stay in the house so said it would be a good week to go away traveling. I liked this idea, but soon realized that I did not have anyone to go away with that week or the funds to do it. In the end another family (jenny’s family) from church invited me to go away with them for the week to the south of France. However tragedy befell us all the day of my host family’s departure. Jenny’s son had been extremely sick for over a week and it was getting worse. Thus the holiday was cancelled. I explained to my host family that this was the case, so surely it would be ok if I stayed at the house. They were not best please! I was not best pleased at their reaction! They are supposed to provide me with food and accommodation. So if they go away for a week without me, then I should be entitled to stay in the house, or they pay for me to go else where! It was determined that I stay, but they didn’t trust me to be in the house basically. That was their parting note I have to say, ‘I don’t trust you to leave you in our home for the week’. This being said after I long list of how to keep and lock up the house (fair enough, but they didn’t need to say everything to me like I was a 5 year old idiot). ‘No party’s and we expect to have this pace looking exactly as it is right now when we come back’…I think you’ll find I was the one responsible for having the place ‘look as it is right now’! They were just rude about the whole situation. They trust me to look after their children every day, but not babysit the house for a week. Plus they left me no food or money to get food, and told me very sternly to make sure that the car was FULL of petrol when they got back. I hardly ever use the car! That was the BIG alarm bell number three.
Various other things have happened that have just been rather rude or inconsiderate since that first talk. I feel that since that talk they have felt the right to say or do anything they please (when I say ‘they’ it is mostly the mother). Never having a schedule of when I am supposed to work so I can try to organize outings isn’t great for meeting up with friends. Being told I am needed to look after the kids at really late notice ruins plans that I have previously made. Having to pay for really expensive medicine (that I did not choose) when I am sick is meant to be the host family’s responsibility. Especially when it wipes out a third of my weekly pay. A constant stream of being told in a patronizing manner that I am doing things differently to how she wants things done can get extremely tiring. I understand that when someone is living in your house that’s not family, things that the ‘guest’ in the house does become annoying. However I feel that there is a correct and polite way to deal with these (what would have been minor) problems. Yet because of the way things have been dealt with, I have come to feel uncomfortable in the home.
A person’s mood projects itself onto the people that surround them. If you are happy and open, then others around you can be happy and relaxed in your presence. However if you are stressed or abrupt in your manner, I find that the people around you can feel tense and unsure in your presence. They are not sure how to react to you, because you are closing yourself off. This is what it has been like for me. I cant read the family, I feel tense and unsure if they are happy, so don’t want to get in their way. One day I can be on a total high, everything is great; the next there is another reason to me wanting to leave. That though hadn’t crossed my mind until it was suddenly placed in my lap.
I must explain that the family has been great to me. The mum was so patient with me when I was really sick. She looked after me so well and genuinely cared about me. We have got on really well. It has been a great learning experience with the twin baby’s. The girls and our language barrier have been interesting. These have been challenges that I have enjoyed. The family has been incredible welcoming, taking in a stranger and showing them the ways of their culture and their life. We have got on really well and had some nice times together. I have enjoyed my time here to an extent, but I have not been having the experience’s that I had intended to gain here. I feel that it is unfortunately time to move on.
At the time that I was feeling a bit low and was questioning why I was here and whether I should continue with the family or not I was practically offered another job. Divine intervention perhaps? After a couple of weeks it certainly felt so. A fellow English Au Pair (Victoria) that I had met through Caitlin on a day out (which turned into a whole weekend of fun) was leaving her job very shortly. A week later Caitlin and myself swing by Victoria’s after institute to say goodbye to her. We bumped into the mum while we were there and got talking. She was asking if we new anyone who was looking for a new position. We talked about a few people that may be interested and then Caitlin mentioned that I was having a bit of a rubbish time with my current host family. The mum said she didn’t want to take me away from my current family, but…well…think about it...and she just left it at that.
Ahhhhhhh!!! All the way home I was in complete indecision about what to do. I hadn’t thought of leaving the current family. I was just going to stick it out and do the best I could with the situation. But Victoria’s situation just seemed so good. I would get double the amount of pay I get now. Will probably work slightly less hours then I currently do. My French lessons would be paid for. I would get the whole weekend off, so I could actually do things with friends and travel. I would have use of car most of the time, especially during the day, when my free time would be. I will be given a phone that has a pre-paid contract with unlimited texts to various countries, (be prepared for how annoying I may get) including ENGLAND!!! I will still have my own bedroom and bathroom in a separate part of the house. I would be allowed a friend or two round to hang out in the evening. I already get on with the mum of the house (Caroline…makes me think of my mum Carol every time!). I’ll be looking after two boys aged 7 and 10 (with little English accents…they grew up there). The families are French but living in Switzerland. They have lived in England for the past 8 or so years. So all speak fluent English…but speak French around the house, which will help my French. At least I would be able to deal with the boys in English. They go to an English school…the same school as the boy’s that Caitlin looks after. So we will be on the same schedule! More time for us to hang out! Haha!!! That could be bad…we hang out all the time anyway! I basically lived at hers the week I was on holiday. What a great situation though right?! Yes they could turn out to be like this family at times, but with these better benefits, I wouldn’t care if they were worse! But was this all just temptation, and not divine intervention after all?! So this train thought continued for the next couple of weeks!
I finally contacted the family and asked to be considered for the position…I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask whilst I made up my mind if this what I wanted to do or not. While waiting for an answer from Victoria’s family (as I seem to always refer to them that way) I prayed like crazy, fasted, had a blessing and couldn’t put my scriptures down! This has been such a hard decision to make. I didn’t want to let down my current host family, but I knew that I would if I did decide to leave. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful or selfish, but knew that if I didn’t leave I wouldn’t grow in the ways I wanted to while I was here, and that’s why I came here, to grow and gain experience’s that would enrich my life. The new position would allow me this. After a long time of talking to many different people and searching for answers whilst changing my mind every other day as to whether I would leave or not I got an interview with the new family. This went really well and was followed with a request to be this family’s new Au Pair. I obviously accepted and everything just felt right.
Telling my current host family was horrible! That’s another story in itself, which I know most of you have heard already! But for the purpose of keeping everyone fully informed however (and obviously trying to make this the LONGEST post ever!) I will divulge some of the details. They were not happy, naturally. I was petrified, completely! I am just going to give you the message that I gave the world on Facebook……..
‘Today I had the task of telling the family my decision to leave. I just did it, and it was over in under 2 minutes! The mum pretty much hates me, thinks I am a horrible person, that its the end if her life and has banished me to my room! Ill have to wait and see what the rest of the evening and tomorrow brings.’
So I didn’t actually get banished to my room, but it was pretty clear that that was where I was to stay for the rest of evening…out of the way, but to continue the snippets of my conversations about the situation there is more…..
‘Thanx guys!!! I was clutching my ensign as I told them....so prays are very much appreciated!! But as the ‘yo yo’ of the situation has been, the mum just came and spoke to me like nothing had happened. Hopefully that will last and I can make it through the two weeks!
The ‘yo yo’ situation continued for a further week. So several other things were said and done that made me want to leave right then and there! But I have been pretty determined to stick to my side of the agreement. This does seem to have paid off, as the mum has been very nice to me this week however (which I am extremely grateful for!).
After a rather stressful month of indecision I am very excited to start another new chapter of the ‘Rose Tag Travels’. Thank you everyone for all your support and guidance. It has been MUCH appreciated.
A la votre!
P.S. The documenting of my little adventures shall now commence in further posts!
