You know you’re an Au Pair in the USA when…

Recently joined this group in Facebook. The points below are so appropriate and applicable. To let you know more about the lives of au pairs in the USA, I decided to post this in my blog. Of course, not all the situations are true for all au pairs. This depends very much upon the kind of host family you have and the family situation they are in. I would say that about 60-70% of the points stated are true for me. The point about napping…oh, so true! Ha!

You know you’re an Au Pair in the USA when…
…you always introduce yourself with : ‘Hi! my name is (your name), I’m from (country) and I have (number of children you are taking care of) children!!’
…everybody is greeting you with a ‘Hi.How are you?’
and you can’t respond fast enough, so you say it first!
…the worst thing is, when the dad is working from home
…you know what a S’MORE is
…you spent all your money at the MALL and you still have nothing to wear
…you hate Dora, The Wiggles and Thomas
…you say silly instead of stupid
…you go to PLAYDATES
…you’ve seen more movies in one month than in your whole life at home
…you drive over 30 minutes to a friend and you think it’s not far
…you only have other Au Pairs as your friends
…you can make bacon
…you say ‘like’ and ‘totally’ every three words
…someone has asked you stupid questions like:
- ‘do you have cars in your country?’ - ‘You don’t have Valentine’s day?’ - ‘Where is your country?’
…you don’t think it’s wrong to have cake AND ice cream
…you park as close to the store as possible so you don’t have to walk even one yard too far
…you cherish moments of silence more than ever before
…you notice yourself saying ‘GOOD JOB’ a hundred times a day
…you wonder why you slept the whole night long so uncomfortable and you notice the next morning, you slept on a barbie, a lollypop, sandtoys etc
.…you need to be creative to find new punishments because a time-out doesn’t work anymore ;)
…you have to admit to mistakes you never did or put the blame on you day for day
…you’re sure you don’t want own kids within the next 100 years
…you know now exactly how difficult it was for your parents to have little kids and you feel like saying thanks for all you’ve done to your mum and dad every day
…you’re ready to drink anytime of the day
…you start to love disney movies again and can copy every passage of them
…you’ve learned what it means to be patient
…you know what a LCC is
…you know that you should never SHAKE A BABY !!!
…you take a nap after you drop off the kids at school(even though you just woke up 2hrs ago :D)
…you are DRIVING to the busstop to pick up your kids, which is only 200 meters from your house.
…the kids call you mum cause you spend too much time with them…
…you think $160 every weekend just for shopping and coffee are not that much
…one cup of coffee doesn`t make you awake anymore, it just makes you alive
…you or your friends are KELLERKINDER!!!!
…you miss the good ol’ days when you were able to go to the bakery and get real bread w/ real butter (not that American shit called bread..haha)
…you don’t walk into the bank, you use the drive in to get your money
…you use Purell instead of washing your hands
…instead of singing songs from the radio, you’re singing childrens’ songs