Ainsi. Beaucoup de choses se sont passées depuis mon dernier poste de blog.
I typed that in French with almost no help from google translator. If I can name just one benefit from my time with that French family, it would definitely be my vast improvement in the French language. Listening, reading, writing, speaking, all of it has improved so much in just 2 months. What I learnt in high school, a lot of it all came back to me and I learnt some really essential things too that just wouldn't have sunk into my mind if I hadn't stayed in France for almost 2 months. Anyway, I didn't have to say goodbye to Paris just yet because I'm actually going back there in about 2 weeks time on my Contiki tour.
I have to admit, updating this blog now almost gives me peace of mind because more than anything else at the moment, I am scared of losing my English writing skills, strange enough as that sounds. The essay writing skills I had developed by the end of year 12 were the one thing that enabled me to do things like fluke the SOR I paper with a 49/50 through 30 minutes of study in the car despite not having practised a single SOR question since trials. And now that I have once again reconsidered my career path (international relations/law at ANU instead of international studies/journalism at UNSW), I will really have to start trying not to let my writing skills get too rusty. The fact that no one reads this blog because I changed the settings to private doesn't matter. I mean there's way too many things on this blog that could get me into deep shit with the wrong people (although those people don't matter to me in life so it's not like I would care anyways). This blog is for me and myself only. Well, who knows. This could all be nothing more than a fleeting memory in five years time.
I'm in a hotel room with a king and single bed and an awesome bathroom all to myself in a little village called Serfaus in Austria. The hotel I am staying at, the Löwe, is a 'kinderhotel' which means they make a huge effort to cater to children. Free pram rental, kids buffet at each meal, free childcare, playcenter, waterpark, unlimited bibs and Hipp baby food (I am quite well acquainted with European baby food brands after dealing with T in France), none of the dirty looks that usually tend to get thrown at screaming kids in hotel restaurants. Anyway, this is a pretty different scenario to my last night in Chelles, France. I think all in all I ended up working 10-15 hours extra for that horrid French family. I know because I kept track of each and every single hour I worked for them, and I had a pretty impressively detailed system going on. I even factored in things like not having the promised wi-fi for so many days straight, not given enough to eat, being made to babysit at 11:30pm, etc, and deducted working hours accordingly based on what I thought was fair. Granted, I didn't deduct that many hours for the wi-fi and food issue, because I was pretty bad the first couple of weeks too. I'd babysit T whilst going on my laptop and phone, which I will admit was not the appropriate, professional thing to do and I shouldn't have done that. But all in all, that is the only mistake I made and that went on for only about a week until the mum told me off.
The evening before I left French family, Pascale (I'm sick of using their initials, I don't care if they somehow in the one-in-a-thousand-chance found this blog), the mother, still hadn't paid me. She asked to make a bank transfer of my pay to my Australian bank account. At first, being the non-assertive-say-yes-to-everything fool I was, I agreed. Luckily, I soon changed my mind and told her I was short on cash so needed the euros (which was actually true, I had only about 80 euros left on me at that point). I don't know how Pascale could have been that disrespectful or irresponsible, but she was. She should have had 338 euros ready for me days before she had to pay me. Also, I don't agree with her logic that au pairs should be paid after they do their work. I think I should have been paid either the full amount at the beginning of the month or half the amount at the beginning and half at the end. Because otherwise it made me feel like I wasn't receiving any money for my work, and it really demotivated me especially as I didn't really trust Pascale at that point. Pascale then claimed she needed to go to the ATM (which I seriously doubted. What idiot with 3 kids, one epileptic, doesn't have 300 euros on them in cash around the house?). And apparently she had to wait for N, the dad, to come home before she could go, even though I would have watched T, the baby, and A, the new au pair, was already going to watch M and A, the older kids, anyway. Pascale claimed she would slip my pay under my door the NIGHT BEFORE I was due to leave the family, and I half thought she wouldn't do it and I'd have to wake her up in the middle of the night to demand it. Luckily, the next morning I did receive that envelope, but with at least 28 euros short of what she owed me (not even counting the extra hours I'd worked), along with a rude note claiming I hadn't worked 30 hours that week, which I didn't read until I was in Bonn unfortunately. Otherwise I would have written her another rude note back listing all the things wrong with her and the way she treats au pairs.
Because she never offered to give me a lift to the airport, I chose to take the bus instead. The taxi company I never really figured out how to confirm my booking with them, and there are a lot of dodgy people in France so I wasn't even sure if it was a legit company as the family didn't live in a Parisian arrondissement but in another town altogether on the outskirts of Paris. I woke up at 4:30, walked the 10 minutes to the bus station by myself with two suitcases weighing 20+kg each, a 12kg duffle bag and 6kg backpack. Luckily this kind man saw me struggling and helped me wheel a suitcase to the station, and another kind man loaded my things onto the bus for me. Which, by the way, the bus only cost 1.33 euros to the airport!!! I was able to use one of my carnet tickets. Despite all the other sucky things about my French au pair experience, the location, Chelles, was pretty awesome. Then I had to get the subway to the right terminal and another bus to the correct check in counter. I managed to hide the duffle bag on a random waiting seat (because the airport wasn't that busy early in the morning), and the woman didn't notice I had an extra overweight bag. All in all, my airport experience went pretty smoothly. The flight was delayed about 45 minutes and couldn't land in Cologne because of strong winds, so I ended up in Düsseldorf. What a great start in Germany, making A, my new host mum, wait for ages at the airport. Anyway, long story short, she paid 180 euros for me to take the taxi from Düsseldorf to Bonn.
And that was the promising beginning of what I hope will be a good year-long experience in Germany.
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