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My name is Elisabeth and I am 23 years old. I am from Sweden, but now I live in Larvik, Norway. I have been an au pair in the USA with Cultural Care Au Pair and I would like to share some of my thoughts with you.
Why go to the USA as an au pair when you can be a tourist?
Well, there are a lot of good reasons why, first of all I didn’t want to feel like a tourist that would be staying in hotels, knowing that I had to go back in a few of days or weeks. I wanted a home and a family, I wanted to meet friends, and the most important, I wanted to work with children. I saw the opportunity to improve my English, to meet people from other countries, to get to know a family that I would keep in contact with and also get to know the culture that I would be living in for the next year. What I didn’t know was that my host family would be a part of me, and that I would grow as a person and take more responsibilities than I thought. I thought I was grown, but the year changed me, not to the worse but to the better. If you are a tourist you won’t have the same opportunity to get to know a family that close or be able to get set into an American life style.
How was my host family and what did I do during my year as an au pair?
I lived with a single dad with two wonderful children aged 8 and 10, who was married to a single mom with two children aged 6 and 9. My duties were to make sure the children had breakfast and make their lunch and drive them to school. Then I had free time to do what I wanted to do until I had to pick them up from school and take them to different activities. My job was to make sure that they were having a good time, that they could get to their activities, help them with their homework, cook dinner, do laundry and so on. I did have a lot of spare time. My family took good care of me and I felt that they cared about me and wanted my best during my time there. When I had time off I spent a lot of time with friends, we went to Starbucks, to all the shopping malls, to movies and traveled. I went to school and took 6 credits, and I liked it a lot. I took Spanish classes, sign language classes and English classes.
My year as an au pair helped me grow, I became more independent from my family at home and I got new goals. My years wasn’t about living with a rich family who lived in the biggest house in the block and let me drive the most expensive car, it was about letting me grow as a person and meet new people and working with children.
Elisabeth, au pair in Atlanta, Georiga 2004
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