I thought it would be fun to write in English this time since I made a lot of friends all over the world who are probably also interested in how I think about my experience and my highlights of this adventure. I can't believe these 16 months flew by so fast and I have only 2 more left. Let me tell you guys what happened in these months.
So first I lived with a family in Maryland for 3 months, it didn't work out between us unfortunately. In these months I traveled to Boston, Massachusetts for my birthday. I met up with a Dutch girl who I met on the airport in Amsterdam before we both flew to New York. Boston is beautiful, it looks like NY but smaller I guess and also colder too.
A few weeks after I took the bus to New York for the weekend to meet up this same Dutch girl and 2 other Dutchies. I remember we walked in our hotel room which was close to Central Park and we saw cockroaches running around, gross! This is apparently normal in New York. It’s actually no surprise cause even when it’s a beautiful city, the streets are really dirty. Anyways, of course the receptionist couldn't give us another room cause it was Saturday and everything was fully booked. So we pretended they were never there and slept in that room anyways. One tip for you guys, whenever you live in a situation like this, DO NOT turn the lights off, keep them on so the cockroaches will stay away (we didn't know that..)
In November 2016 I decided to leave this family and so I arrived in a new family in Virginia. Where I take care of the silliest and prettiest girl who can’t stop talking (now 5 years old), and the cutest boy who’s always able to make me laugh so hard (now 2 years old). I came right before Thanksgiving, which is just as great as Christmas. No presents but A LOT of FOOD! Love it. I got to get to know the whole family in once and they were and still are amazing!
They took me with them to Florida to visit more of their family for Christmas. I don't know but I would never think that people would be so welcoming. In America there's only Christmas Eve and 1 Christmas day, and that's definitely more than enough cause I couldn't believe my eyes to see this giant pile of presents what could probably be bigger than the Christmas tree. It's definitely not a lie that an American Christmas is really over the top.
One day I received a message on Facebook from an au pair who I didn’t know, telling me she’s planning to do a road trip to Ohio, Lexington and Tennessee and asked me if I’m interested to join. Uh normally I would never ever agree to go in a car with complete strangers but knowing that they’re au pairs too makes it a lot easier. I asked my friend from Prague if she wanted to join and that Friday we got on the road, driving more than 10 hours to see these beautiful States. The highlight of this trip was definitely Nashville. The whole street was alive, lot’s of handsome man and beautiful women. And most important, a lot of country music, everything was country – and so much fun!!
My brother and dad came to America to see me. I took the bus again to New York, which is only 4,5 hours apart, to meet them up there. I told them to meet me at the apartment I booked but instead I waited for them at the airport to surprise them. I had my phone to record it all but I was so nervous to see them again. So nervous I thought I would fall on the ground haha, and so nervous that I forgot to record it. I have no idea why? I was just really excited. When I saw them I just walked next to them and said hi, my brother didn’t even see me at first. We spend 4 days together and I could actually show them around here cause I visit this city for 3 times already.
Than in March I met Evelina, the beautiful blonde you guys mostly see in my picture. She’s a Swedish girl who I still love a lot even after our first (terrible) meet up. So after a lot of fun and talking when we first met, we decided to go to her friends house, who is a total j*rk and I will tell you why; this guy loves himself so much, he is rich and he doesn’t care about others. He told me to park my car at the parking lot by his house, and when I decided to leave, my car was GONE. Lol? I really thought he stole it at first but why would he do that? So I run back to his apartment and at first he didn’t even open so I kept banging on the door until he did. He was so annoyed cause he wanted to sleep but I don’t care, I just want my car back. Guess what, it was towed. I needed to pay 160$ to get my car back, what a joke. But I had too. And even when he knew this was going to happen, he didn’t care at all. Lesson learned though, a lot of places here you can’t park without a permit or visitors pass so now I always double-double check.
Let’s see.. I did a sign language course and abnormal psychology to get my credits. If you receive all your credits, the agency pays for your flight back home. So they’ll do.
I met more amazing girls and became the only foreigner in a group full of Swedish girls. Trying to learn some Swedish but my plan is to visit them all and do a language course in Sweden. Just because I love the language.
My Dutch friend Gina came to visit me! That was a lot of fun. We’ve been to New York (again, for me haha) and Miami, which was amazing. Doesn’t matter what time it is but on Ocean Drive everyone is drinking on every hour of the clock. The streets were so crowded. We always had something funny to look at. Ocean Drive is THE street with bars restaurants etc and cars can drive by. Sometimes you see naked people, sometimes you don’t ha! The second time I went to Miami, with my Swedish crew, I saw some guys trying to make a video clip in their cabrio, it just looks funny. So yeah, Miami twice – very lucky to be able to do that!
My mom and her now fiancé came to visit me. My host family let them stay with us for a week and it was so much fun. They got to know each other too and everything was just chill and comfortable. My host mom Setareh – showed them around in DC, we saw a lot of other places like Philadelphia, where my mom and me went to a U2 concert. Arizona, where we stayed at our Dutch friend Camping. I was kind of scared cause there are actually spiders there who can kill you uhh… I even woke up a few times because I was dreaming about them. We did a road trip to Las Vegas. It was SO HOT, 47 degrees Celsius. My flip flops were even melting, not kidding.
In this summer my host family took me to the beaches in North Carolina. First in a tent (not my favorite) but the second time in a crazy big house (what wasn’t even the biggest one they stayed in) and I could take my Swedish friend Annie for the week, super nice.
Further I went to Portland in Maine where I tasted lobster for the first time in my life, and I liked it. I went to Chicago in Illinois, where it’s super super cold but also suuuper beautiful! If you’re ever plan to go there choose different months than Nov-March.
Before I leave, I’m trying to plan one last little trip to California.
You would think by now that this is one big vacation, which actually is but I’m also working (really hard) 2 kids on that age is not easy though, it can be a big challenge sometimes. But definitely fun and there’s definitely a lot of appreciation. Not only from the kids but also from the parents. If I really wanted to, they were willing to get me a green card and adopt me haha!! You would think, why not? But In this time my cousin got really sick but happily got better. Now my grandma is really sick and It’s really the hardest thing to deal with stuff like that when you’re so far apart.
I’m very lucky that I could have an amazing experience after I switched families. Believe me there are a lot of families here who treat au pairs like a slave but I’m lucky enough that my family, really treats me like family. They care and they understand and love BBQ and are just as goofy as me, right Setareh?? I’m also very lucky that I met a great group of friends who make every weekend so much fun and who are actually really care. I think that's like gold to find in another country.

I'm going to enjoy these last few weeks and I'll see you (all) back home
xoxo