I will never go hungry as an au pair!

Some call it the most important meal of the day, some just skip it and go straight to lunch but I must say, skipping breakfast is like staying home on Black Friday AND that would NEVER happen!

Breakfast, yes the meal I love the most and USA has all the options for each taste!

My host family, love them very much but I will never understand their breakfast routines --the mom never had time and ran out of the door before I had even started working, the dad, he usually just ate a granola bar (a energy bar) and a cup of hot chocolate, very strange to this day, but as long as it satisfied his belly right?

In my family back home we always have breakfast together so this was a BIG culture shock, I came to realize that this is something I can show them, something from my very ow culture - so I took on this project and decided to introduce my passion for breakfast to the four kids. I actually many times used the breakfast as a way to get them all out of their beds fast!

Many days I made them pancakes, waffles, hot cereal or bacon. Yes it took some time but what I really like about breakfast is not the fact the lovely food but the time to spend with the family together before the day starts.

I would often sit with the children when they were eating and ask them what their day would be like. My six-year-old girl would tell me about the boyfriends, it was always 5 different boys in her school at the same time.  I often was left feeling like my own dating game was kind of boring compared to hers!

My best tips for great places in the USA are:

• Crape Escape- Sacramento, CA
• I.H.O.P (International house of pancakes) Located all over the U.S.A!
• Starbucks for awesome coffee and great bagels
• Dennis Dining for cheap and great eggs
• Peeta bread café, really good sandwiches!

Enjoy your breakfast time!

I am a two-time grand-au pair now!

Every au pair has a little different view on how old children they want to work with as au pairs - and to tell the truth, I honestly think every age has it's own pros and cons. With younger children you get to witness many milestones and get to teach them a lot new things and be there to see their development. When I was an au pair for the second time I actually was taking care of a boy who had just turned 2 years, and it indeed was fun to see how he grew from a little toddler to a small boy.  During my first year as an au pair, my host family consisted of 4 children and the oldest one was a teenage girl. Many au pairs are a bit doubtful when it comes to being an au pair for teenagers, but I can very warmly recommend it -- you are often close in age and usually the responsibilities are a bit different when it comes to taking care of younger children. Often the relationship that gets built between you two will be more sisterly/brotherly and they will of course remember you in the future!

In the beginning of course it was hard - my host child was very attached to her previous au pair, and it took time for us to build a relationship. As there were 3 younger children in the family, I spent most of my time taking care of them and not too much with the teenager. Our one-on-one time was always in the afternoons when I picked her up from school and we would drive home. Slowly but surely these drives would become the part that both of us were looking most forward to during the day. That would be the time of the day we could gossip about boys, plan our next shopping trip, plan which movies to watch, talk about her school days and teachers and so much more. During my year as her au pair, we definitely grew and inseparable bond and we continued to stay in touch and keep that bond strong. The other children in the family well still fairly young after I left so I did stay in touch with them through the parents in the family but with the oldest child we kept in touch. Few years ago she reached out to me and told that she was expecting her first baby, and now she is currently expecting her second baby! I like to call myself now a "double-grand au pair"! Even though we do not keep in touch always that often, I am still happy to have become part of their lives and follow both my host-kid's (not that she is that much of a child anymore haha) and her family's life!

One of my absolute favorite part about going as an au pair definitely was the fact, that you create relationships that last for life.

Make fall a memorable season as an au pair!

 

Camilla is one of our managers for Cultural Care Au Pair here at the Stockholm office and the one and only former host child! Her family hosted a total of 8 au pairs through Cultural Care Au Pair during her childhood, whilst growing up outside of Boston, Massachusets.

When the weather starts getting cooler, the leaves start falling, and the rain starts pouring… you know fall is in full force. But this doesn’t mean that the fun has to stop! Growing up in the United States as a host child with au pairs, I want to share some of my favorite fall activities from when I was younger.
One “chore’ my siblings and I were always excited to help with was raking the leaves. We would have a competition about who could gather together the largest pile and then, at the end, we would rake them all together into one massive pile and then spend a good hour jumping into them. One year our au pair actually found garbage bags that looked like pumpkins… filling those with leaves formed great garden decorations!

On the rainy days we would usually be found inside doing fun projects. My favorite was making caramel apples.  We would find a recipe for caramel online, usually a healthier version, and our au pair would make it on the stove, with us watching avidly of course. Once it cooled a bit we would get to cover our apples on a stick in nice gooey caramel and then roll it in some treats. We had everything from coconut shavings, to raisins, to gummy bears. Then our au pair would get a little down time while we started the sticky and time consuming task of trying to eat our creations. Putting down some newspaper on the table is highly HIGHLY recommened!

Lastly, my siblings and I were huge arts and crafts fans! We loved anything artsy. We would often go on leaf walks with our au pair and pick up the prettiest and biggest leaves we could find and bring them home. After waiting for them to dry, we would use them to make leaf rubbings with crayons. We made our own cards out of these, which we would send to friends, relatives, and even home to the au pair’s family!

So even though it’s sad that summer is over, make sure you and your host kids appreciate fall to the utmost extent! It’s a wonderful time of year and you better hurry and enjoy… before the snow comes!

Happy Days!

Camilla

The host child point of view!

My name is Camilla and I am currently the Sales Manager for the Scandinavian office. I am sad to say that I am actually one of the few here at the office that has not been an au pair. BUT, and this is an important but, I am the only one here at the office who can claim to have been a host child with Cultural Care Au Pair!

My parents moved from Sweden to the USA a few years before I was born and until I was eight years old we hosted au pairs in our home. My fondest memories were always having someone extra in the home that loved us and always someone who could spend one on one time with us. Since I have two siblings there was not always time for my parents to sit down and listen to us after having worked a full day. So having the au pair as a back up, whose sole job was to spend time with us, was excellent. It also didn’t hurt that my friends were always jealous, since our 20 something au pairs were always cooler than any parent.

Our au pairs lived in a basement apartment in our home, with their own bedroom of course, as well as bathroom and entrance to the house. I remember the hardest thing when we were younger was understanding what “time off” meant and that our au pair was not always working. For us kids, we didn’t see them as working, I mean, how could being with us be work?! We would sometimes stand outside the au pairs bedroom knocking until she would come play. It took some time for the rules to settle with us J

Today I still actually have contact with most of my former au pairs and actually attended one of their weddings last year. It’s been such a blessing for my family and it really kept our Swedish culture alive!