The Preparations
Since one of the requirements was two hundred hours of childcare, I immediately decided to look for a family with whom I could babysit. Although hours spent looking after younger siblings also counted, and with three younger siblings my cards looked pretty good, I figured an additional reference wouldn’t do any harm. My aim wasn’t just to make any application; I wanted to pull out all the stops, as this would increase my chances of finding my dream family. Highly motivated, I printed out notes with my telephone number and pinned them to the notice boards of all the nurseries and childcare groups.
However, my high spirits quickly evaporated as I didn’t hear back for weeks. I was almost ready to give up hope of my additional reference, but luckily a family suddenly got in touch. The parents wanted to meet me in person first, so I dropped by in the evening. The mother seemed to spend much more time on the appearance of her house than on her own. Her four-year-old angel of a son immediately let it be known that she was ugly and smelly, which initially put a slight strain on the atmosphere of the conversation—neither the father nor I knew where to look, and let our eyes wander around the room. Nevertheless, everything went well. The parents thought I was nice and said I should come by for a few trial lessons in the afternoon soon.
And so I did. However, the mother obviously didn’t trust me to look after the boy on my own, so she sat in the room with us most of the time, which was a little irritating, but not too bad, as the little boy didn’t think I was ugly or smelly and always behaved very sweetly towards me. We could play with his toys for hours; he let me read to him, and in return, he drew pictures for me.
When the nine-year-old daughter was at home as well, we would go into the garden or play pantomime. I had made the mistake of starting this once and had sparked such enthusiasm that they hardly wanted to play anything else. All in all, it was a very enjoyable job that reinforced my conviction that the au pair path was without doubt the right one for me. If the year in America went even half as smoothly, I couldn’t imagine ever having to regret my decision. Well, occasionally, their mother would burst into our playtime or engage me in worry-laden conversations to pour out her troubled housewife heart to me, but I listened attentively, nodded with understanding, and joined in her deep sighs at the right places.
After a while, the parents finally trusted me enough to let me look after the children on my own in the evenings, which was even more carefree as they were allowed to watch movies. We watched Toy Story together, ate sweets, and were all very happy.
Although I didn’t get to babysit very often, either because I didn’t have time or because the boy, who apparently didn’t have a very strong immune system, was afflicted by one of the many rampant childhood diseases, the mother filled out the childcare reference form for me, which was part of the AP application documents. She also developed a real passion when it came to taking photos of me and the children for the collage that was also required. We were photographed playing and reading books from every conceivable angle. With impressive ambition, the mother seemed to pursue the goal of taking pictures that were in no way inferior to those on the AP homepage. My role as an understanding listener had more than paid off.
The rest of the application documents turned out to be quite extensive, and the attempts to make them as appealing as possible took up more of my time than even the most nerve-wracking school exams. In addition to general information such as an address, information about my family, schooling, children’s experience, religion, certain eating habits, and hobbies, I also had to describe my views on how to bring up children properly, which gave me quite a headache. I carefully read through several articles on the subject to be able to write something reasonably intelligent, as I had never really dealt with the subject of how best to raise children before. The question of why the family should choose you as an au pair wasn’t easy to answer either, as I felt a little uncomfortable praising myself to the skies, but most au pairs always listed the same qualities, such as independence, responsibility, honesty, and creativity.
It took me several days to write the personal letter to the host family, and I also scoured the internet to find out what the other au pairs had written. In the end, I had even embellished the three pages on which I described myself and my life with drawings to demonstrate my vaunted creativity. However, the collage took the most work, filling up fifteen pages and being decorated with stickers, drawings, glitter, and anything else I could get my hands on, showing me either with children, my family, or traveling with friends.
At some point, I have to admit, my mother rightly realized that if I put even half as much effort into school, I could easily be one of the best. But I didn’t want an A-level, I wanted to go to America!
Soon afterwards, the next phase finally began, bringing me a step closer to my dream.
In mid-January, I went to a preparatory meeting in a hotel in Bonn with a friend from my school. I had infected her with all my enthusiasm, and now she was also eagerly awaiting the promise of an au pair year. Only five other girls were waiting in the conference room, two with their mothers. The supervisor, a very nice-looking student, shook our hands and asked us to take a seat.
While she started talking, I took some time to observe the other interested parties. Whether or not it was due to my euphoria, which made me beam without interruption, I found that most of them didn’t look like model au pairs. More like this year was their last resort to avoid going off the rails. That’s probably why the mothers made a point of attending the workshop to make sure their daughters took advantage of the opportunity. On the one hand, I was secretly pleased; with such competitors, I had all the more chance of having a good family, but on the other hand, perhaps I shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.
Anna-Lena, the competent-looking supervisor, emphasized that only non-smokers were now accepted into the program, that you shouldn’t have any tattoos or piercings, and that nude, bikini, or party photos with alcohol didn’t look very good on the application. When some people started laughing, she said that, believe it or not, it had all happened before. Nude photos might convince the host father, but the host mothers would usually be rather unimpressed.
Of course, Anna-Lena did not miss the opportunity to rave about her au pair time and her magical host family, who had always supported her and taken her in like another daughter. She now had a second home that she could return to again and again. Another advantage of the au pair job is the real windfall. “You can look forward to Christmas, I’ve never received so many presents in my life! I got a blanket, clothes, jewelry and, to top it all off, an iPod. When I came back to Germany, I was of course rich. Although I had a very comfortable life in the USA, I was always able to put a lot aside, because, after all, you earn almost ten thousand dollars a year! In addition, my family often invited me to dinner.”
But she didn’t just receive material attention, the children also gave her an incredible amount of love and saw her as a role model to follow. “You just have to be very careful not to swear, for example, even in German, as the Americans know only too well what most swear words mean.” This raised my expectations even further. I could already see myself living the purest life of luxury. Heaps of new clothes, visits to musicals, fine restaurants, and expensive care products.
The only hard thing for Anna-Lena was returning to Germany: “I saw and experienced so much that year and was more than depressed when I realized that everything in Germany still looked the same and nothing had changed.” I could understand that only too well – it was already difficult for me to return to my dreary home country after a short trip!
After she had finished her story, and we were allowed to ask questions, other former au pairs came into the room, surprising us all with the announcement of an interview and shocking us, not a little. We had actually thought that we would be interviewed at a different time, and I, for one, was not at all prepared. I was accordingly nervous when the first questions were asked in English. I answered as best I could and felt that my vocabulary was extremely poor. A view that my interviewer obviously didn’t share. She was beaming all over her face throughout the interview, nodding eagerly and praising my great answers and ideas. Fortunately, most of the questions were quite simple, and many of them were also in German.
For example, I was asked to talk about my favorite children’s film or what I would do with the children if it had snowed outside. To my surprise, I got full marks for my English skills. My school teacher wouldn’t even have given me half, but would have raised a thin eyebrow disapprovingly behind her thick glasses and slapped the ruler loudly on her bony hand. I only allowed myself one small faux pas when asked what was the longest time I had looked after children in one go and answered three hours far too honestly. Others had more presence of mind and promptly answered ten, the maximum working time of an au pair. I was pretty sure that wasn’t always true, but of course, it looked a lot better on the application. Panicked, I suddenly found myself losing a lot of ground in the battle for the best host family.
When the interview was finally over, we were given a piece of paper on which we had to write our preferred departure date. I opted for August, as this gave me some time to travel around Europe after I finished school. We also had to tick whether we had a boyfriend or not. “Some host families don’t like it so much if you have a boyfriend, because then you are often more prone to homesickness.” They didn’t have to worry about that with me, my family was more worried that I would be alone for the rest of my life. Men usually paid more attention to the overhead lighting in the club than to me. We were also asked to indicate whether we were prepared to live with families of a different religion or “race”, with homosexuals or single parents. I immediately ruled out single dad, as I imagined that would be a bit uncomfortable under certain circumstances. My experience with the male sex was limited to a minimum. The “race” point gave me the most headaches. Of course, I had nothing against other cultures, but I really wanted to get to know the American way of life. But wouldn’t it seem strange if I chose a no here? However, one of the former au pairs immediately reassured me: you can tick whatever your intuition tells you without having to justify it in any way. She had simply put a no everywhere because she wanted the new family to be as similar as possible to her own. So it became a no for me at this point too. Finally, we had to specify the maximum number of children we were prepared to look after. Three seemed just right to me, I was used to that much from my siblings, and four would certainly take a lot of nerve. When it came to the age range, I opted for older than five, as you could at least talk reasonably with older people.
Before we went home, Anna-Lena showed us some personal photos of her unforgettable time. It was reassuring not only to hear from advertising films and websites how many wonderful things were in store for us, but also to have this confirmed by real au pairs.