Pumpkins, dress up and randomness

First time in America, first Halloween experience! Sucks that I'm too old to trick or treat, but you could still smell my feet and we can all have something good to eat! Yes, au pairs get bored!

It turns out I arrived in America in pretty good timing. Missed all the snow storms in Connecticut, just in time for the Festivities and celebrating the "Hallows" which comes with a lot of fun and excitement! So for about a whole month I have been carving pumpkins and talking about dressing up and wearing strange costumes and all the rest! I NEVER want to carve a pumpkin again! Three pumpkins in one experience is good thanks, really don't have to do it again! On the up side, got to roast loads of pumpkin seeds! I carved some pretty cool things and decorated some cool 'crime scenes' and then there was the fun of dressing up like random nothings because I was too cheap skate to spend $50 on a stupid costume that I would never look at again!

So after much debate we thought that maybe it would be a little sad if a bunch of girls way over the trick-or-treating age limit dressed up and pretended we were worthy of candy! Much to our delight the realisation of how over rated knocking on people's door and begging for free calories and tooth ache(on a limited medical aid) made us feel a lot better. So just for the show of it we dressed up took photos and did the good old fashioned thing. . . watched horror movies and told lame ghost stories until we fell asleep!

One of those nights that you could really do a scrap book page on.

The Roller Coaster

5 Weeks in the United States of America! I have only been here just over a month and I cannot believe number of emotions I have been through! At orientation the Loud American lady said that it would be a roller coaster of emotions and they may vary from person to person, but I do not remember her saying anything about the emotions varying from hour to hour!

Every roller coaster has its many ups and downs, twirls, spins, lurches and moments of anticipation! My roller coaster thus far has gone a little like this. . . You know that first moment when you're on the roller coaster? It starts going up really slowly, sometimes it clicks almost counting down the seconds until the first plunge. For now though, you're heart is pounding, your mind is racing, your adrenalin is telling you that you are so excited you just want the thing to start. Then you start to doubt your decision, was this really such a good idea? I have no idea what to expect, how long will it take? Will I make it through this? You feel like it's now or never do I scream and beg to get off or should I just hold on tight and try my best to enjoy the ride?  Your climb evens out and you stand still at the top for a moment. You either look down and scream to get off, or you think hey, things are going to be downhill from here. Downhill being ambiguous of coarse. (Either easy and free fall, or crashing and holding onto your last thread before the uphill starts again).

My point is no one ever warns you about the shit parts and the difficult parts that make this all so hard and that you'll experience emotions you've never heard of! Everyone just says, "It's such an experience, you'll come back a changed person with so many stories and you'll have seen so much" uhhhhh. . . It's like you go through phases, like you would in a relationship or just PMS. Honeymoon phase: I love this place, I'm going to learn so much etc. Culture shock: Kids back home, they would never do this, back home this would never happen, who are these people, another species? Then you get Home Sick: Missing home, missing your family, hating yourself for being so stupid to do this of all the things you could have done just a car ride away from home and then you reach denial where you tell yourself things are going to be fine or its just a phase or the other way around. You talk everyone around you, people you aren't even sure if you can trust. Then I guess at some stage you reach Adaptation: where you will realise you were so silly for ever doubting yourself and how stupid you were to have ever been so hard on yourself. Oh wait there's another twist in the roller coaster, and here we go again. . . phase 1!

Bottom line is nothing anyone says makes this any easier and no one actually warns you that it will get rough and that you will spend nights wailing to yourself and get addicted to TV shows and strange things like blogging to help the time fly until the next time you have reason to smile. Oh wait they do warn about this. . . when you're 12827km away from home! Luckily things do get better, it's just about waiting for the next straight or uphill on the Giant like PMS Roller Coaster, except there's nothing menstrual about it!

Jess robyn some brain cells together and writing them down

What I am about to write may appear to be another boring blog written by someone that really has nothing better to do other than complain or write about their boring lives. Actually, I think I just summarised the definition of a blog. This Blog is about my experience as an Au Pair in what technically is on the same planet, but really is an entire world of it's own, America.

So I arrived in America 3 weeks ago to this day exactly and I was overwhelmed with emotions, ranging from excitement to anxiety, frustration and the expected Home Sickness. This is the first time I have ever left home, never mind to the other end of the world. Some called it brave, others stupid and others had no idea what they were talking about! So I took off, after an hour delay on SAA and arrived in America, New York, JFK Airport at 07:30 am on a Monday to start a year with a vague idea of what to expect and how things would go. The glamourised idea of living with  the perfect American family with an entire bedroom and bathroom to myself, shopping galore, opportunities to travel and the most important part, working with kids that would fall in love with you and never want you to leave. Luckily for me I had 4 days of Au pair orientation to burst that bubble for me before my expectations got too high!

The first day of orientation was awesome as me and two other South African girls had the opportunity to explore the area and streets of Down Town Connecticut, Stamford. Burlington Coat Factory, Target, Starbucks, all things great and wonderful. So we took advantage while we had the chance to absorb it all before we were locked in a conference room to be briefed as to what on earth the year ahead would possibly be like. Please read the fine print, "nothing anyone says is guaranteed"!

Have you ever had the feeling where you wake up and think you're somewhere else? Only to realise that you are a couple of thousand miles away from where you think you would be happiest at that moment and feel like your whole inside gets sucked out of you and you're left with nothing but tears to comfort yourself. First night in America and this was my experience. I thought I had just woken up to the familiar snoring of one of my family members, seen the light coming in from the crack under the door into my room and thought I could get up and find myself in my comfortable bed back home in my little town in South Africa, only to realise it was either my Brazilian or my Slovakian Room mate. The worst feeling in the world. When I woke up the next morning we made our way down to the lobby for our first day of lectures. For the next three days, a very loud American lady would tell us all about America, Americans, American food, American law, American children, American parenting, anything and everything American! I will never forget how she described Americans and their weird and wonderful ways. She did a really good job! A really good job leading me to question my decision to come to America and wonder about what I had really gotten myself into. I thought that I was pretty well prepared mentally, oh but I now believe that I am far more naive than I ever thought I was.

The three days of all things America did have some good in it, other than preparation, reassurance and support. I got to see the Big Apple! New York City! The City that never sleeps, yes that one! I got to see it. We went to the Top of the Rock (30 Rockefeller Plaza) and it was just beautiful. Lights as far as the eye can see, other than one giant black spot which I finally realised was Central Park. I also got to do a quick run through Time Square, trying to grab a quick memento that I didn't feel was ripping me off too badly! You wouldn't believe that it was 21h30! Like being in complete day light! Then we went to Battery Park and got a slight glimpse of Lady Liberty in her might appearing to be the size of Barbie's baby from that distance. Then of coarse one of America's biggest disasters in all the awe and wonder, we got to see the new developments and plans for Ground Zero! Breath taking! One of the guides told us to imagine one of the buildings doubled with a little extra on top of it. Unless you had seen it before 9/11, you can't even begin to imagine the enormity of it!  And then there was just the fun of getting to drive through the city and see only a tiny portion of what New York has to offer, I will definitely be going back.

Finally day four arrives and the 80 odd Au pairs involved are pretty exhausted, almost Americanised and quite frankly, we just want to get to our final destinations, our host families, where everyone is expecting welcomes that will blow you away, nerves that your family might not recognise you, fear that you might jump into some stranger's car and excitement to meet their new families for the next year and the idea of settling in and adjusting! So all of us are shoved into a few shuttles and we make our way towards different air ports, train stations, and some of the lucky buggers who were getting picked up at the hotel! My flight was booked for 6:59 pm but we were all at the air port by 3:00 pm. Isn't it just enjoyable to sit around dirty airports with no cell phone, lap top or anything else to keep you occupied. Lucky for me, my new German friend was one the same air line as me and her flight kept getting delayed because the sky just randomly decided it would prefer the ground as a new home! So after deciding that eating would be the best way to pass the time by, we get up to check the flight boards for any changed flight information. Then I see it, all flights to Chicago, American Airlines, CANCELED! The blood leaves my face, my heart falls into my stomach and my stomach falls into my butt. What the stuff am I going to do? No phone, none of the other Au pairs had their flights cancelled, and now I have to stand in a huge line and see if I can get onto another flight. Don't worry though I handled it all very well, I burst into tears! So some American guy and his business partner try to cheer me up and say something along the lines of "hey everything in life is an adventure" or some bull. In the mood I was in and the luck I was having, I was not in to mood for any more American positivity or philosophy. I turned to them and said "I am stuck with no phone, no communication and no way of knowing what to do next"! If I had known all I had to do was talk and someone would fall at my feet over my accent I would have made it bloody obvious that I was distraught! So my puffy eyes, red face and South African accent saved my ass. I had 3 phones thrown at me. Luckily at orientation they tell you that this kind of thing has to happen to someone so I phoned my host mom and she was already a few steps ahead of me and booked me on a flight at noon the next day. Next phone the Au pair emergency line and they'll send a cab to get you back to the hotel (All the way in Connecticut from Laguardia air port). Another night in a hotel pretty much on my own, with free Internet and computers to let my family know what has happened and that the youngest in the family had decided to choose her very first over seas experience to have all the fun!

The next day I was met in Chicago by my host mother and son in person, for the first time, having only spoken to the host mom twice over Skype. In all honesty I wish it had been my own mom and one of my sisters, but it was too late to turn back now! I went into it head first, celebrating a brand new year ahead and what better time to celebrate than the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah.