13 Nov. Thoughts…

Hi everyone,

I hope you are doing great and are having a nice autumn as well.

Since this blog is also going to be kind of a diary for me to look back at, I thought I might do a different one this time. As you see, my blog doesn’t have a constant theme, but I promised myself to keep it as true to myself as possible, so I thought why not share some of my current thoughts on here in combination with some of my photos I took in Ireland, but haven’t used yet. I also wanted to say that this post is going to be more text-intensive, and probably a little random for some, so for anyone more interested in my photographs, feel free to skip this post, as I mostly do this one for myself and for future AuPairs.

First and foremost I can’t stop smiling about the fact that not only my host girls are learning new things from me, but even more so probably, the other way around. One example for that would be, that the girls sing all the time, especially songs from the movie the „Greatest Showman“, which was very nice in the beginning, because the message in most of the songs is very beautiful, but let me be honest here, after hearing the same song 35 times in a row, not even the most beautiful message is that beautiful anymore, you know what I mean? But eventhough I am much of an all-time-hummer (does that word even exist or did I just make that up? Never mind, I’ll use it anyway.) myself I would never really sing things outloud when someone was in the same room, if they didn’t join in on the song. Connie and Lottie do it without any embarrassment and you can see how good this passionate singing makes them feel. So what I’ve learnt form this is, that I will defintly try to not be embarrassed  of doing things with all of my heart, when they make me feel good.

As I already mentioned with the example of the „Greatest Showman“ songs, you defintiely learn to be more patient. But also that you have time to let them try to button up their shirt themselves, even if you could have done it yourself in a quarter of that time. Lottie doesn’t get impatient while doing that at all and if it takes her ten minutes turning around her tights, then she at least did it herself and comes out of her room with a big pround smile on her face. At first I thought I had to help them with a lot of things, but then I realized they actually benefit in so many ways, when they do these things on their own.

Another not specifically AuPair related thing, that reappears in my head daily is how much more body aware I have become here. Not that I haven’t been quite bodyaware before, but I realize very small changes in my body, that I haven’t felt before. I am not going to tell you about them, because I don’t think this would be of any interest for anyone of you, but what I wanted to say is, that at the moment I have much more time being by myself and looking after and listening to my body has become more important to me in that time. So for everyone considering becoming an AuPair themselves, I am pretty sure you’ll learn quite a bit about yourself in that period.

Speaking of having more time, you might find yourself scrolling through Instagram and Youtube more, than you did before, because what should you do with all that suddenly available time? Well and that became kind of a problem for me, because the more I was on those social media platforms, the more I compared myself to all those people putting content out there. That’s where you might experience, that you become harder on yourself and body awareness turns into body critisism. And that is so unnecessary! So my tip for future AuPairs would be, find yourself some things you really enjoy doing, so that you have something to do in your free-time. Some things I picked up here or am just doing again are, going to the gym, baking and cooking, listening to podcasts, watching Ted-talks to learn something new every day, doing yoga, doing meditation, drawing and painting, writing in a journal, going out into the fresh air, reading a good book and even taking it out to read it in a Cafe, visiting places nearby…, for those who might need some inspiration about what to do.

For all those who actually read this one, I hope that it was in any way interesting for you, but as I explained on top, I am mostly doing this blog for myself, so bear with me this time please.

Thanks a lot and see you soon,

Lena xx