20 Things Only An Au Pair Can Understand

There are many things that only true au pairs can understand and your friends in your home country would probably just wonder, what the fudge you're talking about.

1. Searching some peace and quiet only for a second while you are watching the kids, so you pretend that you have to use the bathroom and take a small break on Facebook and Instagram.
2. Others don't get the word "rematch". Somehow this is a word that's only being used when you're an au pair.
3. You gained at least 10 lbs while you've been an au pair and tell yourself that you are so gonna lose it  before you go back home, but once you're the plane you still weigh the same.

4. If you explain people that you are an au pair and they don't get it, because they have never heard of it, so you just say: "I'm like a nanny, but from a foreign country."

5. You hear that you've got an accent where ever you go.
6. Everytime you get your pocket money you are sure you will save it, so you can travel around the country. But one day after you got it it's already gone.
7. Sometimes you get the feeling that you're part of a really weird reality TV show.
8. You buy new things all the time and once the day of returning home is coming close you wonder if you should just sell all that stuff, because you don't want to put all this work in sending all of it to your home country.

9. You complain all the time about the tiniest things but as soon as you're back home  you wish you could go back to your host country.

10. Bringing the kids to school in your pajamas? Why not... on some days you are just too lazy to even change before you give the kids a ride to school.
11. You have one crush after another. You look for cute guys on Tinder, but then there is also the cute neighbor or this really nice Starbucks barista.
12. The host kids keep correcting you, because they just don't get that you're not a native speaker.
13. Your family and friends at home think that you're life is going easy and smooth although you're struggling everyday.
14. When you become homesick you just stay on bed all Sunday, watch movies, eat  junk food and wish you could be home. You don't look for distraction.

15. When you help your host kids with their homework you feel incredibly stupid and start denying that you have ever learned that stuff at school.

16. Sometimes you just pretend that you haven't heard your host kids disrespecting you or asking you a question because you're just too tired of saying and explaining the same things all the time.
17. You've been jealous of your au pair friends because they have the bigger room, the nicer car, the whirlpool in the yard.
18. Sometimes you're just tired of adapting the actual accent of your host country so you speak in your original accent and don't care how it sounds like.
19. There is this one song that will always and forever remind you of your au pair year. Mine is "I'm yours" by Jason Mraz. Every morning when I had brought the little one to preschool the song was played on the radio.
20. You've met a couple of guys or girls that just thought you're interesting because you're from a foreign country and wanted to do so much things together, but once you've exhcanged numbers you never hear from them again.

This post is also available in: German