Ok I have managed to make myself quite busy in recent times, which makes a blog post hard to write - especially when I’m generally inclined to go into detail about everything! However I realised I at least need to do a quick post to inform everyone (who takes an interest more from afar), that I am no longer with my initial host family. As of Tuesday this week I moved out, and have organised another au pair job in Dornbirn, for which I am in the process of getting all the paperwork and visa stuff re-sorted. My previous host family were lovely people, but unfortunately I have discovered not everyone can live together. When you are used to different ways of living your day to day life, have different expectations of what the other person will be like, and (most problematically) have an unfortunate lack of clear communication, everyone quickly becomes uncomfortable and therefore unhappy. While there was no terrible huge drama, little things started to build up and systematically make me feel more and more down and unhappy as time passed. So when I got to the point where the prospect of 7 more months was a bit depressing to imagine, I decided for the sake of my mental health to make the change.
Initially I was not just looking for another host family, but also into working visas here in Austria, or as a last resort in Germany. However I quickly discovered that bureaucracy has a unique, quiet but sure way of slowly killing ones enthusiasm. Visas in particular seem to be a huge culprit of this! I also came to the conclusion that without a large amount of money or the ability/luck to find a high paying job, working visas in Austria aren’t an option for me. However I have been lucky enough to have the support of a wonderful family I came to know through the church in Dornbirn, and with their help I managed to find a new au pair position, which is a little unconventional, but something I am definitely looking forward to. Basically it involves being shared between 3 families, all from the church in Dornbirn. Which sounds a little crazy, especially as it means that altogether I’ll be working with 9 kids! But I will spend the most of my time with the one family I’ll be living with, and then spending one day a week each hanging out and helping the other two families. That will start up on the 17th Feb, so I’m already moved in and here but have a week to chill out a bit before I actually start.
Moving to Dornbirn will also (sort of) be moving me closer to friends too, which will be nice. At least there’s a lot more options to get around Vorarlberg from Dornbirn. One result of spending a couple of months unhappy in my living situation has been that I have built what sometimes feels like quite a busy social life - but busy in the greatest way. I think when you move so far away from home and family, you always tend to build your own little family wherever you are, and I have really been enjoying my newly founded ‘Austrian’ family (in quotation marks because none of them are really from Austria!). I also feel like I’ve been adopted somewhat by Nadina’s family, which has been so great. And I’m hoping to feel a lot more like one of the family with my new host families - or at least Sandra and David’s family, as I’ll be living with them. Things are off to a good start, as I found a lovely note (and chocolate!) left in my room as I was moving my stuff in, and we’ve already had some nice chats in the short visits I’ve had. Will just have to sort out how to live together, in terms of communicating plans and how we do things - always weird at first but I think it will quickly get sorted out. I think I’m also going to have to get better quickly at entertaining kids and more specifically changing nappies!
Anyway, while I’m here and have a little bit of time, I’m just going to expand a little from above. Firstly, Nadina and her family. I couldn’t have gotten through the past couple of weeks without them. Some of the loveliest people I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to meet, I really enjoy spending time with them, and thankfully they seem to feel the same way! I stayed with them for 4 nights after moving out on Tuesday - which is also conveniently just around the corner from my old host family’s place so I didn’t have to cart all of my crap (which has magically multiplied in 5 months!) too far! The support I’ve gotten from all of my friends, but particularly Nadina and her family, and from Katie and Aby, has really kept me going.
I am also definitely feeling like I have made a life here in Vorarlberg, despite the somewhat slow start - when I start to feel like I have too much going on I know I’m settled! I think in recent times I got so used to filling all my free time up, its going to be a habit I’ll have to break a little now. Since my last post where I left off after my trip to Prague, I haven’t done anything specific. Just a lot of hanging out, and meeting/getting to know even more people around here. A farewell party, youth meetings, Nadina’s birthday (with lots of delicious cake!) and first experiences of Austrian clubs (or ‘discos’ lol). Church and couch surfing meet-ups really have proved to be the best ways to meet people! Notably, in recent times we have met a bunch of people who are either exchange students or English teaching assistants, and have been really cool to hang out with so far. Also another American au pair called Nina, who we will hanging out with more in the future I hope! I have chucked a couple of photos below, and leave the updating for now. The next update will be full of cute kid stories I’m sure :)
