Finally a good day! It’s amazingly therapeutic to get together with other au pairs and make fun of Germans who have too much money. The beginning and end of my day sucked and I’m running on not enough sleep, but I’m still smiling because I’m starting to have a life again.

I earned two hours overtime this morning bringing the kids to school, which means I had to get the kids up and dressed, make breakfast, make sure the kids brushed their teeth and got their shoes on, and get everyone to the train station by 8:02. Then I had to bring both kids to Sophie’s school and Robin to his school on a crowded S-Bahn while trying to annoy other commuters as little as possible (although I’ve kind of given up on that last part). Maybe it doesn’t sound that stressful, but trust me, it is.

I was supposed to meet Nante, another au pair from Madagascar, at 9:30. At 9:15 I realized that the bus I was waiting for to take me to Marienplatz wasn’t coming, so I had to walk and then take the metro. I got to Marienplatz late and tried to call Nante, only to be informed that I had no credit left on my pre-paid phone. Luckily she called me, and by 10:00 we found each other. We got McDonald’s coffee and had a nice conversation in French about how much not being born in Europe sucks.

I had agreed to meet Amy, the South African au pair who works for a family that’s friends with my family, at eleven. I like meeting new people back to back, that way if they’re weird I have a legitimate reason to leave. But I really liked Nante and had already cut our date a half hour short. Amy sounded friendly enough on the phone that I figured she wouldn’t object to me inviting another person, so I told Nante this, and turns out that she and Amy used to work together until Nante quit under unpleasant circumstances. Nante told me that she liked Amy, but they had trouble communicating so I was going to have to translate.

The three of us went shopping and I felt useful because I was facilitating Amy and Nante’s first real conversation. Plus I was the only one of the three of us who had ever seen snow so I got to give a lesson on how to dress for cold weather. Then Nante had to go, Amy and I wondered around a bit more, and then it was back to reality.

This week has been exceptionally crappy. If that’s true, then I can deal with this. If this is how every week is going to be then I need to find a new job before I find myself in a mental hospital. Here’s what I mean: I don’t especially like being an au pair; I didn’t honestly expect to and that’s why it was a last resort before being an illegal alien/bum. I don’t think anyone enjoys cleaning up after other people, and watching these kids kind of sucks too. But I think I could deal with a crappy job for four hours a day if that was it and I liked my life otherwise. Tuesday marked my first week here, so it really hasn’t been that long even if it feels like it has. I haven’t got my visa yet, which I need in order to open a bank account, which I need in order to get paid. My German classes don’t start until October fourth and my social life is thus far non-existent. So can you blame me for being stressed and unhappy?

Monday morning I was all ready to go to the Volksschule and sign up for my German classes. I was excited because being able to communicate better is also a big part of me being happy here. But then Axel comes into my room and tells me that Robin is sick—“nothing serious, just a bit of a temperature”—so I’ll have to stay home with him. What he doesn’t say is “I’m sorry, I know you had something important that you were looking forward to doing today and now you won’t be able to…” But okay, it’s in my contract that I have to stay home when a kid is sick. I guess I just have a different definition of sick, because Robin seemed perfectly fine to me.

I wasn’t going to let this get me down though because on Tuesday morning I was going to meet Amy, another English-speaking au pair in Munich for some much needed social interaction with someone my own age. But no, Robin still has a temperature so we’ve got to cancel that one too. Oh! And Axel has to go to work early, so I get to drop Sofie off, bringing Robin with of course. That means half an hour less of sleep which of course I don’t mind. Wednesday Robin went back to school but that day I had to drop off both the kids and pick up Robin and clean the house in between, so no time for myself that day either. Today I had a (mostly) free day so I could go and sign up for my German classes, plus I have tentative plans to meet up with some other au pairs. I’ll stop feeling sorry for myself soon.

The settling in period is over. I’m finally on German time. I didn’t take any naps yesterday, crashed early, and woke up at seven ready to go. Which is good because Friday is the day that Aga and I clean the whole house. This will probably be my least favorite part of the job. It’s not hard or disgusting as some cleaning jobs can be, just boring. While scrubbing someone else’s bath tub, it’s hard not to wonder at some point why I bothered with college.

After the house was clean and Aga left, I walked over to the organic market. They left me money to buy milk and whatever else I wanted. I got some vanilla-mango yogurt, which is heavenly by the way and the first thing I will make anyone who comes to visit me try. I had a few hours of “free time” which I spent on skype with the law school admissions counsel trying to figure out why the website isn’t letting me send my application to the University of Florida. No one’s figured it out yet.

Then it was time to pick the kids up for the first time by myself. I went with Aga yesterday and it’s really not complicated. Even so she wrote out detailed directions and then made me recite them to her. First I go pick up Robin, the five year old son. He’s the only Bavarian I know who actually wears lederhosen (every day) and a spelunking light on his head (most of the time). Then we take the bus one station and the S-Bahn one station to Sofie’s school, then back to the S-Bahn and the kids have their snack while we wait for the train back to Gauting.

Today, as Aga suggested, I brought two bananas. Robin started eating his, then Sofie decided her banana had too many brown spots on it and threw it out. So of course Robin’s banana then had too many brown spots on it also and he threw his out. I’m glad that no one would mistake Sofie and Robin for my kids (they’re as Aryan as they come) because the looks I get on the train are less control-your-damn-kids looks and more you-poor-foreigner-stuck-with-these-brats looks.      

Wow, this sounds really negative. Truth is that overall this job is not so bad and Munich is awesome. And I expect life here to get much better once I enroll in my German class and start meeting people my age, which I’m going to see about tomorrow…so more positive entries to come very soon!

I live in Germany! It had barely been twenty four hours and I’m still in the phase where all I want to do is sleep. That’s what I would probably still be doing right now if I didn’t have to wait to let Max, the fourteen year old son of the family who forget his key, in.

I left New Jersey on a Sunday afternoon. My friends have, collectively and generally, been pretty lame this trip. Of course there were exceptions. You know who you are. Nevertheless, I was unambiguously happy to get the hell out of there as my mom, my brother and I drove up to Long Island. By the way, four hours of NPR on the tenth anniversary of 9/11—not what I’d call a pick-me-up.   

We visited with the good half of the family. I saw my cousin’s new apartment and her new cat. We all watched and made fun of the Real Housewives. I started to feel like there were some things I would miss. On Monday we got to the airport early, which was fortunate given the length of the security line. My mom cried and waved to me right up until I passed through the body scan. If tearful goodbyes at airport departure gates are the saddest part of my life, passing through arrival gates are the happiest part. And that happens again in only ten months. At my age, that’s nothing.

I couldn’t sleep on the flight to Dusseldorf even though by the end of it I was so tired that my legs started falling asleep independently of the rest of my body. When passing through customs the officer asked me if my passport was forged but then took my word for it that it wasn’t. After a short connecting flight I was in Munich.

Axel, the dad of the family, met me at the airport. He drove me to the house like we were in a video game (no speed limits!) while giving me a crash course in Bavarian history. He had to rush off to work but he showed me my room and gave me a brief tour of the house. It’s literally the nicest house I have ever been in. Pictures will be posted to my facebook soon, but my private bathroom has a sauna attached to it, if that gives you an idea. Axel told me I could do whatever I wanted until Aga came home with the kids. Aga is their Polish nanny. I asked to make sure I understood, and yes, they have an au pair and a nanny to look after two children.

The urge to crawl back into my new bed is overcoming me now, so the saga will continue later.   

This time next week I’ll be on a plane to Dusseldorf, and if I’m lucky, sleeping. It’s too bad I can’t bring a rum runner past secretly because I can’t not sleep after one of those, I have learned. One of the many great things about no longer really living in South Jersey is that whatever shame I used to have is gone now that the probability of seeing any of these random strangers ever again is even further reduced. So I was not embarrassed that after only one rum runner (consumed with food no less) Katie and I had to make an unplanned visit to the Brigantine beach so that I could pass out on the sand for a whole hour. Or that I stripped off my leggings in front of everyone, because who wears leggings to the beach? I don’t even care how many people saw my underwear while I was passed out because I don’t see how anyone could have known that they weren’t bikini bottoms. And if anyone was enough of an undergarment expert to notice the difference and then get offended, je m’en fiche. This is my typical thought process these days.

I’m coming to terms with the end of the summer, which is I guess officially today according to most social calendars. For some reason when talking about Labor Day I always accidentally say Memorial Day. I know people know what I mean, but they’ll still smugly correct me. “That’s in May, dear.” Well so is Labor Day in every other country in the world. Anyway. Nights are getting longer and colder. Out pool is freezing but I’m still going to go in every day until it’s covered because there may not be many more pool opportunities for a while. The ocean water was just too cold to be in this weekend. I was really looking forward to jumping in the waves, but there will be more summers I guess.

And I’ve a got a good feeling about the interim between now and the next real beach day. I can’t remember the last whole year I wasn’t in school because that was also a year I was still in diapers. But I think I’m going to like a more focused routine. My goals are the same as they’ve always been: make money, speak more languages, write a book. I suppose a college degree was  prerequisite, but now that that chapter’s over I can admit that writing papers about the image of Joan of Arc in each century or whatever the hell I was doing this last year was kind of a waste of my precious time. This year time will be wasting no more. I’ll drink to that.