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.
No comments:
Post a Comment