about goodbyes and being a tourist

Time to say goodbye (with loads of pictures, sorry!). With only two weeks left the last couple of weeks I have ben trying to do a couple of things that were still on my list. The school holidays for the kids started as well so I got to spend some more time with them which is always fun! One of the things on my list was Richmond Park, a really big park in London where they even have deers. I went there with Claudia to have a picknick. The weather was really nice and we had a lovely day! 

I had to go to to the hospital...

Well...the title says it all: I had to go to the hospital this week. But fiirst things first let me tell you about last thursday and friday. So last thursday my brother and his girlfriend Raya arrived, but because my brother wasn't feeling well me and Raya decided to get some breakfast without him. They were staying in a place at Islington. There is a story attatched to this as they were supposed to stay at a friend's house but those plans fell through so they had to find something else, but had no luck doing so. They were thinking about giving up and not going and as I really didn't want that to happen I decided to post something in a facebook group full of Dutch people living in London. We got a couple of replies but there was one reply from a very nice man saying that my brother and his girlfriend were allowed to stay in his appartment in exchange for a bottle of wine and the cost of his cleaning lady. Great!

Cambridge!

Hello again!

The last blogpost I wrote was in May and was about me not going to uni (well, at least not this year). And now we are already in July. Time is flying by fast and my time in London is coming to an end, but more on that later. First an update on my life as I often get questions what I have been up to, so here you go. :-)

it's time to sit down and talk.

"You are not going to uni?"

Since I started working here I have met quite a lot of new people and that includes a ton of au pairs. Usually the conversations that you have with new people are about similiar things like "where are you from", "what do you like to do in your free time" and "what are you going to do after your gap year?"
And since I moved here my answer was I don't know. I don't know how long I am staying here, I don't know what I am going to do after this and I don't know if I want to go to school next year.

The answer: I don't know if I want to go to school sometimes leaves people with questionmarks written all over their faces. Why wouldn't I want to go to school? Don't I want a degree? Do I not want to start a life?

I have thought about going to uni  and moving back to the Netherlands for a very, very long time. Almost every spare minute of my time I have been thinking about what to do with my life.
Every time I went back to Holland I would cry for at least a good couple of hours because I didn't know "what to do with my life". After spending quite some time talking to all the people that I care about the most I figured out that the only reason why I would want to go to university is society.
And no, not a university course that matches with society classes but society, like real people. You and me.

It took me quite a while to come to terms with this partly because I would sometimes get the feeling that people would not take me seriously as I am just an au pair, right? But you know what. Being an au pair or having a job similiar to mine does not mean that you are stupid. Just because I am not going to school right now doesn't mean that I am not moving forward, I have learned so many (oh yeah there she goes) life lessons over the past couple of months. I got more independent, more confident as a person and in the English language and I learn something new almost every day. I am trying to keep myself busy with more than just babysitting and drinking coffees in quirky pop-up cafés. Personally I think it wouldn't make a lot of sense for me right now to go to university as I simply do not want to go right now. Which wouldn't really be the best motivation to start at least a 4 to 5 years course with, haha.

I think sometimes people underestimate how important it is to follow your dreams. And for a lot of time I thought that me not going to university meant that I was lost and not sure what my dreams were. Slowly but surely I realized that those future dreams are not always lined out in a college degree. And sometimes it is. If you feel good about it, do it.

I was talking to a friend the other day, she wants to be an artist and she was talking about how she was not completely satisfied with her work, so she was insecure to show it to other people. The only thing I could think about was is when you want to be a doctor you don't just think "I want to be a doctor" and BOOM! You are a doctor. No, you have to work for it, learn and develop. I think it's the same with any other job out there. You can't always exactly know what you want to do for the rest ( or at least a big part) of the life from one day to the next. It takes time. 

Another very important lesson that I learned is just because other people are at university or going to university doesn't always mean that they 100% know where they are going and this has given me a lot of comfort.

No, I am not going to be an au pair forever but you know what I am only 20 and...

nothing is impossible

 Hellooooo! New week, new blogpost. This week was quite hard especially the start of the week since I felt really ill. I think I had a fever and over all I just wasn't feeling very well. So on monday after taking the kids to school I went back to bed until I had to work again. I did the same thing on tuesday. So exciting writing blogposts about feeling sick! My hostdad had his birthday on wednesday so I had to babysit, but luckily the kids were really good. On thursday one of my hostkids Sari went to a concert so I just had to pick up Linus he felt a bit sad about him not doing anything fun so we decided to make hot chocolate, watch a movie and eat some popcorn!

it's always friday

20th January 

This week started off really good because Linus (my hostkid) celebrated his birthday today and because of that I got to go with them to wagamamas, where I had my first curry, ever! I had a great time, especially because I think my hostkid really enjoyed me being there.

I still love the lights

So back in London after the holidays! I came back to London on the 4th of January. My flight was really early and when I was boarding I suddenly saw one of the Dutch au pairs Lois! Unfortunately our seats were really far apart but we saw eachother again when we got to stansted airport (which took a while since there was a lot of fog). We decided to take the bus together. I got home and the kids looked happy to see me. In the afternoon I met up with Larissa, she is from Austria.