Pre-Madrid Preparations!

So it is 4 weeks exactly until the big day (i.e. me moving to Spain!) wow! I've got so so much stuff to do before then - I've been writing a to-do list since I first started procrastinating during dissertation/exam season in April - so as you can imagine i'ts pretty big! It includes some important things such as insurance, flight things (checking in/booking seats) and other boring but essential tasks, then little things like sorting out phone/sim stuff and buying these adorable mini portable speakers I've found on amazon (to be used during the many sunbathing sessions in Retiro park I hope :D). Here they are - 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/XMI-X-mini-Capsule-Speaker-iPhone/dp/B005UY1JUQ/ref=pd_sim_nm_3. 

(......plus a million other things to tick off my list too!)

SO! A lot of my preparation for moving to Spain right now includes two big things: losing weight and learning Spanish! I eventually need to lose about 3 stone so over the past 6 months I have made some big changes including: drinking lots of water (try to drink 3+ litres a day), going for walks, doing a workout video in my apartment (30 day shred or 30/45 min YouTube cardio and strength training vids), swimming and going to the gym. I really like working out at home. I find gyms quite weird/annoying. People slyly looking over to your cross trainer to clock how many calories you've burnt with a face full of perfect makeup, texting on your phone, taking selfies etc - piss off and leave me to my sweat fest - worry about yourself! The whole experience is even worse when its a student gym so you know at least 5 people each time you go - not the one! So I managed to pick up a set of dumbells for 99p (plus an excersie mat thrown in for free too!) - BARG - from good old eBay of course as after a lot of research on weight loss, I realized that cardio alone just isn't enough if you want to see results! you need to incorporate weights (even if they're tiny 1/1.5kg ones like mine) as this burns more calories, gets you stronger with the added bonus of looking fit and lean when the fat eventually does come off ! So yeah - go get on eBay and make the worthy investment (if you want to lose weight that is)! Also, the 30 min shred is on YouTube + a million other really good workouts to do at home - there is really no excuse. ANYWAY on top of exercising you have to of course eat healthily! My diet currently consists of porridge, fruit, nuts, chicken, eggs, veg etc... the usual soul destroying non-chinese food non-chocolate non-wotsits kinda boring food :(. 

                    99p well spent :)

The other major thing I've been filling my free days with is learning Spanish!! I had Spanish classes in school for like 5 years so I'm not the worst but I really need to update my vocabulary as the last time I spoke (or sang) Spanish was when that loca people song came out...."Johnny, la gente esta muy loca, what the fuck!?". So, many crap apps on my phone later, I found this one called 'Duolingo' - its amazing!! I love it! It progresses through basics and common phrases to more advanced grammar and vocabulary. It does not allow you to progress until you pass each level which I like. It really tests you - asking you to answer in both English and Spanish - with a little help at first with the final questions being more hard and testing you on the previous 'lessons' - it's really helpful and makes it easy to learn and best of all its free! I'm hoping and expecting to pick up a lot of Spanish when I'm actually there immersed in the culture, surrounded by the language (as opposed to me repeating words out loud to a phone in bed). But I'm sure this will help somewhat :)

                Little duolingo guy :)

Other obvious preparations are buying nice summer clothes/bikinis but the frustrating thing is (and the story of my life to be honest) is that I don't want to spend my money on nice clothes when a) I wont feel comfortable in them while I'm this weight and b) I find it will be a waste of money if I really am going to lose this weight as they wont fit right come August time when I'm hoping to be a lot lighter! So knowing me I will put this off until the week before I go. 

Before Spain, I need to move out of mine and my boyfriends adorable little flat in my university city which I love and will miss so much!! It's been a fun but loong 4 years and now I'm 100% ready to move on with the next part of my life! 2 more weeks left here, then 2 more back at home, then Spain! 

The next few weeks are going to fly by, I even received an email today telling me I can already check in for my flight, crazy! I really need to get on with checking things off my list.....!

Adios :)!

Xxx

An Au What?!?

Hii! My name is Natalie, I'm from England and I'm a soon-to-be Au pair in the city of Madrid, Spain!

I thought I'd start a blog on my experience as I read as many blogs as I could find before making my decision on becoming an au pair and I found it SO helpful! The only problem was, during my research I could not find one blog written by an English girl who has never been to Spain nor does not speak Spanish! So I hope this helps somebody! I will mainly be blogging about my day-to-day life with my host family, the children, and my life outside of working! Knowing me I will probably end up going off on a tangent about my different interests too: food, beauty products/makeup, weight loss, films.... 

I'm going to go back to the start and explain how I first came about my decision of au pairing in Spain! This time last year I had never even heard of an 'au pair'  until my friend said that her friend was doing it in Italy for the summer after graduation. Out of interest, I googled it and found out it was like being an nanny/older sister to children, living with the family and exposing the child(ren) to the English language via everyday life activities, homework, tasks and just playing. The next time I heard of the idea was a few months later when one of my best friends said she was thinking of au pairing in Croatia! I was chuffed for her! Once she arrived, she was able to Skype me and tell me all about it and the idea sounded quite appealing - living in another country scot free - living and food costs paid for - great! But also there is the little issue of looking after small children on a daily basis. This however didn't put me off - I have a lot of cousins who are younger than me (10 and counting actually) so I am no stranger to the idea of being around, playing with and looking after children. Granted I've never had to look after them for more than 2 days at a time but still, I'm hoping i wont be in for too much of a shock! So with my friend having a great time in Croatia, I brought up the idea to a few friends/family members to discover 3 of my other friends had done it/are doing it and my auntie was an au pair in Sweden for a year! So its a pretty big thing apparently?!

This is when my crazy research began, starting with creating a profile on www.aupair-world.co.uk. Like I said I have previously read a lot of blogs, a lot of forums, (not just on au pair stuff but on life in a foreign country) etc. I was initially attracted to the idea of Italy (oh by the way I knew right away I was sticking to Europe - way too little funds for Aus/America) - so I searched through Italian, French and Spanish families. This was soon narrowed down to Italian and Spanish for a while and I was actually half committed to a family in Rome when they abruptly stopped contacting me to eventually send a message weeks later 'hi we have found our au pair now, sorry, we have a friend who.....' aaaand delete. time wasters! So then I didn't trust Italian's lol! Just on Spain now! But where to go in Spain?!? There were a lot of families in the north of Spain who required an au pair, but to be honest, personally a massive part of au pairing is just getting away from cold and grim England for a while! and I read that the north of spain is not as hot as the rest (fair enough its not England cold but stil....) so I politely rejected those applications. But then my next dilemma, Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, Malaga, Tenerife, Ibiza ?!!?!? I have to admit, I was soooo tempted by the Ibiza applications but at the end of the day, the family just didn't seem that nice so I couldn't allow myself to be that easily swayed by the beautiful island and amazing nightlife - I would spend everyday with this family after all so I needed to find a goodie! So my mind was now set on a mainland city - if its one thing I have learned from my friends experiences - you need to be able to make a good group of friends your own age there! you need to be able to get away from the family and vent. One of my friends was offered what sounds like the experience of a life time, basically touring around Spain and even to the south of France due to the father being a golf fanatic. But you would never be able to make a group of friends to hang out with and have real time away from your job being with a family like this. In the end he decided against it.

So yes; a big city, in Spain, with lots of other au pairs there. This is when I found the 'au pair Madrid' group on Facebook - I discovered tens of girls there making plans for each night and each weekend! Bars, days out, trips to outside of the city! This sounded perfect - so my mind was made - I was only going to accept and look for applications which were based in Madrid (this may seem fussy but trust me there is such a demand for au pairs in Spain that you're allowed to be fussy!) A LOT of awkward Skype's later I found the nicest family! The Skype with this family wasn't awkward (hardly) at all - you get a feeling from some families - trust your instinct - don't just go with the most glamorous profiles! This family seemed really nice and genuine and from my research I had certain questions to ask to be clear I was making the right decision.

Questions such as: Do I have my own bedroom? (I've read some girls end up in the kids bedroom with the kids, or maybe not as worse but still bad, a single bed squished in a room full of the children's toys and play things). What are my expected hours/days off? What level of English do people in the household have? (by the way, in my host family both parents speak English and the children have half of their school lessons in English so the children do have basic English). Are the children well behaved/do they get along? How many/how old are the children? Where is your house/is it easily connected to the city by bus/metro? (I didn't wanna be in the countryside an hour from the city). What is the pay? (so awkward to ask but at the end of the day you are going to be WORKING for them - you obviously will get paid so just ask and make clear how much this will be and when it will be received!)(by the way if you don't already know - the pay is SUPER low for an au pair, like 60-100 euro a week but the fact you are living in their home rent free with no food to buy when you are home and the experience you are getting out of it - money shouldn't really be your main intention. Saying this, you can arrange to do private English lessons for extra money, but still). More questions... What are the jobs of the parents? How are the children disciplined? (v. important). What are the preferred dates of starting and leaving? In the end I was so happy with the answers given by my family I was ready to hop on a plane there and then!

But again, I've researched this a lot and heard absolute horror stories. In reference to disciplining the children, my friends friend had nightmare children who would bite each other and one day she proceeded to shout at the child who was biting, saying it was not nice and that he was hurting the sibling. The housekeeper then turned on the au pair and shouted at her saying not to discipline the children! Needless to say she went home early. So you have to be clear with this as people bring their children up in lots of different ways! The best way to clear things up and confirm all of the wonderful answers the family give you on Skype is to ask to speak to their previous au pair(s) (if they have any) - if they do have, they should have NO problem with you talking with them, if they do have a problem, run. So I emailed their previous au pair asking basically the same questions - asking her to confirm it all aaaand she did! Thank God! So it was settled - I will be moving to Madrid on July 14th for 2 months to au pair 3 children - aged 5,6 and 8 and live with two lovely parents and a housekeeper in a suburb 30 min bus away from the city! Yay!

What will my role be? Wake up with the children at 8/9am and be with them until the mother returns from work at 3-4pm. During this time, my sole purpose is to improve/keep up the children's English. They will have English homework to do during the summer. It will also be my responsibility to think of games/tasks to help them learn new words and sentences. At all times I will be speaking with them in English! They will have no choice anyway as my Spanish is absolutely basic :) Lo siento kiddies! Also as it will be summer, I will be playing with them in the pool outside the house too - knacker them out for when the parents finish work I'm guessing. So, from 4pm ish is my time! And I get Saturdays and Sundays off (with the occasional babysitting of a Friday/Saturday night if needed). 

So with my final exams finishing a few weeks ago, I can finally start to get really excited about this :):). With flights booked, I've started to look through the Facebook page again at au pairs who would be in my area at the same time as me and I already have a made a handful of friends who I'm excited to meet and explore the city/country with!

Looking back it was a reallllly long process but I'm glad I was so picky and I'm glad I researched a lot beforehand because as the old au pair said - I've found a really really nice family. I hope this helps people who are going through the same process and don't know where to start!

Now begins the preparations for moving to another country......!