Au Pairing in Spain - the first two weeks

Hi everyone!

Somehow I've been in Spain two weeks already. The time has flown by, but I do feel very settled in the family. I'm working in a village south of Madrid for a family with three girls: Lucia (11), Leana (6) and Maeva (3). The mum (Silvia) is French, learnt Spanish at university and has been married to her Spanish husband (Angel) for thirteen years, so her Spanish is excellent! But it's really nice to have the opportunity to speak French with her, and her family, who live nearby. It was especially helpful at the beginning when I was finding Spanish very challenging.

For the first week and a half the girls were still at school, so I spent my mornings getting used to the house, reading, preparing English lessons and of course making the most of the sunshine and the pool!

In the afternoons I would collect the girls from school, and we'd play some games and go in the pool once the parents got back from work.

I've been accepted as part of the family and I feel so lucky for that! I've been for dinner with the family at the grandparents house, I've been to friends' birthday parties and I've been on days out with the family, for example at the weekend we went to the river with two other families...

And I was invited to see Leana graduate from primary school too...

Now the the girls have finished school, I have a routine for the week. In the mornings we get up (the girls around 10/11am now!) and have breakfast together. Then I do about an hour of English with them, depending on how we're feeling. Then we have a choice of activities; playing games, watching a film, going to the park, cooking etc. I'm going to try and get into a routine of a certain activity on each day as well to make things easier and have a variety. On Tuesday and Thursday evenings I go to zumba, and on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings I do an English-Spanish exchange with a lady in the town. One hour in each language practising reading, writing, speaking and grammar. It's very helpful! I'm also going to be giving extra English lessons to Lucia and Dario, the son of the lady I'm doing the exchange with.

Saturdays and Sundays I have off, but it is difficult to have time to myself unless I go out of the house. Silvia has been very kind in organising activities for me on Saturdays. The first weekend I did a bike tour of Madrid (of course, being me with my awful balance and apparently rusty cycling skills, I managed to fall off right in the city centre!) and this weekend I went to the Palacio Real for a tour and visited the cathedral and some gardens in the surrounding area. Here are some pictures of my time in Madrid:

The Temple of Debod 

La Plaza de España

La Plaza Mayor 

The Crystal Palace

A beautiful rose garden in one of the many parks of Madrid 

The royal palace - el Palacio Real

The cathedral

There have been a few challenges, of course. The language being the main one. I learnt two years of accelerated Spanish at university, but forgot a lot of it during my time in Austria, so especially at the beginning it was tough. I feel like I'm not at a point where I understand a fair bit, but producing the language is still hard sometimes, which makes giving instructions and disciplining the girls tough. I don't have to discipline too much, but Leana is very headstrong, and sometimes makes a massive fuss out of small things, so that can be challenging. But overall, I feel very comfortable here and I think this is the best au pair experience I could have hoped for :)

Thanks for reading!

Laura

Teachers' Outing and St Florian's Day

Hello everyone,

I can't believe it's been a month since I last wrote! Things got a little hectic with finishing my year abroad research project (dissertation), and finding a house at university - both of which have now been sorted out.

So what have I been up to?

Back in April I went to see 'Into The Woods' at the Musiktheater in Linz. It was totally in German, but I knew the story so it was pretty easy to follow. I really enjoyed it, and was very impressed that they'd managed to fit the extra-long German translation into the already very fast songs!

I also went on a teachers' trip (Lehrerausflug) with one of my schools. It was really great fun! Here are a few pictures from the trip:

We first visited Burg Strechau in Steiermark (a castle in the region of Styria) which was beautiful, and very typical for Austria. 

This was the view from Burg Strechau out over the town.

Chiara the Italian assistant and I spent the weekend together, and it was great fun getting to know her better.

This was the hotel we stayed in in the region of Carinthia (Kärnten)

We also went on a brewery tour and tried some traditional Austrian beer, schnitzel and Goulash

On the way home we stopped off at Friesach, Kärnten (Carinthia) and climbed up a hill to find this view over the town, of the old city wall and the beautiful church. 

Last Wednesday was St Florian's Day. He is an important man in this region because he is the patron saint of Linz, and of Upper Austria. He's also the patron saint of firefighters, chimney sweeps and soapmakers...
So to celebrate the day, I went to St. Florian, which is a little town south of Linz, where one of my colleagues lives. She invited me to visit the market they have, where they sell traditional food and clothing from the region, and to do a tour of the church in St Florian, which also has a very important history.

St Florian was important in the Catholic Church because he was seen as being between mankind and God, so people could talk to God through him. At the time he was alive, the area was under Roman control. After refusing to worship the Roman Gods,  St Florian was sentenced to death, and was drowned in the Enns river with a stone around his neck.
This Church is also important because the musician Anton Bruckner lived nearby, and loved to play the organ here. He is actually buried directly underneath his organ in the crypt. 

The library at the monastery. 

The marble room at the monastery, which used to be used to entertain the Kaiser (royals in Austria) and is still in use today for concerts. 

I am also now the editor for the Student Language Bureau blog, which is aiming to help anyone setting out on their year abroad, or settling back into life after living abroad. We have a range of bloggers positioned all over the place. If you are interested in checking this out, it can be found here: http://www.studentlanguagebureau.com/blog.php
And if you are interested in writing for us, contact me on: editor@studentlanguagebureau.com

Last weekend was a long weekend, and I went off travelling again - I went to Innsbruck and Budapest! I will write another post about that this week.

Thanks for reading!

Laura

Winter in Austria: Snow and Skiing

Hi everyone!

In the last two weeks, winter has really arrived in Austria. One morning when I was at the bus stop at 7am, the temperature was -16 degrees Celcius!! I'm not built for temperatures like this!

A few exciting things have happened in the last two weeks:

1. The snow came back! I went to stay at Emma Cate's house in Steyr and we woke up to heavy snow outside. And the snow is still here as well - it's so cold it's not melting, and we had more yesterday!

2. I went to see 'Joy' at the cinema and it was great! A film that makes you feel every emotion at the same time, I'd really recommend it.

3. I've got back into reading again, and I'm on my second book of the year. My first was 'Me Before You' by Jojo Moyes and the second is 'The Little Paris Bookshop' by Nina George. 

4. I taught at the primary school again and we learnt parts of the body, colours and numbers up to ten. Next time, we're going to draw and describe monsters, which I'm very excited about! I'm always amazed at how quickly they pick things up. Some of them can't really read or write yet, yet they are able to memorise vocabulary in a foreign language and even sing songs like 'Silent Night' without ever reading the words!

5. The Student Language Bureau (an organisation which provides jobs for students abroad) are starting up a blog site and are going to feature a blog from me every two weeks!

6. I bought a ball gown for a Viennese ball I'm going to next week - pictures to come in the next blog post!

7. Yesterday, I went skiing for the first time with Carissa. It was great! Not as terrifying as I thought it might be, apart from the final slope we attempted in order to get down the mountain...we ended up being rescued by one of the piste machines because the slope was difficult and they were about to close the slopes! But apart from that, I'm very proud of myself for trying, and I had a great day! Here are some pictures...

Stopping for refreshments in the restaurant

Me in the all-in-one ski suit I borrowed from me housemate!

Thanks for reading!

Laura :)