On March 1, I reached the halfway mark of my time in Nürnberg as an au pair. Wow! Unbelievable. In some ways it feels like I've already been here a whole year. I've established a life for myself here, and it's not been an easy task. These past six months went by so fast, but so much has happened. One of my intentions when I decided to be an au pair was to take this time to figure out my next step. I have never had a burning desire to do any one thing with my life once I graduated college... And I'm still contemplating my options. I've already spent so much time thinking about what I want to do, and suddenly six months went by! I'm not any closer to knowing, either. What's the saying? Life happens when you're busy making plans.
Anyways, life here definitely has a lot of pros and cons. There are certainly more that those listed below, but these are the more important ones.
Pros:
- I have a lot of free time - typically I only work 30 hours per week.
- All my bills are paid for, I just have to pay for activities outside of the house.
- I have a built in support system (aka my host parents) for questions and problems, especially navigating the German bureaucracy system.
- My German gets better every single day. I can now confidently say that it's fantastic!
- I really do love the lifestyle here. Everyone is so active and the food is generally much healthier. There's so much history at every turn in the city and there's always somewhere beautiful to appreciate.
- I like living in a "big" city. Though Nürnberg is only Germany's 14th largest city with a population of approximately 500,000, it's still the biggest city I've lived in. I love using the public transportation or riding my bike places instead of having to drive everywhere.
- Speaking of driving, I am now excellent at driving a stick shift and feel incredibly comfortable doing so.
Cons:
- My free time hours are opposite of a lot of my friends, which often means I can still only see them on weekends or random evening during the week when I have off.
- My paycheck is very small. If I want to eat out, or go out drinking with friends, or buy a new shirt, I have to pay. This stuff can add up quick, especially when I travel.
- My home life and work life are the same. If I had a bad day at work, if the kids were being especially difficult or if my host parents irritated me, I can't just go home and escape it. I can escape to my room, sure, but often the kids or HP will knock on the door for something or another. Essentially, I always have to be on my best behavior when I'm inside these four walls, and that in itself is exhausting.
- For the previously mentioned reason, it's hard to meet people and make friends. If all I did in one day was work and hang out at home, there would be no reason for me to leave the house. This is not conducive to meeting people.
At any rate, I've started to miss home. It's taken six whole months for me to be able to say that I actually miss the US. When I first got here, I was so happy to be back in Germany. All the things that I'd missed about it, I had access to again. Their novelty was fresh again. In the beginning, I missed people, sure. Soon I made friends and established the connection to my host family, and I started missing people less and less. But now I've been here long enough that the novelty of these people has also worn off, and I've started to miss my friends and family again. I've been missing a lot of big events - birthdays, weddings, vacations, etc - and that has made me miss home even more. I feel like I'm missing out on the lives of the people who matter most to me. I suppose that's the price I pay for living so far away from them. Most recently, I've been missing the food. I really miss my parents home cooking. If you've ever eaten at my house, you know that Dotty and Bob both know their way around the kitchen. I also miss American restaurants. Not in a general sense, but specific establishments with specific food. Sometimes I miss Moe's, or the bbq place with the amazing pie whose name I can't remember, or basically any Mexican restaurants just for their cheese dip. At any rate, I miss home. I wonder if this is going to be a lasting feeling or if this will be fleeting too.
I'm very excited to see what these next six months have in store. Soon I'll start looking for a job once this year is up. I definitely want to stay in Germany, and I'm fairly certain that I want to stay in Nürnberg. I also am going to look into getting my masters at the university here. As you can see, I have a lot of research to do.
Here's to the next six months!
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