Orientation in Newark...and New York!!!

Wow those last days were crazy, fun, exciting, happy and sad...a little bit of everything I would say.


So lets start on Monday morning, the day I was leaving Bremen. 
Luckily, I met another Au Pair, Frauke,  at the airport so that the flight to Frankfurt wasn't too boring or upsetting. 

Our plane to Newark

When we arrived in Frankfurt, we could't believe 
our eyes when we saw lots and lots of other girls, just looking like us with all their documents, visa, flight tickets etc etc in their hands, everyone excited and at the same time examining all the other girls to find out if they were Au Pairs, too.

Me and Frauke - just arrived in Newark

Me, Pukkie and Audrey

After a 8 1/2 hours flight to Newark everyone was just happy to get his suitcase in a more or less good condition back. Whatever.


The arrival at the Hilton Hotel was good, we were welcomed and soon we had to learn that life as an Au Pair also means to follow rules...but we were tired anyway and didn't really care about curfew checks at 10.30pm. Our rooms were completely mixed, it was my pleasure to share it with Pukkie and Audrey from Thailand and France ;)


As the program we participated in was called "infant specialized" each of us got a little baby to take care of for the whole week. Kind of shocking to suddenly have to carry around that little monster everywhere we were going...but it was fun though.

Ahhh Manhattan!!

Times Square!

The moon! hahaha!

Tuesday night was great, we usually got a waking up call at 6 am so all of us were confused when there was a super loud alarm at 3 am. I couldn't really decide if I just wanted to pull my blanket over me and try to ignore the noise or find out what was going on...but as the first thing wasn't really working... I got up. And if I am up, everyone else has to be!! ha! So I woke the other girls and then recognized that all the other 130 girls were already panicking...it was the fire alarm. 

Babysitter Pukkie and Danica at work!

Well, what happened next must have been a funny picture for everyone who was watching the situation: about 130 very sleepy girls and other hotel guests were waiting outside by the street in their pyjamas. It was absolutely freezing and it took the fire department ages to arrive, which either meant the whole hotel was gonna burn down or it was just a little kitty on the roof trying to find her way back. Whatever it was, we were scared cause nobody ever told us. After one hour we were allowed to go back in and go back to sleep.
I mean, how nice. Not that we were tired and jet-lagged anyway. haha =)

Shopping :)

All in all, orientation was fun. We had 5 very very very awesome days of workshops and went to New York one night which was great! Meeting so many nice people from 29 different countries, tryin to understand their culture and their traditions was great. I loved it!

Carolina, Taìs, me & Diva

Diva, Weronika, Taís, Melek and Carolina

Me & Anne

It was very hard to say goodbye on Thursday to all the other girls and on Friday to our "special infants" group but I also couldn't wait to finally meet my hostfamily.
The flight to Atlanta was on time and everything went pretty well. 


Jeff and Stacy were already waiting for me at the airport holding a sign with my name on it but we immediately recognized each other anyway :) They are lovely people, so welcoming and caring. I'll tell you more about my first days and get pictures on and stuff later...


Anyway, to all of you girls out there in Texas, Virgina, New Jersey, Washington, California, North & South Carolina, New York, Arizona (...and I don't really wanna list all of the states) may all of you have a great year, enjoy the time with the kids and your hostparents! I'm sure we'll speak soon! :))


Danica xxx