August 25, 2019
Hi! My name is Lily, and I had no idea what I was
doing. As in, I was a semester away from graduating college, with a
degree in a field that required a minimum of grad school before getting a job,
and, in any case, I didn't know what I wanted do for a job or where to
live. I knew that I didn't want to go to grad school right away because I
have been in school since I was three, and I was so tired. I knew that I
didn't want to live in Montana, where I had grown up and gone to college,
because that's where I've always been, and I wanted to experience someplace
new.
I have always been obsessed with England, and was fortunate to go on a class trip for an English class while I was a sophomore at Rocky. I started looking for jobs in higher education in England because my work experience while at Rocky was in Residence Life. There was one that I applied to, at the beginning of December, at New York University's London campus for a hall director, and I applied right away. After a month and a half, they emailed back saying that I was just not right for the position.
In January, I started Googling "jobs that pay people to travel" because I have always liked to travel, and then I wouldn't have to be stuck in any one place. The two industries that stood out to me were airline and cruise ship. I looked into being a flight attendant. There were several things that attracted me to being a flight attendant, not the least of which was flying to new places all the time. As I started looking more into it, it started feeling like less and less of an option. One, you had to be based somewhere. Like have an address in a city with an airport. Because you don't live there for long (because you're always traveling), it would be a place that you stayed in for maybe a couple weeks out of every month. I didn't like the idea of leasing a place to stay in only half the time, and to sub-lease it for the time I wasn't in it wouldn't be fair to the tenants to make them leave every couple weeks or so. And if I were to live at home, or Billings, which is where I went to school, that's where I would be based. I wouldn't be doing the big international flights like I wanted to do. Or even go to exciting new places. All the cities that Billings flies to I've been countless times. Also, I am five feet exactly, and I can barely put my own luggage in the racks of the airplane, let alone help everyone else in the plane. So, reluctantly, I scratched that idea. The next was cruise ships. I have always liked the idea of working at the front desk of a hotel, and a lot of my experience at school was operating the main switchboard and being in office that would help or direct anyone to where they needed to go on campus. I started applying to cruise ship lines, only to get nothing back. I applied for jobs behind the desk, as the concierge, or the tour guides for the port days. I even applied to be a daycare worker, and being a youth activities coordinator. I got nothing back. I sent countless applications and emails in to different organizations, and they were looking for people with experience in those fields. I get it but it's still frustrating. I was looking at cruise ship jobs from the beginning of January until the end of February, applying every day to jobs, and often several times a day.
Not until spring break came that I put the job search on hold for a couple days. I flew to Boston to stay with my aunt, uncle, and three-year-old cousin for the week. It was amazing! I had never been to Boston before and loved the city. My cousin is adorable and we played all day, every day. Towards the end of the visit, my uncle starting asking me the inevitable "what are you going to do when you graduate" questions. I said I had absolutely no idea. My uncle had lived in Prague for nine years, and I knew that he would be able to give me advice on whether I could live in Europe, or should just look for a job in the States and forget about my dream to live abroad. He told me that it was an experience he will never forget and one he wanted me to experience. He started talking about how good I had been with his son all week, and could maybe look at being an au pair. I had a vague idea of what an au pair was (a foreign nanny), and he explained more about it. His sister-in-law, his wife's sister, also lives on the east coast and had a French au pair for a couple years with her daughter. He explained that the au pair lives with the family and takes care of the child or children, often taking them to different daily activities, and often going with them on holidays to care for the child(ren). While he was talking I Googled how to be an au pair. I clicked on the first website, aupairworld.com. The rest of that day, I spent creating my profile. I had my uncle and aunt proofread it, and then I was on the website for anyone to find. Within minutes, I had families messaging me. On the website, you could put in the countries you were interested in living in. I decided to choose countries where English wasn't the main language. I chose seven countries, and on a whim, I put Luxembourg as the last country on the list.
Years ago, I remember my mom reading something off the news about a country called Luxembourg. A duke had just gotten married to a commoner, and the article went on to talk about the country itself. It was smaller than the county that I live in (Carbon County in Montana, US), but was one of the richest countries in the world (second richest actually), and most of its residents spoke French, German, Luxembourgish, and English. I picked Luxembourg just because of that short conversation over a decade ago that stayed in my head. From the title of this blog, you can probably guess where I am heading! I had two-three families message me every day for three weeks before I settled on one family. This family lived in Luxembourg, and I really liked reading about them in their profile. After a couple weeks of messaging them on the website, moving to WhatsApp, and then video calling them, I was certain. The parents and I discussed it, and determined that I would be a good fit for their family. I was going to be their au pair!
Of course, while talking with the family, I did more research into Luxembourg. The name means "little fortress". Earlier, I talked about how much I loved England and want to live there. The biggest reason is that I am obsessed with castles. I had no idea what I was in for when I started researching Luxembourg, but to find that its name means little castle is something out of a fairy tale.
The story I tell everyone wondering how I got this position is a much shorter version of this, and I honestly had no idea how long this first post was going to be until now, as I'm finishing up. I leave for Luxembourg on September 8th, and will write two more posts before I'm in the country. The next post will be on the process of getting approved, and the last one before I leave will be on my thoughts for my upcoming trip! Thanks for reading:)
I have always been obsessed with England, and was fortunate to go on a class trip for an English class while I was a sophomore at Rocky. I started looking for jobs in higher education in England because my work experience while at Rocky was in Residence Life. There was one that I applied to, at the beginning of December, at New York University's London campus for a hall director, and I applied right away. After a month and a half, they emailed back saying that I was just not right for the position.
In January, I started Googling "jobs that pay people to travel" because I have always liked to travel, and then I wouldn't have to be stuck in any one place. The two industries that stood out to me were airline and cruise ship. I looked into being a flight attendant. There were several things that attracted me to being a flight attendant, not the least of which was flying to new places all the time. As I started looking more into it, it started feeling like less and less of an option. One, you had to be based somewhere. Like have an address in a city with an airport. Because you don't live there for long (because you're always traveling), it would be a place that you stayed in for maybe a couple weeks out of every month. I didn't like the idea of leasing a place to stay in only half the time, and to sub-lease it for the time I wasn't in it wouldn't be fair to the tenants to make them leave every couple weeks or so. And if I were to live at home, or Billings, which is where I went to school, that's where I would be based. I wouldn't be doing the big international flights like I wanted to do. Or even go to exciting new places. All the cities that Billings flies to I've been countless times. Also, I am five feet exactly, and I can barely put my own luggage in the racks of the airplane, let alone help everyone else in the plane. So, reluctantly, I scratched that idea. The next was cruise ships. I have always liked the idea of working at the front desk of a hotel, and a lot of my experience at school was operating the main switchboard and being in office that would help or direct anyone to where they needed to go on campus. I started applying to cruise ship lines, only to get nothing back. I applied for jobs behind the desk, as the concierge, or the tour guides for the port days. I even applied to be a daycare worker, and being a youth activities coordinator. I got nothing back. I sent countless applications and emails in to different organizations, and they were looking for people with experience in those fields. I get it but it's still frustrating. I was looking at cruise ship jobs from the beginning of January until the end of February, applying every day to jobs, and often several times a day.
Not until spring break came that I put the job search on hold for a couple days. I flew to Boston to stay with my aunt, uncle, and three-year-old cousin for the week. It was amazing! I had never been to Boston before and loved the city. My cousin is adorable and we played all day, every day. Towards the end of the visit, my uncle starting asking me the inevitable "what are you going to do when you graduate" questions. I said I had absolutely no idea. My uncle had lived in Prague for nine years, and I knew that he would be able to give me advice on whether I could live in Europe, or should just look for a job in the States and forget about my dream to live abroad. He told me that it was an experience he will never forget and one he wanted me to experience. He started talking about how good I had been with his son all week, and could maybe look at being an au pair. I had a vague idea of what an au pair was (a foreign nanny), and he explained more about it. His sister-in-law, his wife's sister, also lives on the east coast and had a French au pair for a couple years with her daughter. He explained that the au pair lives with the family and takes care of the child or children, often taking them to different daily activities, and often going with them on holidays to care for the child(ren). While he was talking I Googled how to be an au pair. I clicked on the first website, aupairworld.com. The rest of that day, I spent creating my profile. I had my uncle and aunt proofread it, and then I was on the website for anyone to find. Within minutes, I had families messaging me. On the website, you could put in the countries you were interested in living in. I decided to choose countries where English wasn't the main language. I chose seven countries, and on a whim, I put Luxembourg as the last country on the list.
Years ago, I remember my mom reading something off the news about a country called Luxembourg. A duke had just gotten married to a commoner, and the article went on to talk about the country itself. It was smaller than the county that I live in (Carbon County in Montana, US), but was one of the richest countries in the world (second richest actually), and most of its residents spoke French, German, Luxembourgish, and English. I picked Luxembourg just because of that short conversation over a decade ago that stayed in my head. From the title of this blog, you can probably guess where I am heading! I had two-three families message me every day for three weeks before I settled on one family. This family lived in Luxembourg, and I really liked reading about them in their profile. After a couple weeks of messaging them on the website, moving to WhatsApp, and then video calling them, I was certain. The parents and I discussed it, and determined that I would be a good fit for their family. I was going to be their au pair!
Of course, while talking with the family, I did more research into Luxembourg. The name means "little fortress". Earlier, I talked about how much I loved England and want to live there. The biggest reason is that I am obsessed with castles. I had no idea what I was in for when I started researching Luxembourg, but to find that its name means little castle is something out of a fairy tale.
The story I tell everyone wondering how I got this position is a much shorter version of this, and I honestly had no idea how long this first post was going to be until now, as I'm finishing up. I leave for Luxembourg on September 8th, and will write two more posts before I'm in the country. The next post will be on the process of getting approved, and the last one before I leave will be on my thoughts for my upcoming trip! Thanks for reading:)
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