A few pictures from the house...

As you might know from the last post I wrote, I am currently an "au pair" in Ireland. I'm sort of living in the family's house, and since I didn't take pictures with my lovely canon for a while, I decided to take pictures of little objects from here and there in the house.
There isn't any logical order or anything in my pics, I'm just posting little things or decorations I like.

But before I show them, I'm first showing you a hairstyle I had to make this morning. Indeed, "Henrietta" (nickname I'm giving for the girl I'm babysitting) has a anti-racisme day at school today and dressed up in traditional Singapore clothes. With that she wanted a bun with those chop sticks inside them. I'm not a great hairdresser :P but I think I did alright. What do you think?

 

So there you have the back of the head of Henrietta. I'm obviously not going to post any pictures of her here in case someone could recognize her AND she has no clue that I have a blog anyway.

Well, here are the photos I took this afternoon:

 

 

 

These photos were taken in my bedroom. When I first arrived here, Henrietta said she had put these up so that I wouldn't feel homesick :)

 

 

 

Henrietta has so many toys it's unbelievable! You can barely walk into her room and it's always dark in there cause too many boxes of toys are blocking the way to the window.

 

These are the new barbies apparently. I remember having a couple of barbies, maybe 6 maximum. But she has 17 of these dolls! They're strange dolls and don't represent humans; they are zombies, werewolves, vampires,etc.

 

 

 

 

 Something I see everyday on the fridge. It's kind of a moral thing which I'm not surprised since they have so many morals here. Henrietta for example nearly never goes to her friends house who lives across the street because the parents curse a little bit, so it's not "a good environnement for children". This is Henrietta who said this herself. I was like, ok, when I was 9 I never thought of these things. So her friend has to come over to this house then. You might see that she has a tendency to be...let's say bossy.

 

This is the dog, she's very cute and gentle but it's sad that all she does all day is hang around in the tiny garden. She's bored out of her head so I bring her on walks when I can but it's not always easy with the rain and the cold.

 

 

 

One of the shoes Henrietta was meant to wear today but didn't since it's way too cold outside.

 

 

The wardrobe that's been lying like this for a few weeks now. I'm not suppose to touch it cause Jill has a plan in her head and knows exactly how to build it. Yet, it's been weeks she's saying that she will build it. Not done yet.

 

And a photo of myself. This dressing gown was a gift from my aunt. She gave it to me when I arrived in Ireland and I am soo happy she did cause the weather is so horrible here and Jill doesn't want to put on the heating (cause it's "very expensive").

So that was my little post. I hoped you liked it and I must go soon pick up Henrietta from school and run after her to clean up everything she messes and dirties. Life is great :D!
Hope to write a new post soon!

Au Pair Life - week 3

 

 

So, it's my third week as an au pair in Ireland. What can I say?

See, I've been thinking of writing posts about my au pair experience every once in a while so that in the future I can read these and look back on my au pairing days.

 

So, I'm in a nice family -one mother that I will call Jill and her 10 year old daughter that I will name Henrietta- I'm creating these names for privacy reasons. Anywho, they're quite nice and live in a common semi-detached house in a village of Ireland. Their life is normal, nearly dull at times: work, school,home,etc everyday the same thing.

 

Well, till now I've been ok. I don't have very strong homesickness (well not yet anyway) and my work is not hard at all (bring kid to school, come back do some cleaning, fetch kid from school, do homework with her and then Jill comes back home from work and I'm off).

 

What I like about this Au Pairing thing is analysing people and discovering new culture. This may seem strange cause I am Irish and have lived here till I was 7 but my mom is German, so I grew up with different ways and habits than the other Irish kids.

 

Here is what I have analysed already:

 

-Henrietta (haha what a funny name! Her real name is much more modern) is quite narrow-minded when it comes to other cultures and foreigners. Any country other than Ireland is called a "weird country" if she doesn't remember the name of it. This isn't like super shocking when people here hear her talk like that but as I am a mixture of different countries and since I love getting to know foreigners, I found this quite vexing.

 

-Henrietta and her friend (that I will name Sunny) only eat "Irish food". Well, it's not totally Irish since British people eat the same so let's say "British food". Whenever I babysit Henrietta and Sunny, I always try and influence them to wanting other food than the usual chicken and fries (oh I think I'll soon hate that dish since they seem to have it here nearly every day!). So I try to talk them into eating some nice Italian pizza or spaghetti or lasagna (god I really need to go to Italy! :)) or even just some rice. But they're answer is always: "nah....". But anyways, next time I babysit them again, I'm not making chicken and fries. They can wine all they want to Jill but I'm cooking them something else!

 

-Jill is quite a feather head, always forgetting to pick up her child from school (when it's her go), or spending hours on the phone to the wifi company cause the wifi doesn't work (when actually all you had to do was switch on the power button on the side), loosing her phone all the time, being 1 to 2 hours late for work nearly everyday,etc.

 

These things are a few things I noticed in the last 3 weeks.

 

Now, let's get to the weather and life part. Ireland is known for it's rain (if you don't know this write it down in case you ever thought of coming here on holidays). So logically, everyday it rains! And it's so depressing when you add rain with grey skies everyday and coldness and dampness. Sounds lovely doesn't it! Sorry, I just realised that there might be Irish people reading this and if there is then I am very sorry. But coming from a warm, sunny place like France to a cold, damp, oh and don't forget windy! place like Ireland, does depress me a bit.

Life here is also quite dull: you can't go for proper walks without umbrellas (oh wait you can't cause the wind is too strong!), raincoats,etc; you're always catching some kind of cold; the housewives here spend their days comparing curtains (yaay!); nearly everyone has a dog. But these dogs are kept to mind the houses and live in tiny little gardens where they get totally bored to death since no one wants to bring them on walks since it's raining, and so on and so on....

 

So you get the global image!

 

Of course I'm not saying that everybody is living a dull life here. I'd say Bono (from U2) is having a great life!

 

Ok enough with the depressing! Cause the family is nice and I get to see my family every weekend!! My family meaning my grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins,... that I normally only see like once a year or twice max.

And this Sunday is St Patrick's Day! If the weather is alright, I will go with my family to the Dublin parade (this will be the first time I ever see the parade! yayy!).

 

So it takes some time getting use to life as an au Pair, especially in Ireland (next time I'm going somewhere hot!).

 

I'll try and keep these au pair posts going (without all the depressing stuff I promise!) and I wish everyone a lovely day and a lovely St Patrick's day!!