Au Pair Lessons: Get to Know Your City

Because that’s what it is now. It’s your city. Maybe only for six months, a year (though you never know what will happen), but, for that time, it is completely and utterly your city. You live and shop and eat and drink and are entertained there. So get to know it. Start out with all the cheesy touristy things (even if you don’t like looking like a tourist). Do the bus rides or walking tours or boat tours or whatever else is available. Any major city will have a tourism office where you can ask questions and pick up maps, brochures and activity listings. Figure out what interests you and hit it up. Learn a little history. Visit the big museums and take cheesy touristy pictures and spam your Facebook or Instagram feed with them.

Au Pair Lessons: Take Lessons (or do something)

Do you know how hard it is to just ‘meet people’? I mean on your own, jus going out and doing things and hoping that, maybe you’ll end up reading the same book as the person across from you on the metro or that you’ll get your drink mixed up with someone else and find out that, oh! they speak English too! It is hard. Meeting new people if you don’t go to school or don’t play organized sports or don’t work outside of the home is mother freaking hard. 

Au Pair Lessons: Stay in Touch

I know that this seems pretty obvious and one of the things you’re positive you’ll keep up, but the best laid plans humans and furry rodents usually meet up with that road paved by good intentions. It’s not because you don’t care or they don’t care or you’ve moved on or any of those things. The biggest factor, really, is life and all those small, kind of pesky things that you didn’t really count on or told yourself wouldn’t be a factor. And then BAM! they were. 

Au Pair Lessons: Stay Busy

I need structure. I need a busy schedule and places to be and things to do and dates and times and something marked on my calendar for most days of the week. I need to have to schedule in days off and time to do ‘other things’. I need to be busy. The thing is, after dropping the kids off at school at 9 am and between picking them up after 5pm, I don’t have a whole lot on the books to keep me busy. I also find it really hard to hold myself to getting things done, since I always know that I can, “Do it tomorrow.”

Au Pair Lessons: Go Your Own Pace

I’ve been in Madrid for almost a month. Two f those weeks I had the kids during the day and last week was my first one by myself since they started up school. The thing is, other than two trips with the family (one where I went off by myself because I’m ~adventurous like that, which of course meant that I ended up missing the last bus back to the house because these are just the sorts of things that happen to me), I haven’t been to downtown Madrid.