If I could have chosen a city to live in as an Au Pair, I had always wished it was Seville. Being a big enough city to have a huge cultural offer, it is well connected and close to the sea.
That´s why I was very happy when my local Au Pair agency told me about their partner Au Pair Conecta, through whom I found my host family. I had been wanting for years to go abroad after finishing school to learn Spanish and get to know the Spanish culture.
The possibility to work as Au Pair seemed perfect to me. Not only because you share a daily family life with a Spanish family and therefore are forced to learn the language, but also because you DO actually HAVE a family who you belong to being abroad. For me it was important to have this family and feel safe and protected. Of course it was also important to know that in any case of emergency, there is always an agency backing you up. In this sense I really appreciated the support of Au Pair Conecta. They helped me especially at the beginning to find my way around in the city, to meet other Au Pairs (who I made really good friends with) and to find a good language school. They also guided me regarding my integration into the family and into my job and duties as Au Pair and they gave me a lot of tips for my free-time activities in Seville.
To tick off the boxes on my application form about which household duties I could do was initially easier than actually achieving them. But after a couple of weeks I got used to everything, and actually had fun at cooking and ironing. Apart of my household duties I obciously spent a lot of time with sweet little Ariane, my three-year-old Au Pair child.
I especially enjoyed the first couple of months, actually much more than I would have imagined. There were so many new impressions! The language school CLIC was a lot of fun and I met new friends quickly. I really loved the weekend trips we did. One of them led us to Marroco and it was amazing!
My host family took me along to a lot of family get-togethers, cooking Paella and eperiencing real Andalusian family-life!
I also attended a Flamenco-course, which was a challenging experience but a lot of fun. A friend of my host-family invited me to see a Bullfight and later on to join him to see a soccer match in the great futball stadium of Seville! These are only a few of my highlights, it was all wonderful and I enjoyed my stay as Au Pair to the fullest!
For New Year´s Eve my host family took me to Cordova to spend a week with the grandparents and the rest of the huge typical Andalusian family.
I never got bored in Seville. Whenever I had time off and no special plan, I just put on my running shoes or took my host mother´s bike and went off to explore the city with its millions of tiny little streets and shops. I loved the Orange trees and the colourful fassades of the houses...strolling through Seville´s streets is just wonderful and I never got enough of it!
For me it was definately the right decision to go abroad as Au Pair. Of course there were also ups and downs, which is normal, but in my case the „ups“ were, without any doubt, dominating my stay.