Hello from New York City !!

Right now, I am sitting in a hotel in New York City, waiting for my bus.

It's Thursday and I am in the US since Monday.

It's crazy. Everything! 

Berlin ... New York City

Monday, I got up at 4am and drove with my parents to Berlin. Of course my suitcase was waaayy too heavy so I packed some stuff in another Au pair's case. I still had to pay. Oh well ... 

The goodbye from my parents was terrible. My mom and I cried so much. 

Fortunately, I sat together with the other Au pairs during the flight so we could talk - which was good because there wasn't much else to do. Actually I looked forward to the flight because I thought I can watch cool movies and play fun games and stuff. Nope. Not with United Airlines. The only good thing was that the weight of the hand luggage didn't matter.

The flight took 8 hours and 55 minutes.

We were all quite excited when we arrived at Newark. We saw the Statue of Liberty from the plane! So cool! 

Well, my excitement came to a stop at the security check. The officer (I just call him officer, I don't know what exactly he was) took more time to check my papers than for the other girls. Suddenly, he got up and went away with my passport and everything. He told me to follow him, so I did. I got nervous because I feared they wouldn't let me in! So I asked the officer if there is a problem and he said "Probably not. The device couldn't read your papers." Or something like that.

So I had to sit in a separate room and wait with other people to let my papers get checked. I felt like a criminal! The thing was that I couldn't tell the others to wait for me or something else, because there was no WiFi. So I just sat there and hoped that everything was okay. 

At the end, it was. But I was so shocked at the beginning!

DoubleTree Tarrytown

Then a guy from the organization picked us and other Au pairs up and took us to the hotel in Tarrytown which is one hour away from the airport. They put you together in a room with people from your region so I didn't know who would be my roommate, but it turned out to be a very nice German girl. In case you are reading this: it was a pleasure to share a room with you!

The rooms were good, the beds were huge! Bigger than my bed at home.

The following days, we had "classes" about different topics. There was a first aid course, we talked about the American culture, how to deal with the kids ... I thought there aren't that many differences between the German and the American culture, but oh there are. Culture clash, I'm telling you.

Our program

Surprisingly the American food I ate yet was not that good. I mean, you could eat it, but it was not really good. They put a lot of cinnamon in the desserts, it always tasted like Christmas. 

Tuesday afternoon, we went on a city tour in New York City. It was so great! New York is crazy.

We went to Top of the Rock, so on top of the Rockefeller Center. You can see Central Park the Empire State Building and whole New York City from there. It's beautiful.

Oh and it rained all day long, but when we arrived in New York, the sun came out :D 

We also ran around Times Square where I got some post cards. The stamps to Europe are quite expensive! Halleluja. But it was worth it for me.

I don't know how you call the place, but during sunset we stood opposite the Statue of Liberty and watched the lights going on and it was magical.

All in all, we were only 4 hours there so it was way too short, but we saw the most important things and it just looks like in the movies! Crazy.

Top of the Rock 

Times Square

sunset

So now, I am still sitting here and my bus should be here in an hour.

The first days were really exhausting, we sat all day and suffered from jetlag. I think that's okay now, for me. It's only weird when I text my friends at home and I'm like "breakfast in a few" and they say "we just ate lunch". I can't get used to that.

Another thing is that during Orientation, so the last few days, they told us what can go wrong. And that's a looooot of things. Now I feel like my kids will die on the very first day. Probably everything will be fine all year long, but I just hope I can do it.

I hope my family likes me.

I hope my room's nice.

I hope they have WiFi.

I miss my parents and friends! And Nutella. 

So excited to meet my host family in ... 5 hours !!

Christin xo