hey guys welcome back to my channel this is Graham thank you so much for watching today and today I'm gonna be telling you guys about my au pair war story part two so before you can talk about this video please hit that like and subscribe button so I can keep making content just like this your support really goes a long way so today I'm gonna be giving you guys the second part of my up air horror story what I did after I his kicked out and then be sure to watch to the end to hear
my big three takeaways three priceless takeaways to help you avoid this kind of situation I wish I would have heard these before I got myself into this situation so please if you do nothing else please look at the three takeaways at the end it's super important I wanted to make this video as a follow-up to my first up hair war story if you haven't watched that I'll put the link right here but it's super important and essentially it just talks about what happened to me what went wrong and to understand this video you'll probably need
to look at that video it is very entertaining so I do suggest you go and click on this link up here but just to briefly summarize my first horror story was only 10 days but it was a crazy crazy week and a half and so this is what I did after that um the last thing you heard of my other horror story was that my host mom came and picked me up and that's where I stopped the story my former host mom came and picked me up from the war story house okay so today I'm
gonna be telling you guys what happened afterwards and then how I ended up making money and being able to stay in Spain and some three huge lessons that I learned some big takeaways that I'll tell you about at the end okay well that being said let's jump right into this video so my other appear war story I broke it down day by day and this one I'm breaking it down week by week I'm gonna try to keep it pretty short but there's a lot of really good stuff that happen in here and I'm trying to
keep the content pretty relatable so if you're in a situation like this you might have some idea of what direction they go so week 1 picks up where my former host mom came and picked me up from the other and essentially week one I was just emotionally and physically exhausted after everything I've gone through with my other whose family once I got back to my former host family the host family that I got along with very well I was just really really tired one of the most important things about appearing is getting into a routine
I think really anytime traveling abroad one of the most important things is getting into a routine for essentially for 10 days I've been constantly moving constantly worried and uncomfortable and it's just a very exhausting thing to do and I was emotionally mentally physically exhausted so yes I was super super excited to see my host kids like my former host kids my formless almost so excited but - I was like very dull and just generally tired like I was very spent that's a good way to describe it my emotions were spent if you remember this from
the other Horror Story video the whole reason I wanted to stay in Europe was my brother was in Europe and we were planning on taking about four weeks to go and travel all around Spain we were gonna get a Portugal of Vienna a cup-like five different cities and so I didn't want to stay for that because those tickets weren't refundable but I talked a lot with my parents and it was my former host mom who at this point was my new host mom and I decided to stay in Europe for that time being but I
knew that I couldn't just stay in Europe because I fund myself when I travel and I don't have unlimited funds I was depending on that 70 years a week even though my former host mom was letting me stay with them during this time I still didn't have the money that I thought I would need to kind of sustain myself for this trip that was coming up at first I thought I should start to look for another host family but like I said there was something that went wrong with my visa and so I didn't have
a visa so I could only stay for three months and really nobody wants to take on an au pair for only three months so after about a week or so research of searching for his family in in the surrounding area I just decided it would be best to stay in Madrid with my former host family for about five weeks until my brother and I met up to spend a month traveling we've lived in a small village outside of Madrid maybe like 30 kilometres outside of the city in the village there were not a lot of
opportunities for me to do much babysitting or appearing I decided it would be best to try to teach English so my host mom sent out a bunch of texts to all her little school friends and and all the different moms in the neighborhood send out text it was really really sweet they all kind of like banded together to help me out and ultimately I think that finding a bunch of new students to teach English to so I was teaching private lessons I think it was a private lessons every week to like six different kids or
seven different kids I mean I was teaching a lot and that gave me the income that I needed but also that kind of gave me a purpose that first week I was really really upset after leaving my former host family I was just very emotionally lost I didn't really have any direction and just generally felt very depressed about my situation and so having that teaching job kind of gave me something to look forward to every day the last thing that happened in my first week which was just crazy so it was I left my foremothers
family on a Saturday and this was a Tuesday morning I wake up and I see this text from my former host dad the one who I had just left and he was like well Graham you shouldn't be lying about a tier 4 host family and just a very threatening message saying that I should have come back and I should have done all these things and so that was weird and it's just again it just felt like something in this like little state of self-pity that I was already in so I did really need something to
kind of lift my spirits and get me going again I was just really really discouraged the first week so the next three weeks or four weeks really week two through five I've combined it all because it was all kind of the same but essentially I just settled into a teaching routine I would go to my lessons every week which I loved I loved I loved a lot even if you're an au pair like working with a host family I highly suggest you do this because it gave me a chance and will give you a chance
to connect with different people in the community in the neighborhood and kind of get to know some different people that you wouldn't have known originally as well as give you extra money on the side also during these weeks have started to reconnect with some old friends that had info vania in the village and it again it just gave me it kind of reminded me of why I love Spain in the first place why I came here in the first place so this is something else that really helped me because it kind of gave me roots
back in Romania and it reminded me why I came there I really wished I would have made more friends my first time I talked about that in another video called my copay regrets but just a few friends that I did have in Co Vania were really a lifeline and a lifesaver during this time and I'm so thankful that they kind of showed up and pulled me through because I was still I mean every day I was thinking about what had happened with my other host family it was a very uncomfortable situation and it didn't end
well and so it was always on my mind and being around my friends kind of lifted me up and lifted my spirits a bit during this time I also started to travel around Madrid more so in the summer I was constantly working I was always with the kids and I never really travelled around Madrid that much but during my off time now when I wasn't teaching lessons I would kind of travel around Madrid see different parts of the city that I've never been to and also travel around the community of Madrid which is like kind
of the state it's a really big area and with my transit pass I could get around the whole community of Madrid for free so I love doing that and that's kind of hot filled Mondays so my days would be like in the mornings I would do my college work Excel was doing College Online and then maybe I would after lunch or something I would go into the city or do something like that and then I come back for my lessons in the evening which started maybe six o'clock so it was a good routine that I
got myself into and I finally settled into a routine which helped me kind of build some roots and just calm down a lot I had been feeling really bad and just anxious over what had happened and with my other host family so finally getting into a routine reminded me of why I love Spain so much in the first place and why I came there wait two through five is when I really started to get in the groove and love Spain again now I'll say this about my teaching experience I've had people ask me about this
friends back home so I did not teach legally I don't guess I just taught private lessons in people's homes and listen if you're an au pair looking to do this I do not have an English degree I'm in the middle of my second year of college right now my degrees and international relations and Spanish I do not have an English degree I do not have a teaching degree so you don't have to have an English degree or teaching degree or whatever a literature degree to teach English you can teach English just whatever your skill set
is and that's essentially what I was doing now I did have a little bit of experience teaching I shadowed an elementary school teacher of the year prior and so I did have a bit of experience but overall like I was not a teacher I did not train to be a teacher or a tutor oh this was definitely something new for me and I did not have a ton of qualifications for it but I say all that to say if you're looking into doing something like this you don't have to be perfect guy okay it's just
one of those things that you can do some research on maybe read a book watch some YouTube and you can do it and I highly highly suggest you try to teach English or whatever your native language is the last big thing that I did during these weeks is I would take little trips around Spain so like I said I would go around the community of Madrid I went to La Scala in the very western part of the community of Madrid I don't quit it's a beautiful city in the southern part of the theni I went
to Ibiza which is an island in the Mediterranean owned by Spain so it was a great experience I'll try to put some pictures in in the video of that but that just kind of sounds dramatic but it gave me my sanity back like I really felt like I was going crazy after what happened and I was constantly playing a repeat in my head so so doing that traveling around kind of seeing different parts of Spain gay for my sanity back and reminded being why I love Spain's so much in the first place so if you're
ever in a position like this and you do decide to stay in your host country do travel around and see some other things outside of your city your outside of your day-to-day life it will encourage you and just help you kind of get into the new routine and your new reality okay so I said my brother and I spent four weeks traveling I think in reality it was more like two and a half or three weeks now that I'm starting to think about it but all that to say week six and seven was when I
met my brother Brady and we started traveling so I ended my lessons and stuff like that back in Madrid I said goodbye to my host family I thank them so much for letting me stay with them having that opportunity to say goodbye kind of like closed a chapter in my life while I'd gone through all these really difficult things for the form of his family and all this being back with with my original host family and just spending time with him definitely close that chapter in my life and it just gave me some closure on
everything which I did not feel like I had beforehand I won't talk a whole lot about these two weeks week 6 and 7 because it's not really relatable content my brother travelled my brother and I we travelled to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in Spain we went to Porto and Portugal and then back to Madrid but I mean that's that's really all I have to say about those weeks they weren't that fancy we just kind of traveled around [Music] okay so week eight our last week in Europe I do want to highlight this week because
it was really really unique and I don't think many others get to do this my brother and I flew from Madrid to Vienna a chick that we already had plans but recall way back right after I got kicked out of my foremothers family's house I started looking for host families and unintentionally I accidentally found long-term host families that were gonna start in the summer or the fall of 2020 I did not mean to I was looking for his family's only in Spain but I just stumbled upon some different families in Europe and I eventually found
my current host family doing this so I'm very thankful but all that to say I found four different host families in Vienna that wanted to interview me in person so we flew to Vienna we only have three days there and in three days I interviewed in person with four different host families it was a crazy crazy experience like I didn't even really have that much time to visit Vienna or see the sides but I don't regret it at all interviewing somebody in person meeting these host families in person completely change my view of them getting
to meet the host families in person gave me an opportunity to go to their houses and meet the kids meet their family and actually like talk face-to-face with them I think this is so important because you can really tell a lot about somebody just about you know how they keep their house up or how they talk to their kids that kind of thing so for example I was talking with one host family it was absolutely incredible in Vienna I just loved everything about what they were saying they sounded perfect for me they had my exact
start dates I mean it was just it was perfect absolutely perfect and so I took a train and I went to their house one night and they were super sweet people but immediately I walked in their house and I noticed it is so messy their house was so so messy and me I'm a very clean person I can't deal with that and so I never would have known that and honestly I probably would have signed up to go and live with their host family had I not been in their house and that would have been
a huge issue for me getting to meet these people in person gave me a big feel for their family dynamic and just how they run their how they run their houses all that being said I didn't actually go with any of the families I met in Austria I ended up going with this lovely family in Seville I'm in Spain and I cannot wait to go be there appear but it was a great opportunity and I I so wish I could do that so I say all that to say if you are living in Europe or
if you're already an au pair in Europe whatever and you're looking to meet a host family in Europe please ask if you can fly to their city I know it may be expensive or whatever but it is priceless I would 100% do this again after this next year I plan to either go and study Russian and Ukraine or go and live and be in it because I did love Vienna and so when I do this I will fly there beforehand and meet families and stuff like this i 100% suggest you do this if it's if
it's somewhat possible and I promise you these host families will be thrilled to meet you in person every one of the host families that I met was over the moon and just very thankful and very appreciative that I would take time out of my day to come and meet them so I do highly suggest this ok guys so now that we've made it to the end these are my big three takeaways from this story number one have a plan B I'm gonna make a whole nother video about having a plan B and what exactly that
means before you even sign up for a host family think about what you're gonna do if it fails if everything goes wrong if you're stranded what are you going to do I did have this plan B I thought about it and I decided to go and live my former host mom but if I did not have that Plan B if I hadn't have thought through something who knows I may have just ended up flying home and missing out on this incredible opportunity so please have a plan B and think about it beforehand the number two
big takeaway that I got was ask tough questions this one is tough I mean it's hard but during those interviews ask really really hard questions about the family dynamic how they discipline their kids what's important in an au pair questions that may seem a little bit awkward to you but please ask these questions because if I would have asked these questions in the first place I never would have had this au pair horror story so please ask tough questions to your host families number three is this is what I think is the absolute biggest one
build connections in your community so when you go to be an au pair don't just spend time around your peers or other appears or your host family branch out meet other families and build connections because those connections that I made through my first opere trip absolutely saved my life during my second trip I really think that I would have just been depressed and gone home did I not have the friends and the good connections my first host family I had a great relationship with them when I was with them I really went out of my
way to work hard and go above and beyond and it paid off later on they invited me to come back and live with him for free for a month and a half they paid for my food they paid for everything build those good connections work really hard be honest have integrity and I promise you it will pay off in the end and you will make lifelong connections so please make good connections build good relationships ok guys so that's my au pair who are Story part to you I know that's very different than part one this
one is definitely a positive and has a healthy spin on it please take that into mind take my three considerations into mind and let me know what you think about all this in the comments thank you so much for watching this video and supporting my channel if you haven't already like and subscribe and I'll see you next time thank you so much for watching bye bye [Music]
