YES

Any au pair with any sensitivity to the host child under her or his care should get that host child something to mark the child’s birthday.

NO

It doesn’t have to be expensive. It can be something as simple as a specially-selected yet store bought card with a photo insider. But, no, you Au Pair’s shouldn’t spend much money on a gift for your host kid. Host parents know not to expect au pairs to spend lots of money– we know how much you’re paid, and how much things cost.

It can be heartbreaking for a child (or an au pair) to think the a person who spends so much time with them has somehow forgotten or overlooked them on their special day.

Here as in just about everywhere else, it’s the thought that counts more than anything.

Explains MTR:

I know that au pairs do not earn a lot of money, but I expect an au pair to acknowledge my child’s birthday with even the smallest and cheapest of gifts. An au pair who knows my child would easily find $10 worth of things in Michael’s that my daughter will be very happy to receive. Our first au pair was with us for 1.5 months when my older daughter’s birthday came. She did not get her anything at all. Not even a card.

Most recent was my younger daughter’s birthday. Au Pair gave her a pillow pet that my daughter was craving, she baked her a cake from scratch (made frosting from scratch too), got her 6 fancy mylar balloons, one for each year of her age. The pillow pet is the most favorite toy now and the balloons are still around the house 1.5 months later, although they are seriously lacking in helium.

I just want to add, that although our current au pair gave all of us gifts for our birthdays and cards for other holidays and they were all very appreciated, I did make it clear that we, host parents, do not require or need any kids of gifts. She should really spend her money on herself. She did not listen to me.

Has your child ever been super-delighted by a birthday card or gift from your au pair? Or some other special gesture that celebrated the child?

Images: Happy Birthday Banner, by Devany on Etsy

4th of July is one of my favorite holidays… all about family, community and abstract patriotic notions.

4th of July is also the holiday when I am most likely to embarrass my children– apparently, as they get older, it is no longer cool to dress up in red, white & blue and cheer wildly at the Girl Scout float in the parade, or to shriek and clap during fireworks.

4th of July is also one of my 2 favorite holidays to share with Au Pairs.

Although many of our au pairs have preferred to high-tail it into the nearest city for more grown-up partying and fancier fireworks, often they’ve spent the earlier part of the day with us — usually catching the ‘exciting to me, kinda boring to them’ town parade.

On the 4th, even more than during other times of the year, I find myself fielding random questions about the USA. I also find myself offering up what seem to me to be wise insights about the ways that our country works.

(Some recent winners have included trying to explain Sarah Palin as a VP candidate choice, how the electoral college works, why NASCAR exists, and why professional  soccer just hasn’t caught on in the US.)

For us Host Parents, 4th of July creates an obvious opportunity for questions and conversations about being “American”. It’s a chance to catch up on  some of the “cultural exchange” part of the au pairing experience.

So, over this holiday weekend, as you sneak inside the house for some quiet time at the computer and maybe a cold beer lemonade, want to tell us about a time you’ve tried to explain something really “American” to your au pair?

What’s most surprising thing for Au Pairs to learn about Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day?

A. They mark the beginning, middle and end of “summer”.
B. They are celebrated with barbecues and maybe some nice cold beer.
C. They are days when most Americans have “off” but most Au Pairs do not.

Answer? C

These three days are ‘bank holidays’, when many Americans get official ‘holidays’ off but when Au Pairs can be expected to work.

Along with Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day, the other 7 US Bank Holidays (listed below) are not automatic holidays for Au Pairs.  Au Pairs can be scheduled to be on duty any of these days.

• January 1, New Year’s Day
• January 18, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
• February 15, Presidents Day
• October 11, Columbus Day

• November 11, Veterans’ Day
• November 25, Thanksgiving Day
• December 25, Christmas Day

Au Pairs do not get US Bank Holidays as automatic vacation days.

It comes as a surprise to many Au Pairs that they don’t get US Bank Holidays as vacation days, along with their two weeks of vacation. After all, they are ‘employees’, so why don’t they also get these holidays?

[I don't have an official answer, but I suspect that this is when the legal status of au pairs as 'students' on a student visa comes into play here.]

Most au pairs who come to the US through an agency are told about US Bank Holidays at orientation, but it still often comes as a surprise to an au pair when s/he is scheduled to work on a holiday. It seems to me that this would be an easy point to miss, given all the other information (often in a second language) that au pairs are trying to absorb at orientation.

Cultural Differences re: Bank Holidays & Vacations

In addition, being expected to work on bank holidays goes against many deep seated assumption and expectations that non-Americans may have about holidays in general.

Most countries have more bank holidays than the US (for example, there are 11 in France, 8 in the UK, 13 in Sweden, 15 in Malaysia and 19 in Brazil ).

And, in most other countries employees get more than double the two weeks of vacation that are the norm for Americans. Put together the smaller amount of ‘vacation’ and the lack of bank holidays, and au pairs are available to work many more days in the USA than in similar jobs in their home countries.

If I were 19 and visiting the US for a year, discovering that I had to work on a bank holiday would feel like a bummer. I am too interested in barbecue and nice cold beer to want to have to work on Memorial Day.

Au Pairs and Bank Holidays, in Practice

One of the important advantages of au pair childcare is the flexibility to schedule our au pairs to work when we need childcare, whether that is a bank holiday or not, within the guidelines of the au pair program.

As a practical matter, many host families still need to have their au pairs be on duty. Not all of us who work get those days off. Even if we do have these days off ourselves, we still may need childcare, and so au pairs can often expect to be scheduled to work on these days.

However, many of us try to make exceptions when we can. We often want our au pairs celebrate the holidays with us or to celebrate holidays that are important personally to them.

For example, I really like our au pairs to be on duty on 4th of July, so that I can make them get up at 8 am can get them to come to the parade and the fireworks as part of the family. Plus, it helps to have another adult there to watch the girls on the playground while I wait in line for lukewarm Diet Cokes and soggy hot dogs at the after-parade festival.

We also will bend over backwards to make sure that our au pairs are off duty for whatever church services they want to attend around Christmas, Easter, and All Souls’ Day.

When possible, we’ll also schedule our au pairs to be off duty so that they can celebrate some holidays with other au pairs. If they really want to go to Times Square on New Years Eve, we won’t schedule them for New Years Day even if we have having neighbors over and could use the help.

As for ‘unofficial holidays’?

Don’t even get me started on St. Patrick’s Day…. You just can’t keep ‘em out of NYC for St. Patrick’s Day.  I have learned to anticipate a hung-over au pair on March 18th, and plan ahead to slog through that day on my own.

What do you and your au pair do on these 10 US holidays?

Images:  04072005 from mmatins
Stars and Stripes for … oh,…from Wuertele
The top from fille_de_photo

When a host family takes their au pair with them to work during part of the vacation, what should they provide for her during her off-duty time? Especially, what should you provide on a ski vacation, where costs are relatively high and your au pair can’t afford to pay for her own skiing?

A European Host Mom Ann asks:

Our au pair from America is a nice girl. She has been here since start of January. In two weeks we will be going on a wintersports holiday. She will travel with us to the hotel (so travel expense is covered) as is the hotel including dinners and breakfast. She will stay in a room that she shares with the boys. We will make sure she will have privacy there.

My question is: who should pay for what? Skipass, ski lessons and a rental of skis & helmet will be necessary (also she needs glasses, a warm jacket and snowpants) if she wants to go skiing. She is supposed to work this week, but if the kids are in ski-lessons, she is off-duty, so she could use this time for skiing.

I would appreciate your advice very much–

thanks, Ann

Let me start of with some general principles for taking your au pair on vacation:

• Anytime you take your au pair with you to work, when you are on vacation, you should provide her with comfortable lodging, and all the same kinds of food, etc. as you would your kids. (However, don’t let her run her own bar tab on your room account!).
• Make sure she knows that, while it’s vacation for you, it is largely work time for her.
• Set aside some off duty time for her so that she can explore wherever you are and spend a little time vacationing too. Also, make sure you’re giving her a decent chunk of time off (like, an afternoon to sight-see, not time after dinner when it’s dark and everything is closed).
• Make sure she has things to keep herself busy not bored.
• Make sure that she has a way to stay in touch with family and friends (e.g., internet access).

You are already planning to do much of this, and thinking about the other details now is definitely good.

The hard part is always whether you can afford to have your au pair vacation in the same style as you parents or the kids are vacationing.  After all, it’s your vacation and not hers.

In an ideal world, you’d have enough money (we all would) to be able to pay for your au pair to ski during all of her off duty time… However, given that it costs around $100 per day to have your au pair ski, this may be out of the question for you.

You’ll want to talk with your au pair about how much it actually costs to pay for each skiing adult. Here in the US it’s horribly expensive– maybe it is less so where you are going? But you want to make she that she knows whether or not it’s easy for you to afford. Not that you want to make her feel beholden if you can afford to treat her, but you also don’t want her to misperceive the extent of your generosity. To imagine that two days of skiing equals a week of pocket money sure puts that into perspective.

You might consider how much you can afford to spend to entertain your au pair… and then offering her the opportunity to chose how to use this budget. She might prefer two days of skiing, or maybe she’d prefer extra time off to do something less costly (skating, movie marathons, hiking).

Make a special effort to identify some interesting and less expensive activities that she can enjoy, and make sure she packs what she needs for those activities. For example, your hotel may have a pool, whirlpool and fitness room. Or, you might bring a laptop and a video camera and encourage her to make a few movies. You might identify historic sites near to your hotel and get her tourist information. I know this may seem dorky and unglamorous compared to skiing, but everyone can remember that this trip is part of her chance to see other areas of the world, and she could take advantage of that regardless of the skiing.

Keep in mind that, when you take an au pair with you on a ‘fancy’ vacation, she may thing that you have a lot of disposable income and that if you aren’t paying for her, too, you’re simply being cheap. It is hard for au pairs, kids, relatives, anyone but the adults in charge, to know how a vacation fits into the family’s overall budget.

My personal opinion is that you should try to spring for two days of skiing… maybe her two off duty days, or a few half days while the kids are busy. It would be hard not to come off as mean to take her to a ski resort and not help to make it possible for her to ski a bit too.

Talking about all of these issues is difficult, and with an immature au pair it can be impossible. But, you are starting with a good foundation.

Remember, and mention this to your au pair, that being able to talk about money, about privileges, about role differences, and so on is not easy, but it is the only way we can make sure that we are correctly understood — in both directions.  This is part of the life lessons for host parents and au pairs.

What else should Ann think about? What do you advise??

Also see:

Don’t take your Au Pair on vacation during her first 3 months!

Family Skts from jgscils598f08 Pretty young woman in white and…from nigel67

Host parents, we got a request for advice from an au pair who is facing temporary eviction while her host parents are on vacation. The situation is a bit of an emergency, since the family is slated to leave within the week. Your ideas? Here’s the situation:

Dear Au Pair Mom readers,

Photo by mamaloco on Flickr

If you are a first-time host family, and if you celebrate Christmas, you might find yourself caught off guard when you begin to incorporate your Au Pair into your family traditions.

Some families will want their au pair to help select and decorate the tree, others won’t. Some families will invite the au pair to their church’s celebrations, others will not.

But whatever you do, make sure that your au pair has a stocking to hang!

In my family, both children and adults hang stockings for Santa. (Adults get small little stocking gifts (chapstick, Hello Kitty tissue packs, sparkly hair clips from H&M, chocolate coins, and always a tangerine).

You’ll want to include your au pair in this tradition. .. ( Check out this earlier post on Holidays, too.)

With Thanksgiving upon us, opening up the holiday season, all of us host moms & dads have a chance to be thankful about what our children and our au pairs bring in to our lives.

Part of the reason I think that having an au pair can be so great is that it asks us to open up our families and to share our lives with others, in a unique way. We have to consider our values and priorities, translate these for someone from another culture, consider their personal and cultural values, manage the constant balance between employee and family, and collaborate together to support our children, our au pair, ourselves, and our community.

Thanksgiving gives us a (pretty obvious) opportunity to reflect on what having an au pair is bringing to our families, and how strengthening our relationships between our selves, our au pairs and our children can benefit all of us. Whether your relationship is more functional or more familial, whether you feel frustrated or delighted more often than not, there’s something good going on or your wouldn’t be in this relationship.

Take a moment to reflect on all of this, and to share your gratitude with your family and your au pair. (It’s okay to give yourself a pat on the back too, parents.)

Since so many folks enjoyed the article by Christine Kane that I shared a few months ago, I’m taking the opportunity to post her Thanksgiving reminders here. It’s always a treat to find something well-written and insightful, and since Christine encourages her readers to share her posts in toto, I’m happy to send it along to you.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Why Gratitude Makes You Happy and Wealthy
by Christine Kane

Gratitude is more than being thankful one day a year. Gratitude is a practice. For some, it’s a way of life.

Why do some people swear by the practice of gratitude? Why do these people have joy-filled and abundant lives?

In other words, why does gratitude make you happy and wealthy?

• Because gratitude is about presence.

It’s about waking up in this moment and being here – really being here – and noticing what’s around you. Most people are so busy thinking about the next thing, or about their horrid past, that they don’t wake up and look around at their present moment – the only moment there is.

• Because gratitude is about honoring YOUR precious life.

Do you ever compare your life with someone else’s? Do you ever wish your life were better and more like [insert famous person's name here]? Sometimes we can lose ourselves in wondering how we “measure up” to some standard set by our families or by the media. Comparison is the mind killer. The antidote is gratitude.

Gratitude requires that you validate your own life. (And you really don’t have any other life, do
you?) It forces you to say YES to the gift that is you. The choices you’ve made and the changes you’ve gone through – they have brought you here. Even if here is a place that needs a little adjustment, that’s okay. There are always gifts in any present moment.

• Because gratitude is about attracting.

It’s difficult to attract abundance and joy if you are constantly saying “no” to what IS. You say “no” each time you focus on the future or past, or when you criticize something that is in your present moment.

Attraction is about saying Yes. When you say Yes, you shift.

Gratitude says, “Yes, I love this!” And then more of this is attracted, because the this is what you’re focusing on.

• Because gratitude is about choice.

How you translate any situation is the situation. What you choose to see is the truth (for you).

This isn’t proposing that you live in denial or phoniness. It’s reminding you that your translation of any life situation is your choice. We’ve all heard stories of people who have ignored others’ translations of their talent, their projects, their art, their looks, their lives. These people chose their own translations and succeeded. You always have a choice when it comes to how you look at things. Choose to choose gratitude.

• Because gratitude is about wisdom.

I think people believe they’re being smart if they criticize, complain, and focus on the problems of the world around them.

Smart? Maybe.

Clever? Sure.

But not wise.

It is wise to look for and find the knowing place in your heart. It is wise to choose joy. It is wise to honor your riches. It is wise to focus on and grow the blessings of your life.

• Because gratitude is about recognition.

Use your power of focus to hone in on beauty and on what makes your heart sing. Recognize the spirit in your life. It’s all around you waiting to be noticed. In the words of Franz Kafka, “It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

• Because gratitude is about receptivity.

Gratitude makes you receptive. It makes you a vessel, waiting to be filled.

I carry a tiny notebook with me everywhere I go. In it, I write down song ideas. I write down quotes I hear. I write down ideas for stage stories. As I do that, I become more receptive, and more ideas and songs come to me. It’s a tool that says to my subconscious, “Send more my way!” And the subconscious always responds.

Gratitude is the same way. It says, “I am receptive! Send more!” And more arrives.

• Because gratitude is about creativity.

Creativity is really all about attention. (So is genius.)

When I write a song, I build a relationship with that song. I spend time with it. I get to know it. I pay attention to it. Artists do the same thing with drawings. They spend time in rapt attention, and the drawing is born.

Gratitude is how we Live Creative. It is a creative act to notice and pay attention to the moments of your life. Some days it’s an enormous act of creativity to find things for which to be thankful.

Start today.

And have a Thanksgiving of presence, creativity, and gratitude! [Thanks Christine!]

Gratitide Cafe by CoreyThrace on Flickr
Cratitidue Tage by eekim on FLickr

Performer, songwriter, and creativity consultant Christine Kane publishes her ‘LiveCreative’ weekly ezine with more than 8,000 subscribers. If you want to be the artist of your life and create authentic and lasting success, you can sign up for a FRE*E subscription to LiveCreative at www.christinekane.com.

Every holiday my DH and I have the same holiday conversation: Should we ask our Au Pair to be on duty?

Scheduling your au pair to work on and around holidays, family vacations, and birthdays (yours and hers) can be challenging, because you’re once again right on top of the question– What does it mean for your au pair to be ‘part of the family’ and also to be the person who’s paid to care for the kids when the parent(s) need(s) childcare?

As Franzi points out: “The whole emphasis on family and togetherness that Thanksgiving brings along could raise expectations and misunderstandings regarding the AP’s role in the whole festivities.”

Your au pair may want to be ‘part of the family’ and participate in the celebration… then again, you may need her to be the person in charge of the kids. And then again, in many families, everyone pitches in whether it’s their paid job or not.

On Christmas and Easter the answers are always influenced by the church-going preferences of our au pair, but on Thanksgiving the issues are much more focused. Plus, Thanksgiving as a holiday is all about family and togetherness— so the ways in which you include your au pair have to jive with that.

Can your au pair be ‘part of the family’ and ‘on duty’ at the same time?

Thanksgiving is usually a holiday when I cook, so I’m very busy. The extended family comes here, so there are several people who our au pair has met only once or twice, sometimes never. And, there’s not much main activity besides cooking, eating, and cleaning, so we seem to have a lot of people wandering around wondering why we don’t have a television where Granddad can watch “The Game”.

Add a few diaper changes, some little people needing naps, cousins arguing over who gets the drum set for Rock Band, and some Aunts and Uncles who just really need a glass of wine, and you can see how having someone officially in charge of the kids looks like a good idea.

More often than not, we do schedule our au pair to be on duty at Thanksgiving. Usually this is around any other plans she might have (e.g., Thanksgiving day parade, soccer game, etc.), and it does not include being on duty during the actual dinner itself.

I’ve found that not only does it help to have our au pair watching the girls, but also it helps her have something to do so that she’s not sitting around trying to engage various relatives in conversation or asking me if she can stir the gravy. After all, she is an expert with the kids, she can organize crafts, help kids make videos, arrange the Battle of the Bands, and even take them to the playground down the street to work up an appetite.

A few times we’ve even had my sister’s au pair come for dinner, the au pairs have been on and off duty together to make things a bit more fun for them.

I’ve found that our au pairs generally like feeling needed and appreciate the chance to contribute to making the family celebration go well. Especially if our au pair can relax during dinner and have some time with no demands, no one has seemed to mind being duty at Thanksgiving.

And, needless to say, knowing that my kids are being cared for while I ‘flip the bird’ is something I am totally thankful for.

What is planned for your au pair this Thanksgiving?

[Note: Having our au pair on duty does not mean that she is necessarily responsible for my sisters' kids. Our au pair will help with the playground supervision of a group that includes cousins, but not with diaper changing.

Also, I start my turkey roasting it breast-side down (using gravity to enhance juicy-ness) so a big moment is when I "flip the bird" over to the fancy side. There have been years when the bird has resisted.... another story.]

See Also:
Tip: Family Fun for Thanksgiving
More Thanksgiving Day ideas…for you and your Au Pair

Thanksgiving Table by Ann & Lane of Flickr

Here’s a Thanksgiving activity that you can involve your au pair in, that can keep her engaged, keep family members engaged, and create something special for all of you.

Have your au pair lead the family in the Story Corps’ National Day of Listening. The actual National Day of Listening is the day after Thanksgiving (November 27th), but you might as well do this when everyone is together at Thanksgiving!

Use the guidelines that Story Corps provides, and mix it up to fit you families’ circumstances. They make it so, so, easy, with a Do-It-Yourself Instruction Guide and even an instructional video!

The Goal:

• Create mini-videos of family members telling family stories
• Create some gifts for your children, your au pair and your family

You will need:

• A video camera,
  A Mac or PC with an internal camera,
  A digital camera, or
  A digital voice recorder

• A list of questions
• Some willing interviewees
• Some willing Interviewers

Then, take the list of questions, turn on the camera, and start talking with each other.

You can use the list of questions suggested in the Do-It-Yourself Instruction Guide, and you can make a list of questions just for your au pair and kids. The Story Corps website actually has a Question List Generator that makes it really easy and comes up with things you might not have th9oguht of. I’ve listed some questions below.

Don’t let the technology get in the way– use what you’ve got, maybe play a little bit, or ask your 11 year old to figure out how to use iLife or iMovie to edit later, but just turn the thing on and go.

This activity will not only create memories for everyone to keep (imagine putting dvds with the stories in people’s stockings, or giving them as New Year’s gifts!), but also you’ll keep a lot of people gainfully employed happily occupied during what can be a boring, tense, or aimless afternoon if you are not the one watching football or the thermometer on the turkey.

For Grandparents, you can ask:

• Where did you grow up?
• What was your childhood like?
• Who were your favorite relatives?
• Do you remember any of the stories they used to tell you?
• How did you and grandma/grandpa meet?
• What was my mom/dad like growing up?
• Do you remember any songs that you used to sing to her/him? Can you sing them now?
• What were your parents like?
• What were your grandparents like?

For Au Pairs you can ask:

• What made you want to be an au pair?
• What was it like when you started interviewing with families?
• What struck you about our family that made you interested?
• How is our family like/not like what you expected?
• What are the craziest things you have learned about Americans?
• How does our family remind you of your family at home?
• What have you learned about yourself so far this year?

With kids you can ask:

• What a re the craziest things you have done with our au pair?
• What are the favorite English words she says in her (x) accent?
• What characteristics of our au pair would you like to have when you grow up?

For extra fun,

Interview your pets. (The kids can make up the answers and pretend to be the dog or cat!) Or,
Interview an inanimate object in your home! (Here we are with Refrigerator. Refrigerator, what crazy things do you know about our family that no on else knows?)

 Keep in mind:

Listening is an act of Love.

Happy memories are gifts we can give each other.

Families all have interesting stories.

Don’t let the schlep factor get in your way… it really isn’t hard, having some tech challenges to surmount can actually bring people together!

Whose story would you like to capture? Whose life would you like to celebrate?

Photo credits:
I love my Flip by Old Shoe Woman on Flickr
Learning how to video by Envision Good
Flip’s first Outingfrom The Advocacy Project

Only 4.5 weeks till Hanukkah, 8 weeks until Christmas, 9 until New Years… Time to think about weaving your Au Pair into your family’s celebrations.

You should think ahead, and talk with your au pair, because holidays can be important times to feel in or out of a family, acknowledged or overlooked, celebrated or taken for granted.

Here’s a question we received from an au pair’s point of view:

I’m a Christian Au Pair for a Muslin Family, with a question about celebrating holidays.

My birthday occurred in my first month with my family and so I didn’t expect a gift or celebration.
Recently, my host family celebrated their holiday Eid. I bought something for the kids, and I expected something from them on Eid, but they didn’t give me a gift on that holiday. Now Christmas is coming, a holiday that I celebrate as a Christian. In December, I’ll have been with my host family for 9 months.

Should I expect something for Christmas?

Dear AP -

At the very least, we should each other’s religious holidays.

Acknowledging a holiday means that we know the holiday is coming, talk about what it means to the person who celebrates it, and plan ahead so that the person who celebrates the holiday has time off to go to church, temple, the mosque, or elsewhere.

In contrast, celebrating the holiday means to get more involved. To me, that means to participate in the holiday, to decorate for it, cook the special foods, and participate in religious and non-religious rituals — like at Christmas, giving gifts. It might be too much to ask that we ‘celebrate’ other people’s religious holidays, since often the holidays don’t co-exist comfortably. (For example, celebrating Christmas is sometimes experienced by non-Christians as a kind of cultural imperialism.)

Gift-giving, oddly enough, seems to fall between the space of acknowledging and celebrating. Being given a gift recognizes the importance of the holiday to you, but also might feel like participating in it to them. Personally, I think that it would have been nice of them to include you in the celebration of their holiday — indeed, since you made an effort to celebrate with them, leaving you out was not very thoughtful. (But it happens, mostly because people don’t think ahead and/or pay attention). But I would not expect your host family to give you a gift– that might be too much ‘celebrating’ for them.

Instead, have a conversation with your host family about how you might want to celebrate Christmas.

• Ask in advance for the time off that you want. I think it is appropriate to have a religious holiday as an off duty day, doing your 45 hrs of on-duty time on other days.

• Be clear about if you want to go to church, and when, so that you have have transportation.

• Talk with your host parents about whether or not they would like you to share some of your Christmas traditions with them… for example, if they are a religious family, they might like to have you talk about what Christmas means to you spiritually. Or, they might prefer a more secular cultural exchange.

See this as an opportunity to clarify what you need and talk with your host family about what they might like. Plan in advance so you can accommodate each other.

Finally, consider that you might need to make plans to join with another au pair or two to do some celebrating in your off duty time…. you don’t want to miss out on the holiday (that could even get you homesick).

Host parents, what do you think? Au pairs? Please share….

Islamic Christmas Ornament by Kyle Design (only $14.95)