Updatey post is Updatey

[fadagaski]

Gah, so much has gone on in the past two weeks!

So far in Switzerland:

• Went on a cable car up the mountain on Sunday with Grannie, which was splendiforous. Röstis are delicious. Traditional giant cowbells are loud and oddly percussive.
  
• Zurich street party was pretty awesome, and it was great to meet some other au pairs. Next time I come back to Zurich for the festival I'll have to dress for the occasion.
  
• I live in the lee of a 4000' mountain (about the height of Yosemite National Park), which is fabulous, but my baby mountain was nothing compared to seeing the vast stretch of the Alps spanning the horizon from a supermarket car park.
  
• The girls are much more agreeable when they're not playing up for mama's attention. We're going to be making necklaces tonight for mama and papa.
  
• Intensive German classes are far from intensive. In fact, they are downright boring. Teacher gave me a sheet on articles but said they were probably "too complicated" for me, but her tone of voice was so patronising that I'm determined to figure them out by next week.
  
• Riding a too-big bike up and down long hills is tiring but not bad, per se. Falling off said bike and then having two-week-old phone run over by a car probably counts as bad. But at least it was the phone and not my head.
  
• My sister is coming to stay on the 28th August! This is AWESOME, as I can take her to Liechtenstein and Geneva and Lucerne and Zurich, even though I'm still working normal shifts. Unless easyJet royally fucked up the booking, which is quite likely because the website was being an absolute pain in the ass.
  
• I got chatted up by a Pakistani man whilst standing outside the Cathedral. He then accompanied me 'home' (random place I walked) and was generally interesting, but a little strange. I thought people in Switzerland were supposed to be reticient, but so far I've had about 5 complete strangers start nattering to me in German. I must look very authentically Swiss, or something.

Thoughts on Luxembourg:

• Boy really made my first au pair experience easy. It could've been ten times more stressful than it was, thanks to him.
  
• Luxembourg was tough for me because
  1. I had to get off my high horse and clean up on someone else's command, and
     
  2. I had to adapt myself entirely to someone else's style of parenting. Which is, y'know, par for the course, but here the parenting style is very similar to mine, so it's much easier to slot in. I'm just a bit superfluous on days mama is home because the girls want her to do everything. They're clingy like that.
  
  
• I don't want to be a single parent. For a time there (about 48 hours) I think I was pregnant, which is pretty freaking scary in hindsight. I don't want to be solely responsible for the health and wellbeing of my own child; I want to parent in partnership. Tandem parenting, if you will.
  
• Don't argue with the SatNav, even if you know it's being completely stupid. You'll only end up driving across the Belgian border when you should've been heading to Dudelange.
  
• It's important to me to have my time off as TIME OFF. My emotional wellbeing is greatly damaged by a lack of privacy and ability to lock myself away.
  
• I did cry when the train pulled away from Luxembourg station and I waved goodbye.

Cliffnotes: Luxembourg was educational, Switzerland is so far extremely fun.

Comments

[shei.livejournal.com]

Yay! So good you're having a great time!

I don't want to be a parent at all. Maybe a dog so if it annoys me I can make pseudo bacon out of it.

[fadagaski.livejournal.com]

Well, today I lost the eldest girl when I wasn't home in time for her return from Kindergarten. I found her in 5 minutes, but it was fucking scary nonetheless.

...

[shei.livejournal.com]

I can imagine. She ok?

[fadagaski.livejournal.com]

Yeah, she went over to a neighbour's house. I feel sick with guilt. Gaaah.