Blog 2: Meet my Host Family!

My host family!

In this blog I am going to introduce you to my host family, the family where I will live for at least 1 year. I will also tell you why I chose this family, Rebecca (my oldest host kid) will tell you something about her family and my host mom will tell you why they chose me as their next au pair.

Who is my host family?
Host dad: Rick
Host mom: Hanna
Host kids:
Rebecca, 9 years old
Molly, 6 years old
Traci, 2 years old but will be 3 years old 1 week before I arrive.

My oldest host kid has written a text describing her family:

My Family
By Rebecca

My dad is funny, hard working, & loving. My mom is a Doctor where she works on giving out the COVID 19 vaccine, & also is hard working. My sister Molly is in Kindergarten and Loves gymnastics, she is smart & loving. The youngest sister Traci is a funny monkey, & has 3 giraffes which she calls “Raffies”. Our dog Charlie is cute, (a little nippy), full of energy, & playful. I Love chapter books, movie nights, my favorite subjects are math, and art, & I like to do sports like: swimming, roller skating, sikking, Nintendo Switch, golf, and tennis. Lastly we love spending time together!

Dear Rebecca, thank you for your nice description! I can't wait until we finally see each other in real life and do a lot of fun things together !!

Now here's a text from my Host Mom Hanna:

We are so excited to welcome Kaylee as our next Au Pair. After having our 3rd daughter almost 3 years ago, we welcomed our first Au Pair into our home. Kaylee will be our 3rd Au Pair and we can't wait to have her join us. When we first read her profile about her experience in gymnastics and her love for travel, we were excited to see if she would be a good fit. Once we had the chance to connect with her, we were impressed with her maturity and her warmth as she quickly engaged each of our 3 girls.

Our oldest daughter Rebecca is 9, Molly” is 6, and Traci is 2.5 We are a busy, loving family always up for the next adventure, COVID permitting of course. Together, we enjoy delicious family meals, spending time at local sports games or community events, watching plays and movies, hosting dinner parties and playdates, and being active outdoors in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. We keep busy with lots of lake time in the summer, skiing in the winter, and are known to really celebrate all holidays big and small!

Travel has been a big part of our history before kids and it is something we continue to enjoy as a family. Rick spent a year in Italy during university and Hanna spent 6 months during college studying in London. Jessica also spent 2 summers in South Africa doing medical volunteer work. We can't wait to have Kaylee join us in Washington in May!

Hanna, Rick, Rebecca, Molly, Traci.

Hanna, thank you for your kind words! I am very happy with you as my host family and you know how excited I am to join you in May!

Matching Process

Once your au pair profile is online, host families can contact you if they are interested in you, they will send you a request that you can accept or decline based on their profile that you will see. That profile contains a lot of information about, for example, who the family is, how many children they have, the ages, what they like to do in their free time, what they expect from you, etc.

If you accept the connection request, you can email, text and call with the family.

If you decline the connection request, the family will be removed from your profile.

I was lucky and received many requests from families who live in the most wonderful places, such as New York and California. Which is amzaing of course, but the profile never appealed enough to me . there was always something that didn't really appeal to me, things like too many children, the ages of the children, strict religious beliefs, certain expectations or the way they see an au pair. So I declined all requests I received for one of the reasons just mentioned.

And then... on November 15th, I got a connection request from the Clown family.

On Sunday morning, November 15, I received the connection request at 6:19 AM, not much later (since I always wake up early haha!) I opened the email and then I could already read the first part of their message to me, I was immediately enthusiastic. I quickly opened my profile so that I could see and read everything. To my surprise, everything appealed to me... their photos, the way of writing, the description of the kids, the ages.

I became more enthusiastic by the second, which according to a friend who was with me at the time was also clearly noticeable. I immediately accepted the connection request!

That day I went out to do Christmas shopping,  so I decided to look further at their profile as soon as I got home. All day long I could think of almost nothing but this family. Where with other connection requests I always had one or more things that appealed to me less, I could not have found 1 thing in this family that I did not like or liked less.

When I was in the car on the way home I already received the first message from them, they were happy that I had accepted their request and wanted to get to know me better. No sooner said than done. We first had a lot of contact via email and WhatsApp. Our call appointments were moved 2x due to circumstances, but on December 13th Hanna and I finally video called  for the first time, a super fun and enthusiastic conversation followed. We both had so much to tell and had a lot of questions for each other, so there was no uncomfortable silence. In fact, we got along so well that Jessica wanted to show me to the girls and to Rick, while normally she never shows the children during the first call. A good sign!

That first meeting was really nice, the girls were so enthusiastic, they immediately had questions for me and wanted to show me all kinds of things. In the days that followed, we called a few more times so that I really had plenty of time to chat with the girls and get to know each other better.

After a lot of contact via WhatsApp, mail and video calling, the family asked me to match during a video call. To match, you must send a request through the website, which you can then accept or decline.

Despite the fact that I was very enthusiastic and actually knew from the very first moment that we were the right match, I wanted to wait a while. I hadn't been able to actually speak to another family yet because I had always rejected connection requests from other families. To be 1000% sure that this was the right family for me, I wanted to wait 2 more weeks to see if I got any other requests and to see what I thought about them. I got those requests too, but none of the family could match the Clown family. On December 31st I was talking to Jessica again on WhatsApp and when I mentioned that I had received connection requests, but that I had declined them, Hanna said that they really think we are the right match and that they are patiently trying to wait. To which I replied that I am convinced that they are the right family and that I will not be able to find a better match.

The prospect

As it looks now, I am still flying to America on May 28th.

I have a lot of contact with other (future) au pairs in WhatsApp groups, on facebook and on Instagram. There are girls (and a few boys) who have been waiting for over a year  already before they can leave because of COVID. Their appointment at the consulate is continuously canceled, so they're not able to get a visa. Until now, all appointments at the consulate until March 2 have been canceled and some have had to make a new appointment for April or later! Very sad for them and I hope they will be able to get their visa soon and to finally go to their host families!

Fingers crossed that my appointment will still take place on March 22, otherwise this could cause me a lot of delay as well. 

In 2 weeks I will start with my online training school. You will learn about legislation, first aid and many other things to prepare for your life in America and also you will get to know other international au pairs. I will be attending trainingschool from 5 to 10 March, they will be very busy days. March 11 I have a "Get ready" workshop, which is in Dutch. This will be about the first months in America and you will get to know other Dutch au pairs.

This was the introduction of my host family!

So this was already my second blog. A lot longer than the previous blog but I hope you enjoyed meeting my host family! Also I am curious about your first impression of my host family! Do you think we're a great fit? Let me know in a comment!

Fun fact: from today it will take 100 days before I fly to America! The countdown has begun!!

Until then, we keep in touch a lot and even send cards! How cute!

Until the next blog!!
Love Kaylee

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