EurAuPair

Every year thousands of young people from all over the world embark on a special journey by becoming au pairs. Leaving behind the familiarity of their homeland for as long as one year, au pairs travel to distant countries, where they are welcomed into another culture as part of their host family.

To reward au pairs for the wonderful job they do caring for children, EurAupair has announced its 1st Annual EurAupair Au Pair of the Year in 2011.

Melanie was nominated by her host family, the Cameron family from Pennsylvania.

Melanie's host family story

I found myself saying more than once to friends and family, if EurAupair had an au pair of the year award, our au pair would surely be deserving of the honor. Thank you for this opportunity to share our wonderful experience with an extraordinary young woman: Melanie Bluhm.

We are the Cameron family from Wayne, PA with three young daughters, four-year old twins Chloe and Sophia and two year old Hannah. Melanie joined our family in August 2009. Although she departed in September 2010, she has never left our hearts. She is the best advertisement conceivable for why a family should welcome an au pair into their home.

Melanie arrived a few weeks before my husband was hospitalized after being told he had suffered a stroke. She handled the situation with competence and a maturity beyond her years. She immediately took charge of the household and took care of all of us, not just the children. One of the things I love most about Melanie was I rarely had to ask her to do anything that she had not already thought of and accomplished on her own.

Melanie had many advantages coming into her au pair year. She had several years of childcare experience, studied early childhood development, and completed several internships with young children. Her experience had earned her a par experience status, and she exceeded our expectations. She made taking care of three children three and under look easy! Any parent of young children can attest that it’s far from easy.

One of the more extraordinary things about Melanie was the deep interest she took in our children’s welfare. Melanie helped us identify pre-ADHD behaviors in one of our daughters, and attended counseling sessions with us to work with behavior modification. Her attentiveness and ability to recognize this condition, not only helped us get our daughter the help she needs, but also helped us better understand her needs, dramatically improving our relationship.

We learned a lot about German culture, particularly East German culture from our time with Melanie. She brought us German Christmas decorations as host gifts, made weinerschnitzel, taught our children German songs, and gave my husband an appreciation for Soccer World Cup.

Melanie’s love and compassion reached beyond our immediate family, enriching my elderly mother’s life. It was her idea to visit my mom weekly at her assisted living community with my youngest while the other girls attended preschool. They would often go on outings to the grocery store or the local café. My mother remains eternally grateful for Melanie’s thoughtfulness to include her in outings with the children.

In addition to her competent care, consistent discipline and loving but firm approach, Melanie is very creative. She wrote two stories in the form of graphic novels about our family, illustrated with pictures. At her farewell party, she had the children put together a puppet show set to Louis Armstrong’s Wonderful World. Her great sense of humor made her a joy to be around.

Now at university studying social work, she is on her way to a successful career working with children. We’re so glad she chose to help build her career as an exceptional care-giver and honorary member of our family.

Before Melanie won the award, she, too, had to write an essay about her experiences of being an au pair.

My American Dream

When I started thinking about being an au pair - exactly two years ago - I knew it would be an exceptional experience. But back then I didn't have an idea how exceptional! I had already worked with children for five years at that point and was almost done with studying to become a preschool teacher. Quite a bit of experience you would think! At least this is what I thought when I read the first email sent from an American family with three little children under three years – two year old twins Chloe and Sophia and 9 month old baby Hannah. No problem? Well, we'll see about that.

I liked the Cameron family from Wayne, PA immediately and that impression improved with every email and soon followed phone calls. I was more than excited when we matched! They were the first family that contacted me and I'm sure I could not have done better. But let's come to that later. On August 24, 2009 I left my little German village to fly to the United States! Unbelievable!

After an awesome and pretty much sleepless week in New York City (well, it doesn't get its nickname from nowhere, does it?) I finally met the family I would spend the next twelve months with! I had always been a pretty calm person. Neither exams nor having a whole bunch of preschool kids by myself the first time could make me feel too nervous. On this Friday afternoon, sitting in a bus to Philadelphia, PA I felt more nervous than I would have doing five exams at the same time – unprepared! Talking to the other au pairs I realized I wasn't alone with that feeling. That helped. I remembered like it was yesterday when my host dad picked me up at the airport pretending my two suitcases were not heavy at all. Well, his heavy breathing and deep red face said something else but not even Hulk himself could have lifted a girls one-year luggage without trouble. My host dad talked to me in the car – probably about Hulk, I don't know. I barely heard yes and no. Before I came to the US I thought my English was pretty good. I guess the reason for that could have been that I'd never talked to an English person before. Smiling and nodding were supposed to give the impression that I understood what he was talking about. I don't think he bought it. 

To welcome me my new host family gave a little party with close friends of the family and two other Au pairs present. It helped a lot to have other girls around who had experienced the same – leaving their home country, family, friends and everything they knew to find something completely new and unknown! “My” girls and my hostmum had not been there yet, it was only shortly after nap time. I was still more nervous than ever before in my life. Then I heard a car in a driveway and little voices. There they were! Very excited I went outside to say hello to my new family and with a huge relief I realized that they were just as nice as I expected! Chloe and Sophia, both still two at this time were pretty shy in the beginning and 10 month old Hannah was asleep.

During dinner I didn't talk very much – an experience my hostfamily would not have again. For dessert we had chocolate brownies – my favorite! And then I did something I would not have done with many people in this universe – I shared my brownie with beautiful baby Hannah and I did it with the most possible pleasure. From that moment on we became friends. It took me a little bit longer with the big girls. It should happen the next day when we played outside in the yard. The girls were playing in the sand and I asked them to cook a mud pie for me! They were probably wondering why somebody would want to eat mud pie but they started cooking. After a while they did not only prepare mud pie but also mud hamburgers, mud hot dogs and mud ice cream. It was delicious! (On this point I have to say that they actually ate way more healthy than that but mud green beans were hard to make). After that nice mud lunch (that luckily and also surprisingly nobody ate for real) I became friends with Chloe and Sophia. This day was almost 18 months ago and I can look back at a most wonderful, eventful and sometimes a little bit challenging year.

Taking care of three girls isn't easy and there are not many college courses that can prepare you for that if you're only 21 years old. But not only that these three little girls were the most amazing and special girls you could imagine; I also had great hostparents who did two things. They showed me their appreciation for what I did and they also managed to make me feel like a full family member and they did that so well that I never suffered homesickness or ever regretted my decision. They included me in every family activity and vacation and I never felt like a guest or an employee but always like somebody they wanted to be there. I've met many au pairs during that year and because of that I know all these things are nothing to be taken for granted. We shared hobbies we had already in common like movies and books and also found new things we could do (and I'm very proud to announce that I made an American watch soccer). But besides that my hostparents supported me by giving me the opportunity to make all I could out of my experience. I saw and did everything I wanted to – little things like a drive in movie and big things like a trip to Miami Beach. They supported me with everything I needed for my travel month and I was able to visit places I would never have dreamed of two years before. It was very hard to say goodbye to my new family, my new friends and America and in place of all the nervousness and excitement I felt the day I arrived I felt deep sadness the day I left. But I knew this goodbye will not be forever and instead of being sad I started to be thankful for the wonderful time I spent in the United States and for the great and lovely people I can still call family.

In my opinion the au pair program is a great opportunity for young people and I can absolutely recommend it to everybody. Since my return to Germany I've been supporting the German agency by being an interviewer for au pair candidates who have made the same decision I made two years ago – to go to the US and live my dream!