My current living situation in Brissie

Hi guys, first of all sorry it took so long. My last post was when I was at the airport in Taiwan over three weeks ago, and a lot has happened since then. Life was a bit crazy for the first few weeks, so I haven't really been able to update you guys much. Now I'm settled in a bit more and I have some more free time I can finally tell you how I'm doing.




As I mentioned in my last update I was going to work as an au pair for a family in Brisbane while I studied. After a long trip from Taipei, 14 hours, I finally arrived in Brisbane. And off course I got here the weekend there was a heat wave and it was 37 degrees. The mom of the family I stayed with picked me up from the airport. When we got to the house I first unpacked my stuff and then we went to the grandparents house because they had a pool. They were really nice, I was just very tired because of the jetlag and being on a plane for 14 hours straight.

At night the jetlag wasn't too bad, I just got tired really early so went to bed around 9 and then I would wake up around 6. That was alright because than I could Skype with my family back home. After being with the family for a few days I didn't really felt like I fit in. It's hard to explain, I just didn't feel comfortable, but figured I should see how it would go for at least a week before mentioning anything. I mean, I have been an au pair before and I know that it takes some time to get used to the family, but it didn't feel right. About half way trough the first week the mom asked me how I was feeling etc, so I told her I didn't really feel comfortable, but I didn't know if it was the jetlag, or I had to get used to them some more. So we decided we should see how it went for the rest of the week and maybe I would feel better.

Some more days went by and I still didn't really feel better, the mom was really trying to make me feel more comfortable after our conversation and even offert to cook a dish from my country. But I just didn't feel happy, at the same time I felt really bad telling them it wasn't working for me, because I knew I was their last try on an au pair. Also the oldest child has autism and already got attached to me, and I felt bad for them.

I tried to talk to the mom over the weekend, but every time I tried she would be so nice to me and I would feel really bad. So in the end I decided to write it all down, I know face to face is probably better, but I just felt to bad that otherwise I probably wouldn't have said anything. I wrote everything down, and then send it to her when I wasn't there. She responded really nice, and said that it was alright, that she wasn't mad and she was just glad I was honest with her and gave her some notice. We agreed upon me staying with them for another two weeks and I would look for a room in a shared house.

Luckily that went really easy, I went to look at two places the next day. The first one looked really nice in the photo's but when I got there it didn't look like that at all. It had wholes in the wall, it was a mess and it was really dark inside, so I was in and out of there in 5 minutes. Then I had this other place to look at, that had very nice pictures online as well, and when I got there it actually turned out to actually look that way. The house was great, the room was nice as well, so I told the owner I wanted it and he send me the contract that same night.

The kitchen (photo's came from the website)

Another view of the kitchen (photo's came from the website)

Bathroom (photo's came from the website)

This is was my room looked like before I moved in

The house is quite big, as in now its just me and the owner, a German guy, living here. But there are two girls moving in tomorrow, and then there are two other moving in later this week. In the area downstairs they are making some more rooms, so there will probably be even more people. I think it would be fun, although it will be interesting to see how we are gonna share one bathroom between all these girls haha.

Last Thursday the mom of the family took me to Target to get some things, because as you can see there is a bed there but that was about it. So we got a whole load of stuff that we loaded in the car. Moving day was Saturday 7 February and the mom dropped me off at the place with all my things. It took me the whole day to unpack and put everything where I wanted it, but it's done now and I'm very happy with the result.

I decided to go for a bit of a beach theme, so I choose yellow and blue as the main colors. Everything is from either Target or Kmart, it was in the box my mom send me.

I really love these little shelving units, especially the pineapple ;) I think it looks really organized, so hopefully I can keep it that way.

I really loved the painting, and it really fitted the theme I was going for. I'm planning to probably put two big collages above each of the shelving units with pictures of friends a family, but considering I don't have a job right now I will do that later.

I'm not super happy with this side of the room ride now, because it doesn't match the rest. I'm thinking about buying a decent wardrobe at some point, so that I will have some more storage space as well. And I got all my make up back, because I let my mom send it all to me haha :)

I feel so much better now, and am glad that I talked to the host family and we figured it all out. I'm still going to be babysitting for them every now and again so that's really nice. Sometimes it just doesn't work, but that doesn't mean there has to be this whole drama about leaving. I think it is more important to be happy, than to be miserable because you want to make someone else happy.