All posts tagged: Making Friends

One Week in Siem Reap (I Think We’re Stuck?)

Oops! We loved Siem Reap and so we stayed a week! And it took us five days before we could compose ourselves and get to Angkor Wat. I can’t say enough great things about Siem Reap. Perhaps it was a relative return to civilization (after Laos) but the social atmosphere, availability of commodities, amazing markets, handicrafts, charm, cafes, sense of social sustainability, friendly locals and curb appeal really wowed. Half pipes on roof top bars, buzzing Pub Street, food alleys, $1 tuk-tuk rides, corn on the cob stands, French bakeries, $9.00 bottles of Smirnoff Vodka and of course, Angkor What?! (and Angkor Wat). Riddle me this, what isn’t there to love about Siem Reap? That’s rhetorical.  We had arrived in Siem Reap just before midnight after a 14 or so hour bus ride and we eager to catch some zzz’s. We relocated the next day to an unremarkable hotel, located to the immediate left of the roof top bar entrance. After a few days of waking up to incredibly loud construction within the building we …

My Apologies! I Know I’ve Been AWOL Lately

 I was too exhausted to even try to order food in German and just sat at a table and tried to stay awake long enough for my food to arrive. Best doener of my life. I probably ended up spilling ¼ of it and made a terrible mess, rather fitting for the hot mess I had become. I know, I know, I know!  I’ve been totally AWOL in the last little while.  For about a week and a half I sincerely did not have much to write about or was just lacking inspiration.  Plus, the weather was grey and depressing, sigh. And then things got a little busy and then well…this weekend “happened.”  Quotations are denoting the magnitude of my ‘night’ in HanGover. Good lord. I’ve run into quite the posse of fantastic people in Hanover.  Networking through facebook, ex-patriot social sites, friends of friends, we have created quite the conglomerate of international young adults. Most of us girls are au pairs, with the exception being Lorna, now an ex-au-pair but dating a great German guy and …

Dirdls & Steins

Part of fully integrating into foreign cultures is obtaining a social life. This could be the single greatest fear of a potential au pair: “Am I going to be lonely for the next x months?? Will the children be the height of my social interaction? The house…a prison?” If you’re considering au pairing, you have to accept the fact that you may be sans-friends for, well, the first month (at least). Depending on the networking your host family is able to perform, you may be luckier than others. Last night, I was fortunate enough to be invited to a birthday party of a friend of a friend. Bavarian themed, I donned a Dirdl  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirndl] and jumped head first into what was bound to be a long night of trying to digest German.  Luckily, this was not so much the case and I was pleased to discover that Germans know A LOT of English and are quite happy to speak it.  I was even more pleased when I met another au pair! Phenomenal, this is the best possible scenario for …