the start

Hi there, first I want to introduce myself.
My name is Riët Berkhout and I’m 22 years old. I live in the Netherlands in a small village up north called Diever.

In this blog I want to take you along in my au pair journey.

I think I started this journey in September/October 2019. I started with looking around on the Cultural Care (from now on CC) website and signing up for an au pair meeting. After the meeting I was even more exited! After that everything went fast. I finished my profile and I started talking with families since 16th of October. I think I talked with something about 3 or 4 families before I found my perfect family. I skyped with 1 family and the other families I e-mailed with. Around the end of November I got the connection request from my future host family. We started talking and we set up a time to have a video call. Our first call was on December 13th and I was so lovely. It felt so familiar. I immediately felt like we have known each other forever. The second call was on the 20th off December and in that call we decided we want to match. And on the 23th of December we match and I became their future au pair.  It was the best Christmas present ever.

Since the match we started talking on a regular base, I think we call every 2 weeks. I feel blessed that I have this lovely family to talk with every time and that I can look forward to meeting them. I got an email saying I was going to travel to the training school on May 11th and then I should travel to my host family on May 15th in Seattle.

After the match I started taking more steps forward. I had to send all my documents to the CC office in my home country. After that was done they send me some documents witch I needed for my visa. I took me some hours but I finally got through the visa process and I could make an appointment. I chose to have my appointment on the 24the of march. I was really excited about that because if I had my visa everything was getting so much closer.

In the beginning of march I found out that the training school was going to close because of the corona virus. It’s better to close the school because there are so many people going there from so many different places it was better to decide to close it. I felt really sad at first but I know the organisation Is doing its best to make everything as planed but a little different. They are trying to make a virtual school so you can do your training online an fly to your host family on Friday.

2 weeks before my appointment visa I got a really sad e-mail saying that because of the current situation with the corona virus and all the embassy was closing and they cancelled all appointments. I was really sad about it because that meant that I couldn’t go on my planed date. I immediately called my CC office and explained what was happening. They told me to stay calm and that if it reopens i had to make an appointment again.
on the 23th of march I got a call from my CC office saying the embassy was taking new appointments but only in June for now. That meant I was going to leave more than a month later then planed. I made a new appointment for the 11the of June. After I made the appointment I send a message to my host mom saying when my new appointment is and she said it’s no problem. The current au pair is there till the end of May and the kids will go to after school care or there will be a nanny for the time. I feel really blessed that they do this for me. I can’t wait to meet them in person and share at least a whole year with them.

For now I’m not totally sure when I will travel to the USA but for sure it will be in June after I had my visa appointment.

For now this is the end for today. If I have any new updates I’ll share them here. I hope you enjoyed reading my blog and I hope you will come over here to read the next one.