Here are some thoughts and stories from my first week or so. Warning: I make NO promises on them being in a sensical order, or more than just fragments of thoughts.
The first few days were REALLY rough on my sleep cycle. I only moved over one time zone, but that small change, on top of the fact that I hadn't been sleeping due to nerves and excitement, plus getting sick on my second night, I was completely messed up. One day, I'd wake as late as 10, the next, 5 in the morning. I was taking naps at random points during the day. It was just completely screwed up! Luckily, I managed to get that under control after... maybe about three days.. and now I'm back to a pretty good cycle of being in bed reading by about 10, and generally waking up between 7:30 and 8. Without an alarm, which makes me REALLY happy. Well, that's a lie- the night I stayed up WAY too late finishing a book, I set an alarm so it wouldn't screw up my pattern again. That was a long, tired day on four hours of sleep!
This time has been all about getting used to the family's schedule and lifestyle, and seeing where I will fit into everything.
I spend a lot of time with the 7 year old son, Hakan. We've spent HOURS building lego sets! We have a pretty good system going, where as he's working on putting together one step, I'll be finding the pieces for the next. He really likes Star Wars legos, which I saw as a really good sign, until I realized that he didn't know anything about the movies. He said they were too confusing, and couldn't even tell me which trilogy he watched first! This kid was trying to convince me the Ewoks were the bad guys. I mean really. I suppose for someone who doesn't know the movies, his logic was decent, though- he remembered the clones being with the Jedi in II and III, and therefore thought the stormtroopers were the good guys, at least in that set of Legos.
He and I are also supposed to work together on his English homework, of course. He gets one worksheet every weekend, and is supposed to read every night. He brings a picture book home from school with him. The one he is working on now is really difficult, and we can only read three or four pages at a time. And he HATES doing it. So I am hard at work brainstorming some external motivators and other ideas to not make reading such a chore for him, as well as activities that help with reading comprehension.
Ipek, the daughter who lives at home right now, is 16 and while we get along really well, the difference in our age shows when we talk about high school. My high school experience centered around marching band, decathlon, and not much else. An Island birthday party here and there. But I have heard stories that would rival 110 gossip, and I cannot get over the fact that this is happening while these girls are in high school! When they asked what the drama in my life was right now, they couldn't believe I didn't have any. After a few minutes of "really? NOTHING?" I begrudgingly reached back a few years and covered the VERY basics of drama from freshman, sophomore, and junior year in a total of 5 or 6 sentences.
Another time the age different showed was when we were picking out a movie to watch. Everyone knows I haven't seen many movies, but she and her friend picked up "Project X" as an option and could not BELIEVE I had never seen it- "Have you EVER been a teenager?" First of all, no, not really. Not in the way that movie seems to think teenagers behave. Second of all, I was probably 22 when that movie came out...
On Friday, the kids were off school, so I went with Hakan and 2 people who work for the family to one of the palaces in the city. It was beautiful, of course, though I was outvoted in the language of the (compulsory) tour so I had no idea what anything was. Hakan was supposed to be translating for me, but that didn't last very long.
So now, I'll really be trying to dive in and fit myself into how everything works around here. It's a big adjustment for everyone, since they've never had an au pair before, and it will take some time until everything is running smoothly, but I am very confident that this is a wonderful place and family for me to be with right now!
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