Swiss Babes

Get ready, folks! Here it is! What you all have been waiting for!

Finally, my blog on life, love, and all the drama in the fabulous town of Maur, Switzerland. I am working through my third week in Maur as an au pair for the Berger family. I thought to start out my blog, I should provide you, dear readers, with a glimpse of the many different personalities that this family entails.

To start with, the "Swiss Babes" include Nick and Jaime, who are (as of this Friday, I think) 7 year old twins. They are fraternal in appearance as well as in personalities and demeanor. By this I mean that Nick is the one I can trust. Not to say that Jaime is a little devil but he generally is just a little bit out of control, pretty much all the time. For example, last Friday I was in charge of getting the kids off to school. The school bus comes around 8 a.m. and I usually have them out there completely ready to go about 5 mins before. For whatever reason, this Friday morning Jaime decides to throw the biggest temper tantrum I've ever seen in my life and runs upstairs into the attic while the bus is waiting outside for him! I tried coaxing him out for about 5 minutes, without any gain since Jaime refuses to listen to me speak English half the tme when he is not throwing a tantrum-let alone when he is screaming his head off at me, then realized how ridiculous it all was . . . time to bring in the big guns. I forced myself to wake up Christian (the father who usually sleeps in because he works late) to practically throw Jaime out the door. Needless to say, no one in this situation was very happy that morning.

As I said earlier, Nick is usually the kid that I can trust to be obedient and honest and do things on his own without me telling him 29 times like I have to do with the other two. Unless it comes to watching t.v. or Harry Potter or eating only sweets (we are very similar). However, he too almost sent me down to drown myself in the lake in the backyard just yesterday. How can a 6 year old push me so far over the edge, you ask? By locking himself in the trunk of a car that has a key to the lock of the trunk that DOES NOT WORK! I have no idea how he managed to get the trunk opened, squeeze himself in there, and actually closed. But I do know that he definitely managed it somehow. After a few minutes of trying to turn the key every which way I could, I soon had all three kids literally freaking out on me. Jaime was crying and running around, so scared for his brother. Nick started crying in the back of the trunk because he realized how stupid a decision that was. And Sanja, who was the most calm child was still almost in tears herself, watching helplessly. After a good 10 or 15 minutes, Nick was finally able to push the cover of the trunk up from the inside and crawl out over the backseat. Of course, at this point we were also 10 minutes late for his appointment that we were headed to in the first place.

Now for the last "Swiss Babe" I will mention today. Sanja is five years old and has an extremely strong personality. Probably so she can keep up with her brothers. She does not like being told no and is quite the little bargainer. If I say "5 more minutes to play Sanja," she will undoubtedly try to swindle at least a few more minutes. However, we also have a lot in common: we both love high heels, we both love jewlery, we both love princesses, and we both love makeup. If there wasn't a 17 year difference, we could probably be best friends! Sanja is also the one who will consistently speak English to me. Where the boys usually don't unless I force them to, Sanja is much better with English, probably just because she practices more.

I could go on and on about the crazy and ridiculous things these children have done but perhaps I will save those for later posts . . . I just wanted to give you a little teaser of what I can expect from this family in the coming months. Also, below is a picture of the house that I live in and a picture from the city of Zurich (about 15 mins from Maur) when I was checking things out there with Heidi a few weekends ago.