Humble Pie

It's been two and a half months and I've managed to not whine about my experience as an au-pair. This is mainly because I think it would shatter people's perception of me living in la-la land, putting real life on hold for a year, and prancing through open fields with my head towards the European sky.

Reality check.

Today after stroller-pushing, music-class-watching, diaper-changing, bath-giving, laundry-folding, and dish-washing, I couldn't help but step back from this life I have.

Before you run off thinking that I'm starting to sound strangely like another version of Cinderella (my personal favorite is the made-for-tv version starring Brandy. Nice touch, ABC...) I just want you to hear me out.

Now: humble pie. I don't think I understood this phrase until an embarrassingly late age, but nonetheless have come to know it pretty well in Germany. At the end of the day, here it does not matter in the slightest that I have a degree. It does not matter that I have friends back at home, or that I wrote a 40-page paper on Saturday Night Live, or that I scored a goal in my last real soccer game in 2006. Sometimes, I must admit, all that is a little hard to swallow.

Will I fold your laundry for you..?

...Do I have a choice?

Choosing to come here turns out to have meant so much more than choosing to be a four hour train ride from a new country. It means that during the week, I fill my time with normal life things... including a job that requires following instructions for menial and sometimes completely trivial tasks. It means people give me "the look" when I tell them that I'm an au-pair-- you would know it if you saw it; it's comparable to the face you would make when you talk to someone who is so excited about the stroller they just bought for their dog.

I don't want this to be misconstrued as me martyring myself in the name of childcare. In fact it may even be the opposite- The ironic beauty of humility is that you can't really have it if you talk about how you have it. I'm still fallin' short. I'm just trying to convey a bit of what I've learned through all this (and that includes *How To: Brush a 3 year old's hair sans pain and screaming*), and it's hard to do that without explaining that it's a bit...well, humbling. But yes, you can all stop scoffing now, I know and feel incredibly blessed that at the end of the day, I'm falling asleep in Germany.

Onward and upward.