GAP YEAR IN CHINA(free study& living in china)

I have finished my stay of 6 months living in a Guangzhou family as an AU Pair. I really enjoyed from this experience whatever from the school or the family and made amazing friends.
Guangzhou is a beautiful cities and quite close to Shenzhen and HongKong which made me several trips to visit there. My family was great, the host father is a Chinese American and the host mother is a local people. I learned Chinese from Normal Univeristy of Guangzhou and the agency made it. I also tried to learn some cantonese from the host mother and found all these language are intersting. I hope I can keep learnning since I found an online learning site when Im home.
However I recommend you au pair job in China if you are really interested of learning Cinese.

I have been an Au pair in a Shenzhen family for 6 moths. Now I finished and will back Moscow for the Christmas.
For the 6 months I studied in Shenzhen University which was paid by the agency. (have to say if you prefer light study do not choose this university. I had to attend school from Monday to Friday and each day took 3 hours course of Chinese. :( )
After all I assume this experience was great and I really learned from China.

I have spent my whole summer in China as an au pair. I really enjoyed this period of time. I wish I can move to China after I graduated cause my boyfriend's studying no in Donghua Univ. (You believe it? we met in Shanghai, haha!)
Whatever, the family's great, the children's noisy but I like it (like my real energetic family in Lyon), the environment in Shanghai is better than what I thought it could be. (I didn't need to wear mask all day)

I have been an AU Pair in a Shanghai family for 6 months. I started to seek a Japanese family from Nov of 2013, then I noticed that the Japanese people are kind of conservative and are not willing to host a FOREIGN AU Pair, so I choose the country of China in stead since I learned Japan just heritaged the culture and art from China. (Which I choose to believe in)
I applied the tofriend Shanghai program online. It didn't take long to get myself a family and then I flew directly to Shanghai. I have to say the family was great, and we were quite getting along well when I stayed there. But as a reference, there also have a chance you meet a family with the unpleasant journey. (You may notice as an au pair if you failed to make a change of host family you may need to afford your own trip back home) So I deem myself as lucky. I still keep texting with the family on we chat even I left them for 7 months. I knew they plan to visit me this october, that is amazing!

Well, it had been 2 months since I hit the land of China. I am living in Shanghai with a wonderful family of 4, 2 kids of course, Emma and Victor. I am not good at writing long in English but since the tofriend agency did me a great favor I will try. Thanks to tofriend (au pair in china).
I don't want to compare European countries to here, almost everything's different, but people are nice. My friend who worked in Beijing told me it differs from cities. No wonder China's big enough, Beijing to Shanghai like far as 2 countries in Europe.
The Chinese food, I used chopsticks before in my country so it's not a problem for me, but the bones! It is really hard for me to pick the bones out from my food, I tried several time now I give up. It is ok for me just to have some meat without bones. The Chinese noodles are great, they had noodles in so many different types which is awesome. I like fried noodles and steamed one. However I would say I enjoyed the food here.
The mandarin. I just knew mandarin's the most popular Chinese in China. Now I am learning in the Engineering university here in Shanghai which is paid by the family (thru the agency), as a beginner, I admit it could be harder than Norwegian but I am still trying. In my class there have French, Russian, American and lots of students from other countries. They are from different files like models, wives, white collars. I wish I can continue study after my program finished.
The AU Pair Host family. I am with a family of 4, the ages of children are 4 and 7, so I have all afternoon work here. I play with them and speak English with them, like easy. Sometimes they made me headache but it is ok since I have 2 younger brothers back home. The parents are great they always consider me. I wish to be more invisible when they are concerning about me and that's true.
Well some of you may wonder why I choose shanghai, I'd say when I tried to be an au pair I was open to choices. My people were always saying things about china, and I suddenly found aupairinchina.org and applied online. I think I am lucky enough than my peers that I really enjoyed the life here.

I am from France and au paired to China for 8 months. I enjoyed my journey. first I was au paired to a family in Tongxiang which is a town near Shanghai. I was in that family for 2 months then something not happy happened between me and the host family so quited from them. In this period, tofriend helped me to locate in a temporary place in Shanghai and matched me with a Shanghai family which I liked quite much.
Then I keep continued to be an AU Pair in Shanghai for 6 months. In this family everything seemed ok and I was put a near by university by tofriend which I can have mandarin lessons for full 3 half days per week. I really loved the learning environment there in the university finally I got the HSK 3 level. at the month of Aug, I travel ed to Korea and Japan with the family. Then I finished the program and went back home. After this I can say I really be an adult now! I can handle so many things I never thought I would. I am studying in 3 university and wish I could have chance to visit the family again. Thanks for tofriend. Thanks David, Vicky, Yu and my 2 host families! I will recommend this program to all who want to au pair to China as me.