I'll start by saying this was my first time au pairing, so I can't speak on how Global Youth differs from its competition, but I can say that I had an incredible experience.
I mean, I hardly even knew if I wanted to be an au pair when I first got into contact with Mars, the agent who worked with me before and during my stay. I was coming off some extended time away from home, and I was realizing I wasn't ready to be home long-term yet and I wasn't ready to go back to school. That's how I found myself applying to an au pair website, and it was actually Mars that got into contact with me. He's an efficient man, and it wasn't soon after we got into contact that I had my first video interview with a family.
The family and I immediately hit it off from the start. The sort of connection where any worries I may have had about moving halfway across the world to China disappeared. It was especially easy when Mars was able to make the whole visa process as painless as possible (I'm from the middle of nowhere in Northern Canada, so getting to the Chinese Embassy was honestly the hardest part haha).
Before I knew it I was arriving in Chengdu, which felt a bit insane at the time. Grace, my host mom, greeted me at the airport with her daughter, and Mars, but I was honestly in such a shock that I don't think I said hardly a thing the whole drive home.
I say home because it really does feel like a home to me now. I have bonded so much with Grace's entire family, even her extended family, despite the clear language barrier. Many members of her family only speak Sichuanese or Mandarin. Grace herself speaks quite good English, and her daughter spoke enough when I arrived that we weren't starting on square one, but her son, only a year and a half years old at the time, hardly wanted anything to do with someone he couldn't understand or speak to haha. He's a pretty shy kid, but now he loves spending time with me and we've both learned a lot of each other's languages in the process. In general, I'd say my Chinese is still terrible haha, but I now can tell you the names of every construction vehicle and car brand in the language. I'm not even sure I could have told you what a backhoe loader was in English before I was faced with this child's exuberant interest in vehicles.
Grace really wanted the kids to practice English organically, so we had no lesson plans. I just acted as an older sibling essentially, something that was quite natural to me as the oldest of three. I followed the family to wherever the family went, and Grace was a very enthusiastic tour guide. She knows so much history and takes so much pride in her culture that I learned so much in her company. We travelled a lot of Sichuan Province, I got to see Chongqing (a long-time dream of mine), Guangxi Province (the karsts are actually insane), and Guangdong Province as well. We spent the entire month of July in Thailand which was absolutely amazing.
And while I had of course expected to grow close to the children, I hadn't thought Grace and I would have so much in common. We like the same books and the same genres of tv shows, so often after the kids went to bed, we stayed up chatting and reading or watching something. Normally this was accompanied by a "midnight snack" which was actually more like a gigantic bucket of crayfish or enough shaokao to feed five.
The connections I have made here are lifelong. I could truly speak about my experience here for days.
Throughout all of this, Mars has always been there. I think we've even become pretty good friends. I went to see Gladiator II with him and his girlfriend right before I left. China is hardly foreigner-friendly, and there is a lot of bureaucracy to get through to be able to exist legally in the country. Fortunately, I never really had to worry if I was doing something wrong or if I was missing some part of the process because Mars knew it all. It was a huge comfort when even something as simple as setting up a phone plan requires an advanced level of Mandarin and knowledge of Chinese contracts.
Mars did set me up with Chinese classes at one of the universities in Chengdu which was a huge help. Everything in China requires an app, and that app is never in English and never familiar. The day I was finally able to navigate AMap with ease was a truly wonderful day. I think I was just only barely getting confident at speaking though when I had to leave. However, it's not something I'm too worried about because I know I'll be back.
