Days since last round up: 15
Best bit of vocab:
Major achievements: finally registered at the Bürgerbüro (citizens office)
Failed ventures: visit from home
Reading: just finished wir sind lockvögel, baby! and embarking on Gier, both by by Elfriede Jelinek
Weather: crisp and autumnal
Before I got to Oxford, I’d been told about ‘fifth week blues’, a phenomenon unique to Oxford’s (and, dare I say it, Cambridge’s) jam-packed terms of just eight weeks at a time, followed by more ‘vacation’ time than most universities. It means that an awful lot of work is squeezed into just about the minimum time it can be, and it’s part of what makes the Oxbridge experience so exhiliarating, but also so exhausting. It’s apparently in 5th week that this strange combination reaches a peak. The initial excitement of term has worn off, you’re over the hill but still have a way to go, you’ve been away from home for over a month, and it can often get a little overwhelming. Of course not everyone experiences this at the same time or to the same extent, but it seems that a lot of students experience similar feelings of homesickness and low-ness just after this halfway point. I’ve never experienced fifth-week blues acutely in Oxford (I tend to find transitions at the start and end of term a bit more emotionally tumultuous), but over a brunch this week with two Oxford friends, we applied the principle to our time abroad, and it seems that there’s a similar phenomenon on the year abroad. I’ve just hit the three-and-a-half month mark, and will only be here for another two, so I’m actually not quite as far in as 5/8ths, but a lot of the same things are true: it’s been a long time since I was at home, I’ve done all the initial exciting stuff, am settling into a routine and there is still a good chunk to go. I definitely can’t complain about my time here so far, but the last two weeks have posed a few small challenges (COVID not helping) which made me feel further from home than usual.
Despite a great end to the weekend with a trip to Kloster Andechs, the week got off to a bit of a disappointing start, with new measures introduced by Germany which now determine risk areas by region rather than country and meant that my parents, coming from the badly-behaved north west, had to cancel the visit they had planned for the middle of the week. We’d discussed it over the weekend and I’d rejigged my plans, but on Monday I was feeling the flatness, even if everything did actually go quite well, and I did slowly start to feel much better as the week and even the day went on.
Because of the last minute change of plan, I decided not to be quite as adventurous these last two weeks, basing myself mostly at home rather than in coffee shops, taking work at a reasonable pace and going out for the occasional lunch or brunch. A bit more work on my extended essay and then some new titles by Christa Wolf and Elfriede Jelinek, two authors I studied in-depth last year was more than enough to keep me occupied.
As usual, it’s been ups and downs with the kids. Broadly, the older and the younger girl are on divergent trajectories: while the younger one gets more responsive to me as time goes on, so that we actually have some quite cute moments, the initial excitement seems to have worn off for the older one and now I’m just someone with a little less authority and a little less unconditional love than her parents. Most of my time is spent with the younger girl anyway, but where possible the older girl will go out of her way to make things difficult for me, responding to my questions with ‘you don’t need to know’, regularly telling me I ‘don’t understand at all how it works’ and happily giving the younger one sweets which she knows both me and the parents have said no to. This week there have been one or two scenes which have left me quite worked up.
The younger one is generally easier, but obviously still poses all the difficulties of a contrary three-year-old, which, especially in the mornings when she changes her mind four times about which coat and gloves and scarf and trousers and jumper she wants to wear, can be a little trying, and I did let it get to me a few times last week, but I think I’m learning to deal with it better now. She still really likes playing outside and we’ve had quite a few trips out just the two of us lately, from looking for the ‘wolf’ in the trees nearby the house, to an hour on the swings even though it was dark, collecting leaves and riding her scooter. I love the little trips out, firstly because it’s really cute when she has to wrap up all warm, but also because when it’s not raining the weather is just lovely: cold but bright and crisp, and very autumnal. Although, I am beginning to pine for the winter coat, left at home in July, which my parents should have been bringing on their visit!
On Saturday I got a nice break from it all with a solo day trip to Regensburg, combining a chunk of me-time with much medieval history in the beautifully well-preserved old town. Sadly the place lived up to it’s name (‘Rain castle’), and strolls along the river had to be accompanied by the umbrella, but it still proved almost unbelievably photogenic. It’s not a huge place and was easily covered in a day, but offered a lovely place just to walk around and explore. The reset and relax proved necessary for Sunday, a long day mostly spent with Sophia and the upstairs neighbour, but getting in the hours to catch up for a few shorter evenings in the week and a whole day off.
Things with the family are much the same - we’re not incredibly similar but our lives mostly run smoothly alongside each other, although in the last few weeks I’ve been feeling the strain of having to integrate your life into other people’s a bit more so than at the beginning. It’s potentially the only downside I’ve found so far with the au pair experience. The family have also been having video calls to find their next au pair to start in January, and I’ve been looking at families in France, which does really make you think about what you do and don’t like about your present experience. I’ll do a ‘review’ post about au pairing at the end of my time here, but I’ve definitely learned a lot more about what I’ll be looking for in a family in France.
On the other hand, having officially registered in Munich now (you’re supposed to do this within fourteen days but all the bookable appointments which you can get in advance of the day itself were full in July until October - I took the family’s word on this one), I do feel very settled, and at home in the city even if life in the house sometimes makes me feel far away from my own family. With the Oxford term now in full swing it’s also a strange feeling to be away from it all (while still receiving the compulsory 14 emails a day for the first few weeks of term), even if it is very different there because of COVID. On top of this are other years abroad in full swing, and I don’t know if this is natural or just me, but it’s very easy to compare and see what you’re doing in a slightly different light. I’m still convinced I made the right choice for me, au pairing gives me freedom, time and an immersive environment, but it’s not without its emotional and mental challenges, and I’m learning to accept that these ups and downs are just all part of the experience.
On top of all of this is the COVID situation, which not only means no visitors for a while, but is also causing a bit of worry about how Christmas plans will be looking. If everyone reading this could cross all fingers and pray for me that Germany isn’t added to the UK’s quarantine list that would be lovely. At the moment France isn’t as strict as Germany against the north-west, but it could easily change and I’d rather not have to spend 2–4 weeks isolating either side of Christmas. That’s a problem for later, but I don’t think I’m the only one who feels like the mood has changed a little when it comes to COVID, and with things starting to get stricter again, the year abroad becomes a little more isolating and a little bit more scary. This was the topic of conversation over a Friday brunch with the lovely Anna and Immie, both also on their years abroad from Oxford, which reassured me that year abroad anxieties are nothing new, and that lots of people are feeling the same.
This weekend has been something of a marathon, with the dad away to do some maintenance on the house on the Bodensee where we were on holiday, and the mum having asked me to be around all weekend as an exception to support her with the kids. I caught up on a lot of hours and everything was generally very successful, only a few tears and no disasters, and some genuine fun with both girls. Things nearly went awry at the last minute on Saturday, when 10 minutes before the mum came home me cutting a pancake into small pieces caused absolute chaos (you would think I had cut the child into small pieces from how loudly she screamed), but with unexpected help from the older girl we managed a swift recovery. The focus of my weekend has definitely been the family, and after a 41 hour week, I’ll be ready to dial down the pace a little next week, and get out exploring again.