The first days in the States...

were very, very exciting. After saying my painful goodbyes to my family, I boarded the ICE train in Stuttgart on September 4, 2017 at 5:51 a.m. to catch the United Airlines Boeing 777 bound for Newark Airport.

Upon arriving in Newark, the clocks suddenly went back 6 hours. It was suddenly 2 p.m. instead of 8 p.m. I met other au pairs at the Newark airport and waited together with them for the hotel shuttle that took us to the Doubletree Hotel by Hilton in Tarrytown.

The highlight of the orientation was a trip to New York City. Planned stops there included the Rockefeller Center with its observation deck on the 70th floor, also known as Top of the Rock.

Next stop was Times Square, whose lights dazzled us from afar and surpassed everything we had seen in pictures before. Unfortunately, our stay there wasn't very long because it was raining. However, I will be going back to NYC this weekend to take in the whole spectacle again at my leisure.

After three interesting but stressful orientation days, we continued on to our host families. In my case, it was in the state of New Jersey. I've been here for almost a week now and so far everything is going well. I was very excited and had some worries before arriving at my host family, but so far, the good impression I had from Skype has been confirmed, and the surroundings are beautiful.

More entries to follow...