Hey guys!

I am currently in Dubai but I wanted to write a little update on my adventure to Switzerland in one month!

In my recent post about my upcoming plans and exciting news, I announced that I will be moving to Switzerland in a month! If you haven’t seen that post yet, go check it out to be in the loop 😉. I had a few people ask how I found this job and how I managed to get it so I thought I would just give a little explanation and go more into detail about how and why I got this job.

So, I originally started thinking of changing my degree around the beginning of this school year because I knew I would be completing the sociology portion of my major at the end of the semester in April 2018. Basically, I had no idea what I wanted to do and I was stressing because I wasn’t sure what my next steps would be.

On top of this, Tom (my boyfriend) is completing his degree this year and graduating and because he is originally from Switzerland, he has to go back to do his mandatory military service for the army. I knew this was approaching rather quickly and it gave me the idea of transferring to a school in Switzerland to complete my degree. This was my main goal for a while as I researched and emailed a lot of people, schools, etc. but I realized that it was too expensive to commit to something like this when I wasn’t even sure of what direction I wanted to go in my education.

Then I started thinking of jobs I could do while trying to figure things out and I was really leaning towards working with kids in some aspect. At first, I looked into going to school for my teaching degree, or early childhood education degree. I considered schools in Montreal and different places in Switzerland but I wasn’t having much luck.

With this mindset of wanting to work with children in the future, I continued to do some research and I came across the idea of becoming an au pair. I remember this moment felt kind of like a light bulb went off in my head. I knew this would be something I could do to gain experience working with children and also earn money at the same time. It would definitely be a win-win situation.

I started looking up how to reach out to families who were searching for au pairs to come and work for them. I focused mainly on finding a family in Switzerland, but I also considered Germany and France. I really wanted to just put my name out there and reach out to anyone I could. I was very determined to find a match so I started looking at au pair websites. These websites are basically like dating apps but for au pairs and families… lol, I mean I guess you could think of it that way. I would visit the profiles of different families and if I thought they were intriguing, I would send them a message and wait for a response.

A problem I would often have was that the dates that they wished for me to start working did not line up. I wanted to finish my second year of university so therefore I could only start in the summer, after I finished my courses. After a lot of trial and error, and some disappointment, a family reached out to me and told me they were interested in my profile. I started emailing back and forth with them and eventually we exchanged numbers so we could communicate on WhatsApp. Fortunately, we hit it off right away and they turned out to be a great match. The dates lined up, they were located in Switzerland, they were very welcoming and kind, and overall, they just seemed like genuine people. We continued our correspondence for a few months and eventually we both decided that we wanted to go ahead and start the process.

The process was very easy! The family started working things out with an au pair agency and we both did some interviews, they had a home inspection, then they wrote up a contract together with the agency. It was very simple and straight forward and it was easy for me to see exactly what I would be getting myself into. On my end, I went over the details of the contract, signed it and sent it back! After a few weeks, I was approved by the immigration services which meant I could pick up my entry visa at the Swiss embassy in Montreal. Everything went very smoothly and working with the agency definitely helped as I knew everything would be legit and safe.

Now that everything is in place, I feel so accomplished because all of my research and reaching out paid off and I get this amazing opportunity to work in a different country! I will definitely be updating my blog as I continue to move forward in this adventure. Thanks so much for following along! ❤️❤️

xo,

z.