Wednesday 16 January 2008

Fury

I have a fury upon me.

My sister has, in the past, had to employ au pairs.
I, in the past, have had to employ foreign language assistants. My sister's experience of au pairs has been about 50-50. Half of them have been a success, half, not so much.

My experience with FLAs, more tied to nationality. Amongst the French ones, I have had some spectacularly good ones and a few indifferent ones. All of my German assistants have been great apart from one, and she was homesick throughout a goodly part of the year and then just went home.

My sister has been recently, due to a confluence of circumstances, obliged to engage an au pair to be an adult presence for my 14-year-old niece during the week.
This week, while my sister was away in London and my brother-in-law in Germany, the au pair who had been with them for two weeks, left in the middle of the night. Literally left my niece on her own in the house at 4am and went back to Germany. I am so furious. My sister is understandably beyond stressed. My niece will be boarding at her school for a while.

I'm annoyed that anyone would leave the minor that they are in charge of alone without any notice, but I'm also annoyed that I have no way of standing her in front of either myself or my sister and trying to understand why, what would motivate anyone to do that.

In quite a different way, the book I am reading at the moment, 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' by Khaled Hosseini, writer of 'The Kite Runner' makes me furious. Furious that any bunch of people could hate women as much as the Taleban do. This book is shocking. I thought I understood their vitriol after reading the Kite Runner. I didn't.
This book should just be compulsory reading for everyone on the planet. And it's a damn fine read too.

6 comments:

Sleepy said...

That German FLA had other issues!
Hehehe!
I did volunteer to help her out with that.

Was the Au Pair hired through an agency?
Have they got no come back on that atall?

Schneewittchen said...

She did indeed and you were very generous in your offers to help out ;)

It seems that now, getting an au pair to work from you can be like an online dating service. I don't know whether there is any comeback or maybe she could be blacklisted or something.

Sleepy said...

Get hold of her name and add it to this post.
Anyone who does an online search for her will get directed to your page and can read about her exploits!

Sleepy said...

If you are worried about any come back on you and yours, give me the name.
I don't give a fuck! Any shit and I'll do an 'Obama'.
I'll play the Jew card!

Schneewittchen said...

Heehee, I'll ask my sister :))

Sleepy said...

Cracking!