Before I get started I wanted to thank you for visiting my web blog. Since this is my first blog entry; I hope you made yourself a LARGE cup of coffee, tea, or perhaps glass of wine because I have about 10 years of ground to cover to bring you up to date. So, enjoy your cup of whatever you are drinking and welcome to my personal journey.
If you read my about page you probably know my name is Barbora. I was born and raised in one of the most beautiful towns in the world, Spisska Nova Ves located in the Eastern part of Slovakia (more on this in a later post). I was born in 1985 and lived with my parents and my older sister for 19 years until a twist of fate had me pack up and leave for a big trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Since my parents always took us on vacations to explore other cultures around the Europe I thought that this trip would be no different and I was ready to explore the world on my own. If only I knew what the world had in store for me!
To be completely honest, I never imagined living in the United States; it was never a personal dream. Sure I thought about visiting and seeing some of the states, but if you would have told me ten years ago that the United States would be the country where I would start my family; I would probably laughed out loud. I’ve always seen myself as a small (really small) town girl with the heart of the hopeless romantic, who knew, that one day I will meet the right person who gives me love, respect, honesty, and a shoulder to lean on through thick and thin.
Eleven years earlier… It’s November of 2004, the first time I ever flew on an airplane and I am flying across the ocean, completely alone, sitting next to strangers I met at the airport. The flight seemed to last forever. I still remember the moment when my feet first touched the American soil at JFK, taking my first breath of air, thinking about how everything was insanely new, big (REALLY BIG), and so different from what I was used to. I came to the USA as an au pair or in less fancy words, “a nanny” partaking in an experiment called, “cultural exchange”, where you technically live with a host family for one year (or two if you’re lucky). The first week all of the au pairs were required to go through Cultural Care Au Pair Training School and from there we were shipped across the USA like Amazon Prime boxes to go meet our families. We were not randomly distributed, when applying we were supposed to specify an area where we would like to work. I selected area of NYC, Washington DC, and the state of Virginia. Why? I have no idea why. I guess I didn’t know any other states better, or maybe just simply I wanted to stay closer to the East coast to feel a little closer to Europe.
My first family was located in Oakton, VA. They were a very nice couple with a little 9 months old girl and the father had Polish ancestry, which made me feel a little more comfortable in the new world I entered. I was quickly hit by another reality; my English was not as good as I thought and despite the fact that I learned British English at school. Once when people started jiving to me with all that new slang, I was completely lost and it seemed like a completely different language. It was incredibly emotionally draining not being able to understand the language very well, but I did not give up. I started to educate myself by watching the news as well as reading the newspapers since they usually use a more proper form of English. Sadly my stay with the family was very short due to a combination of two things:
- Lack of my English skills
- Unfounded jealousy from the wife’s side.
I had a really good connection with the baby girl, did my best to improve my English, and did nothing to make the lady of the house feel jealous. The Local Childcare Coordinator (LCC) supported their decision for me to leave the family. I lived with my LCC util she or the agency was able to find me second family.
After a couple of days I got my second family located in Ashburn, VA. Once again, they were a very nice couple with three children. The oldest girl was in 3rd Grade, second girl was in Kindergarten, and boy was not in school so he stayed home with me. My hands were full, driving the girls to school, juggling two different schedules, and still keeping the boy on his nap time and his activities schedule. The girls were very sweet helping me with my English; they seemed to enjoy being my personal teachers. Everything went really well until the girls started talking a lot about their previous au pair. I could totally understand why since she was their caretaker for three years, till she left to work for the neighbor for more money. She shortly realized that the grass was not greener on the other side and started taking over my babysitting hours. Technically the host parents can choose whoever they want for babysitting, but unless I needed an evening off there was no reason for her taking over my duties. Shortly thereafter the girls started comparing me with her so I started to worry due to my luck of experience in all of their activities. The job required that I do everything from driving the kids to and from school, going to after school activities, driving them to play dates, helping with homework; all of that was completely new to me. I am from a country were school buses don’t exist, you use public transportation, bikes, or you walk to school. There are no snow days, too much rain fall days, or there is a cloud out days. I still remember when my first grader sister would pick me up from kindergarten and we would walk to the bus stop and take the bus home. Once we were home, we waited for our parents to come home from work. This type of self reliance is still the norm today in my country. We were expected to be more responsible at a younger age, we didn’t eat paint chips, drink toilet water, or burn down the house. Why? Discipline. I digress.
I addressed my concerns with the house mother regarding the other au pair and she assured me that we would work through the kids missing their previous au pair. As soon as you think things are looking up; you come home from a night out with friends to find the previous au pair digging through your stuff like a homeless person searching though the dumpster for a half eaten chicken wing. I will spare you the gory details, but ultimately they defended the previous au pair’s behavior and using an ad hominem argument about my casual smoking when off duty. I can understand if they were upset that I smoked around the children, but this wasn’t the case. So there I was, two days before Christmas outside in the cold, sitting on my suitcase in the middle of suburbia; this was one step above sitting outside with an empty cup, trying to play an un-tuned guitar, while being tone def. I was going nowhere fast, feeling hopeless and being homeless. Not sure what they expected me to do without a phone? Am I on an episode of “Suburban Survivor”… am I supposed to burn my clothes to send a smoke signal to the local boy scouts?
In the end I did make a phone call for help to my first LCC from Oakton, and I spent my first Christmas in USA with the most amazing lady. She was like a grandmother to me. She lived alone, so we kept each other company. I even got Christmas presents, which I did not expect at all. It was so kind of her. She worked at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington,DC and part of her Christmas gift to me was a ticket for The Nutcracker Ballet. She was the one who handed me the piece of paper, which said: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression!” which became my life motto.
The agency gives you only two weeks to find you a new family and if they don’t, they ship the defective au pair back home. That was not an option for me. I didn’t have enough money saved to send back home to repay all my travel debts. The day before the deadline, my LCC woke me up with the best news ever! She found a perfect family for me! I quickly scrolled down all the information about the family and without any further thinking I accepted the offer. I had no other choice if I was planning on succeeding. The best part was they were looking for a bilingual Slovakian or Czech au pair because the father’s parents were immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia which peacefully split on January 1st, 1993. I said my goodbyes and continued on my journey. I will be forever thankful to her for her kindness, her friendship, and her generosity.
My third and my final family lived in Virginia Beach, VA. Based on the description of the family I knew that I am coming to the relatively young family with one baby daughter almost 8 months old. I came to found out that the mother of the baby past away when the baby was 2 months old due to sudden heart failure. Oh, my heart was automatically reaching out to that baby, to the father, parents, and their whole family. When I met them for the first time, the baby automatically reached her hands to me, which was surprising to them all as she never took to anyone. The father was so broken hearted, you could read his emotional pain, his loss all over his face and body. I was so sad for them, but I promised to myself to do my best to help them, to keep the baby girl as happy and bubbly as she can be, and also to try to help the father just keep going, although I had no clue how. Lets remember, I was only 19 years old, although it was 12 days till my next birthday! Looking back today, I really don’t know where I found such a strength, courage, and energy to take on such a tough situation.
The first night spent with the new host family I sat down behind a round table with the father of the baby and shared life stories. It felt like old friends who didn’t see each other for a long time. As you can imagine I was kind of excited to see him, to have adult conversations instead of the regular days filled with baby talk. Do you think that he was always chipper and ready to talk to me? No, not really. Well not usually. What a bummer, hmm? Some days he came home when the baby was already sleeping, I was already sleeping, or he just quietly watched TV. Other days he got home earlier played with his daughter before diving into the work he brought home because he had more work than time; the struggle was real. I felt his pain, his loneliness, and felt so sad for him. Most days he was just a shell of a person walking around, no more happiness, no more joy except the happiness his daughter gave him. He was broken into a million pieces and I tried to help him pick up those pieces, however; there were more downs than ups. This poor guy has so much drama in his life, but that’s for a later story.
After his wife passed he decided to move into a new house (during Christmas) because he couldn’t live in the old house with all of the memories. After moving in he left everything the way it was (boxes everywhere). I eventually unpacked all of the things since I needed to find and use cooking wear, plates, silverware, and other daily household items. As if I didn’t have enough to do 🙂 it turns out I was the cleaning service too; lucky for me I am the cleaning freak (I’ve relaxed with age). The hardest part about this is that overnight I became like a mother to that baby girl. I took care of her 24 hours a day which wasn’t always easy since she had really bad reflux therefore had a hard time napping and sleeping. Even with all the difficulties we had a great time together, I gave her my love and she returned the favor. We were best buddies reading books together both in English as well as Slovak, played at the park almost everyday, created art projects, went on log walks and did boat loads of other activities, she was like the energizer bunny. Honestly, I envied how energetic she was. We eventually did trips to the aquarium, children’s museum, book readings at the the public library and play dates at the playground. She was an absolute sponge, by age one she was speaking in complete sentences and even knew phrases in Slovak (oh boy! she always had something to say). We were always super busy to say the least.
There were days when I was patiently waiting for the father to come home which was rarely before 7pm since he worked 60+ hours/week. Could you blame him? He was a 24 years old single father/widower who lost his wife one week before their first wedding anniversary. He needed to keep himself together for her to build her a better future, however; I believe that he was hiding his pain, sadness, and frustration not knowing what future holds both personally and professionally. Work was an outlet for him, it was the only thing that didn’t change, and he could solve problems instead of focusing on his own. Consequently, his submersion into his work resulted in my own reclusive existence. I didn’t have a chance to meet any new friends because I too was always working. Honestly I had no time, nor did I know where to even start looking. As for the au pairs that I knew, they had completely different (normal) schedules which allowed for some personal time. There were some occasions when I got free time which I would use to read a book, take a bath, or just sleep. During these difficult times I never wined or complained about having too much work or not having time for myself; I knew that one day, when I will be with our Heavenly Father that I would be awarded for my hard work, patience, love, and selflessness!
When the baby turned one year old I decided to leave the family. I realized that I was too attached to her as well as her being too attached to me. That brought me to a deeper realization that I wasn’t sure how I am going to live without the child! Talking about it always brings the tears to my eyes, but I am getting ahead of myself. I was feeling exhausted, completely drained, and emotionally confused; so I made the difficult decision to move to Myrtle Beach, SC where a couple of my girl friends lived and worked. During the time I was there I kept in touch with the father (we kept in touch with each other). He called me often during the week and we talked for hours on the phone. All our phone calls made me realize that I truly cared for him and he showed me that he cared for me too but he was afraid of losing someone again. The most difficult question I had to answer was if I cared for him enough to leave my homeland and family behind to start a new life in America. I knew that if I stayed it would be forever; this was an all or nothing situation not to be taken lightly and I have never been in the business of hurting people but in love there are no promises. I made my choice to come back and that night he and his best friend made the 8 hour drive south to pick me up. When I close my eyes I can still see him getting out of the car with the most beautiful flowers in his hand and when I hugged him I knew that I made the right choice. He drove a total of 16 hours round trip since he had to work the next day. We didn’t rush into anything and after some time passed we announced our decision to our close family. When my parents found out their feelings were bittersweet, but they were happy that I was happy even though I had chosen a different life/home for myself. On the other hand his parents were very neutral (maybe less than neutral), his first wife parents were very supportive (which was a surprise), and most of our friends were genuinely happy for us.
So begins the end of my employment and the start of a love story. In the beginning we shared our love of the baby girl but also love and passion for each other. She was our number one priority, as essential to our lives as breathing and we were all inse
parable like the Three Musketeers. After two years of dating we said our “I do’s” in 2007 which was the same year when our first born daughter Adriana was born. The baby, Mackenzie was 3 years old then and she could not be more happy to have a new baby sister! She was and still is the best big sister ever who every kid dreams of having! The year after Adriana was born we all flew back to my home country, it was 4 years since I was last home. We returned to celebrate a big wedding in the Catholic church with my whole family, my husband’s parents, and other close family members as well as my husband’s late wife’s family. 
After we returned our lives continued to get more busy, the girls were growing like weeds and before I could blink my eyes Adriana was 3 years old. She went to preschool and I began to pursue my dream of going to college. In 2011 I graduated with honors with a degree in Business Administration. 
I decided to postpone furthering my education due to some minor health issues which caused two miscarriages, however; In 2013 our second daughter Noelle was born. We considered her our little miracle because when I was emotionally ready to give up on having any more children,
God answered our prayers. Until you have a children of your own you never realize how fast time flies. Mackenzie is already in 6th Grade, Adriana started 3rd Grade, and our little Noelle is a happy 2.5 years old bundle of joy. Soon she will be entering the school doors as well which means this mama is going back to follow her education dream.
When it comes to my husband, I never once regret making my decision! He is my everything, I love him every day more and more (I didn’t even know that it’s possible to love someone so much), I love everything about him, adore him, and admire him! He is the man who deserves my heart, because he loves me equally if not more, respects me, protects me, supports me in my crazy ideas, and is the best father I could ever ask for to our 3 beautiful girls, who adores him as much as he adores them! Can you feel that love in the air?
Is that a story for a book, or what? 🙂 So, here I am living my big dream with my handsome fella and my beautiful girls, and let me tell you, there is not a one day I regret my choice of my life!
