Bài đọc 2
After finishing school, I spent a year as an au pair with a family in a small town near Lyon, in France. In exchange for looking after their two children, I had my own room, all my meals and a small amount of pocket money each week. I also attended French classes at a language school three mornings a week.
My main job was taking six-year-old Léa and eight-year-old Hugo to school, collecting them in the afternoon, helping with their homework and making their dinner on the evenings when their parents worked late. I had babysat before, but I quickly realised that looking after children every day is very different from looking after them for an evening. On my second day, Hugo refused to put his shoes on, and we were twenty minutes late for school.
The hardest thing at first was the language. The children found my mistakes hilarious and corrected me constantly, which was embarrassing but extremely effective. Within three months, I was dreaming in French. Children, I discovered, are excellent teachers: they never get bored of repeating things, and they tell you immediately when you have said something wrong.
Living with a family also taught me a lot about French life that tourists never see: the long Sunday lunches with grandparents, the serious discussions about which cheese to buy, and the way everyone in the town seemed to know everyone else. The family included me in everything, from birthday parties to a skiing holiday in the Alps.
There were difficult moments. I sometimes felt lonely, especially in the first winter, and I missed my own family. Once, when the children were both ill and their parents were away, I had to take them to the doctor alone, and I had to explain their symptoms in French. I was terrified, but I managed it.
Now that I am back home and studying languages at university, I realise how much that year changed me. I am more patient, more independent and much more confident speaking to strangers. Léa still sends me drawings by post, and I am going back to visit them next summer.