Who am I?

Hi everyone, I am Julia.

For me, always the most difficult questions are “Who are you?” “What makes you special?” “What are your hobbies?” I seriously have no idea what makes me special or what my hobbies are. I am an ordinary girl from a small town in Upper Austria. However, I might have a wild guess what brought me to where I am today.

After graduating from High School, I decided to live abroad for a while. I’d always known that I definitely don’t want to immediately continue to go to school or to start going to university. I needed a break and that’s what led me to Cultural Care Au Pair, an agency which supports you and finds a fitting family for you in which you will live and take care of kids. My perfect match was living in Concord, Massachusetts, which is very close to Boston. In September 2013 I flew over to Boston to start my adventure and meet my new family. I knew from the first moment on that this will work. I immediately fell in love with Felix and Lily, the two-year-old twins I had to take care of. The first month was a challenge, though, since the kids needed to get used to me and I needed to get used to them. I had to get to know them and find out what they like and what they hate and most importantly I needed to gain their trust.

After some complications at first, I managed to get used to my new life in the USA and also got the kids to be happy about that they could spend time with me. But most importantly I finally knew my way around and managed to drive somewhere without getting lost. (Probably the biggest challenge throughout the whole year!)

I met amazing people from all over the world. I travelled across the USA. From Maine to Florida, over to Chicago and San Diego to Seattle. I enjoyed the sun in Key West on the beach and went skiing in the Rocky Mountains in Utah. 

I went to concerts which I'd never seen before, because those artists have never come to Austria. I had to manage everything by myself, I was forced to grow up and stand on my own two feet, which made me who I am today. For example, now I am no longer impatient – two-year-olds know how to convert you to a patient person – and I definitely got more open-minded, I am no longer the shy girl from next door, I got more self-confident and more extrovert.

To finish up, I am now back in Austria, studying “Transcultural Communication” at the University of Graz. Because of my gap year I chose English as my first foreign language and there’s also a reason why I chose Russian as a second language. My host-mom’s brother is a translator and he knows over 15 different languages. However, not common languages like Italian or Spanish, he knows Mandarin, Japanese and other small languages like these, but most importantly he never managed to learn Russian and I accepted the challenge. I wanted to know what’s so hard about it and I definitely know now, but I’ll manage ;-)

I guess, after reading my text, you can figure that I love to travel and even if I don’t have that much time and money anymore like during my gap year, I definitely want to continue to travel the world. Next on the bucket list: Australia ;-)

I hope you enjoyed my little story. Take care :-)