Wablief?

This was one of my first Dutch words and I couldn’t guess how helpful it would be in my last two months here.

I got a job in St. Martens Latem (thanks to Rui, Nico, Estelle and Laura!). It’s hard to explain what I’m actually working on – I cannot get a word for it – but I will try to explain (for those who know the Aupair concept you may stop reading here).

I’m sleeping over at the nicest house where I have ever been with a lovely Belgium family. Guy is the father and Robbe and Nona the children. There are other three beautiful people that it bears to mention. Helinde is Miya’s and Indy’s mother and she works on the shop physically linked to the house. As normal people, Guy and Helinde have to work and they didn’t have anybody to look after and entertain the children, so they contact Aupair who found and hired me! :)

But the Aupair job goes behind being just a babysitter. Basically I would say that I do everything that I can to make things easier around here – but don’t think that I’m a slave, No way! This people are really nice and somehow I’m just one person that for some weeks will be sharing their daily life, not really “working” for them, at least, that’s how I feel about it.

And why wablief all the time? Well, the children are flemish, they don't speak english (on 10, 7, 6 and 4 years old kids is understandable! Even when they are flemish!:P) and mijn nederlands is niet zo goed... can you imagine? No, you just can't. Maar ja, for sure this will be a recurrent topic during the next weeks and for that I’m going to bed now – omdat de kinderen altijd vroeg opstaan ;) (because the children always wake up early) oh yeah, mijn nederlands is finally improving! I’M FORCED TO!

… but as I will have the nights of – and I cannot really go out for a long time because on the following day I need to be fresh as a lettuce (as Joana would say :P), and I’m still 30 minutes far by bike from my beloved city – I intend to write everything (?) that I didn’t have the chance to write before… Para mais tarde recordar… (Because later I will want to remember it…of zo…:P)

Ah, by the way, wablief means something like: What? Sorry? When you don’t understand something that somebody says you just release: Wablief?