My life in Brooklyn

A couple of weeks has now passed and I am more happy to be here than ever! (even though I recently ended up in the emergency room). The time is flying and I cannot believe that I've been here for now more than 6 weeks. Since the last time I posted a small bit of what I'm doing here, I've been socializing a lot with the other au pairs, they are wonderful to spend time with, and tomorrow the first boy is arriving, I'm very excited since he plays basketball aswell. It will be about 3 weeks before we can play ball together though because of my fall while playing basketball.
I played basketball in the park, and when I hung in the rim after a dunk a guy came to bump into me so my fingers slipped and I fell down landing on my back with my hands underneath which resulted in a bruised back, one fractured bone in my left hand and a sprained right wrist.

This was extremely inconvenient for the family since this is the most busy period of their jobs. Kevin just launched his website, so he's  working a alot and Lisbeth has a big conference to think about, but I believe that so far we've made the best of the situation. Jack and Kamilla's old babysitter came to help out one evening and Kevin's parents were nice enough to come and help out 2 days, one of which Jack was ill, so they even picked him up from school, I don't know what I'd do without their help! Also Millie (The English au pair) has been very nice to help me out in this time, she went with me to the ER and she helped me out Sunday by having fun with the kids.

This week I've been seeing another au pair called Elisabeth from Belgium. She is great to just chill out with, soooo relaxed. This Wednesday we met up at 2pm. She had to work until 5:30, so we had fun with the 3 adorable kids she's taking care of. When she was off we went to buy Chinese food and then we watched a movie called The Holiday, it was great. (Unfortunately the subway ride home was horrible since of construction work, took me more than an hour.....)

Today it was my birthday (yaaaaaaay :-D) I woke up after the family had taken off to work / school and did some of my laundry. At lunch I met with Millie and we had lunch and she went with me for my haircut + grocerie shopping.
At 3pm she went home and I went to pick up Kamilla from school and we went for some ice cream. At around 4 Jack got home from school, still a bit sick, so we went to the doctor, fortunately it was nothing serious so we went home and had fun until 7pm where we walked to an Italian restaurant nearby and met up with Lisbeth and Kevin for a delicious Italian meal, I had lasagna (om nom nom nom nom)
After the restaurant we went home. I then realised that my birthday wasn't over. Jack had made some very very tasty brownies and I got a present from the family, a "family t-shirt" (Jack, Kamilla, Lisbeth and Kevin all got it, so now I really feel like a part of this wonderful family) and they'd even written a song to me, I was very moved! I truly love this family, couldn't have had a better birthday in Brooklyn than the one I had today!
I ended up my birthday by watching a basketball game on TV after Kamilla and Jack had gone to bed. This was all for this time. More stories from my life in Brooklyn to come :)

And then the kid's school began

Since the kids began in school I have been able to sleep for a long time every morning, since Lisbeth and Kevin are able to walk Kamilla to school and prepare both her and Jack.
I have been very pleased with this arrangement, since I could get up at around 9 or 10, and then have my breakfast followed by either a walk to the park to play basketball or a run to the gym to work out, or both.
Then at 3pm I've picked up Kamilla from school and at around 4 Jack's coming home by the bus.
When he arrives the general schedule is that we all have a snack, and then their homeworks has to be done, and then at around 6 we'll have dinner.

Meanwhile I've started to talk a lot to the English au pair, and we've met a French au pair, which was really nice aswell. This Saturday I was at the English au pair's house for a barbeque (apparently with the entire family of her host family, we were about 45 people!) so that was very nice and entertaining.

So in conclusion. I am still very thrilled to be here, I enjoy it more than ever before, because I actually begins to have some friends I can see, I even met with Rikke from my highschool in New York (She's becoming an au pair in Boston) which was really nice. Also the basketball is going really great, I begin to recognize people on the streets whom I've played with :-)
I just my first NBA preseason tickets ordered, so I can't wait for October 18th to come, so I can go see Brooklyn Nets vs Boston Celtics!

Basketball, fitness, taking care of the kids, friends and chores all takes ,up time. I am very busy here, but I love being here more than ever! I've started to see the English au pair called Millie a lot, she's really funny to talk to and I love having such a good friend here even tho we've only known each other for a short timeperiode.
I am also beginning to get into the routine of the daily life in Brooklyn with this family, they are all treating me very nice. And the kids seem to enjoy the time we spend together very much, yesterday we went to the Central Park Zoo (pictures will come shortly), where we saw lots of interesting animals and a 4D movie about the arctic wildlife. Yesterday after the zoo, I found out that I'm not very flexible by playing a game of Twister with Kamilla. I suffered a humiliating defeat.

Jack and Kamilla both seem very popular, I've already met so many of their friends, it's very hard to keep track of all their names. A few days ago Jack had three friends over for snack after school and then they went to the park, it was great to see how much fun they have together even tho they aren't in the same school anymore after they changed from elementary school to middle-school.

Last week I went up at 5 am on Tuesday to go play basketball with some of Kevin's old colleagues. It was very fun, but quite hard for me to play that early in the morning, my body wouldn't do what my mind asked it to, but the longer time I played the better. Besides that I've been playing basketball daily in the park in the evening + going to the fitness 3 - 5 times a week, so all in all I get enough exercise.