Today I went to my first au pair meeting in Cologne. It was a little Christmas celebration where we were all supposed to get together and hang out with the families, and everyone was asked to bring a typical Christmas dish/specialty from their home country. Esther just got slammed with a whole bunch of work this past week, so she had to prepare for an appointment tomorrow morning and couldn't go, but Olaf and the kids went with me. We were there for about 2 hours, and I didn't meet a single other au pair. It kind of felt like being in high school, where everyone has their own little clique and you don't fit into any of them. There were 3 Polish girls who sat together speaking Polish the entire time, 2 girls from Albania who spoke to each other in Albanian the whole time, 2 girls from Madagascar speaking whatever it is that they speak, and then there were the 10 or so girls from Russia/former USSR that sat at one table in their miniskirts speaking Russian and probably talking about their strategies for snagging a husband before they have to go home to their country. I tried saying hello to a few of the girls, and whenever I did I basically just got a smile and a nod, and then they went about doing their own thing. It probably doesn't help that they're all like 18 or 19 and I'm considered an old lady. Nobody ate any of my yams, either, but that's ok because we got to bring them all home and eat them for dinner. It sounds like it was an absolutely horrible experience, but it wasn't so bad. Olaf saw a guy there that he used to work with who has an au pair from Madagascar and they got to catch up a little bit, and I played with the kids most of the time (I was also the only au pair that was playing with the kids). I still plan on going to most of the au pair meetings in the next 6 months because they're going to be doing a lot of really cool/fun things, and maybe as new girls start their tenure the situation will improve.

Pauline choked on her cocoa this morning, and chocolate milk came pouring out of her nose. At first she just sat there silent, looking like a deer in the headlights; she had a completely terrified and yet lifeless look in her eyes. Esther smacked her on the back a couple of times as the milk came out of her nose, and then she started coughing so we at least knew she was breathing. As soon as she was done coughing, she reached out her hand, grabbed a piece of bacon and shoved it in her mouth. Olaf was cracking up, and even Esther was laughing. When she heard them laughing Pauline looked up at them with a huge grin on her face. It was so funny (aside from the brief moment of anxiety because the child was choking) and she was so adorable.