December 6, 2020

I've fnally gotten my act together and found a new host for this site. My previous host just disappeared without a word so Confessions has been offline for most of this year. But now we are online again and hosted by Leprd.
A lot has happened since I posted something on here, so I'll briefly mention the more important things.
I finished work with the family in London last summer, and went back home to Estonia. I had hoped to spend a few months at home and then come back to the UK. Things didn't quite go according to plan. I did find a new job in Oxford looking after 3 children, aged 2, 4 and 6, and so flew back to England at the end of October. The 4-year-old boy, though, had a lot of behavioral issues, and I found him to be more than I could handle. I was so stressed that I cried every day after work. By the end of the first week I knew that job was not the right fit for me. My agency convinced me to stay for a bit longer, so I suffered through one more week before I handed in my resignation. After three weeks I left Oxford. Before flying back I went to London for a day and stayed with Sej and Michael and the girls, and flew back home early next morning. I liked Oxford, I'm happy I got the chance to go back and see that beautiful city again. I had spent a few days there when I was taking care of Kacey, coincidentally the family's home was not far from the hotel we had stayed at in Summertown, so I was a little bit familiar with that area. I found a great Chinese buffet, which I visited quite a few times considering I was only there for three weeks. Also went to the Alice Shop, which is a tiny shop in the centre of town that sells thngs related to Alice in Wonderland.
So then I was back at home, no new job lined up, and my parents getting ready to fly to Tenerife for 3 months. I was fully prepared to spend time at the house by myself, we made preparations for me to be able to do that. We stocked firewood, I bought groceries, my dad fixed some things around the house that I wouldn't know how to do. He also showed me how to empty the water pipes and ready the house for overwintering just in case I found a job while they were away and had to leave the house empty until they returned the following March. They left on December 1st.
I was quite enjoying living life at my own pace, I had enough money saved that I could manage the bills for the 3 months I had ahead of me. Now to carry on with the story I will have to backtrack a little to the summer after I came back from London. Not long after I got back my grandmother fell and fractured her hipbone. She recovered but never really got her strength back, so I went into town once a week to buy her groceries. My mom took over when I went to Oxford. When my parents left at the beginning of December I had accepted that that duty would fall on me again. It was only a week or so later that I went into town to see her, but she would not open her door. I tried knocking again and again and calling her, but eventually had no choice but to call the ambulance. They arrived with the rescue service and also the police since we had to break in and it was a rental flat so the police needed my details in case there was any trouble later on. One of my cousins, Hannes, was actually among the rescue crew that broke through the door. It turned out that my grandmother had fallen and broken her arm and was unable to get up. If I hadn't been there that day, things might have ended quite differently. The ambulance took her away, and I stayed back to sort out a locksmith to come fit a new lock on the door. I called my mom in Tenerife and my dad found someone to come get that sorted out. A few hours later they phoned me from the hospital and I went to get my grandma. They had put her arm in a sling and explained to me what I should do to help her, however she was just not herself. She had trouble understanding things and her speech was not great. They took her for some scans at my insistence, but accroding to them everything looked fine. So we went back to her flat and stayed there for a few days, but then I decided to take her to my house. I had gone to town just for one day so I didn't have any clothes or anything with me. I kept a few things at her place because I did spend the night sometimes, however those things could not work for long term. She needed help with absolutely everything, she couldn't even sit up in bed on her own. I packed some clothes and things for her and bought some more groceries and we headed for the ferry that night. The house had been empty for a few days by that point so it was very cold and the freezer had defrosted. Que me trying to cook up all the meat I had bought to last 3 months, I only had to throw away a few things, most of the things were still okay to eat since they defrosted very slowly.
We managed for few days there, it was extremely difficult though. Mostly because her mind was not the same, it was hard to explain things to her so that she would understand. I then got a surprise message from Tafi, Joseph and Cynthia's mom, asking me if I was available for a few months to come help them settle in after a move. I talked things over with my mom and she was adamant that I should go. So we sorted out a place in a care facility for my grandma, and took her there a few days later. It was a special facility to help people with injuries recover, she was scheduled to stay there for a month, and then move on to a care home until my parents got back from Tenerife at the start of March.
I started to get the house ready to be left empty, spent Christmas day in town at my older brother's flat, and we also went to visit grandma in the care facility. After that I went home for a few days, finalised packing and left on the 30th, spent the night at my brother's place, and flew to the UK on the 31st.
Tafi, Joseph, Cynthia and Mary picked me up at the airport, and we drove to Redhill to get a few things from the old house before we were on our way to Hitchin, where they were moving to. In the car I also found out that Tafi was pregnant again, expecting a baby boy in the spring.
Now this sums up 2019. Since this post is already long enough I think I will leave 2020 for another post.

March 17, 2019

I was just updating some links and thought I'd write a few words here while I was at it.
I'm currently living in London, I've been here since April 2017 working for a family with two girls named Ameya (9) and Arya (3). I've really enjoyed working for this family, I get on well with both the parents and the kids. I'll finish here probably some time in the summer because Arya will be starting school full time so they don't need a nanny anymore. So I'll have to find a new job come August/September. I'm hoping to find something in London, it's nice living here. For now I'll enjoy my last months at this job.
I still see Joseph and Cynthia a few times a year around their birthdays and Christmas, the family have since had another daughter Mary-Grace, who is super adorable. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to see Kacey since I left that job in 2015. I've texted his mom a few times but we haven't really gotten to make any plans for me visiting them or them coming to London. I was all for staying in touch but I guess not every family I work for will want that.
On a completely different note, my parents are strongly considering moving to Tenerife. They have been on holiday to Tenerife 6/7 times and are currently there for three and a half months. They will go back to Estonia for the summer and most of autumn, but come November they want to go back to Tenerife and find jobs so they can stay longer. I went with them in October 2017 and it was a great holiday but I don't really know how to feel about them going there to live. They don't plan on being in Estonia for Christmas this year. I've always spent Christmas at home, never anywhere else. I've been working abroad for years now but have always gone home to Estonia for Christmas. Now I don't know what to do. Do I go to Tenerife to spend the holidays with my parents, or do I go to Estonia to spend Christmas with my brothers. I also always see my best friend and her three girls around Christmas, and spend at least a day with my grandmother.
Because of the nature of the job I'm currently doing, I don't have my own place. I'm a live-in nanny so I live in the house of whatever family I happen to be working for at the time. I consider my parents house my home, and I'm having a really difficult time with the fact that my home will be sitting empty for long periods of time. I'm so paranoid that something will happen to the house and there will be no one there to do anything about it. I don't even want to name all of the things that could go wrong. Our house is in the middle of a forest, so nobody would even know if something happened. Losing all of the photographs alone gave me nightmares when my parents first told me the news, let alone all of my own stuff. Literally everything I own on this Earth is in that house, except for things I currently have with me in England.
If I really think about it, I don't spend that much time in Estonia, only about four weeks in a year. But that is still my home, and I'm having a very hard time coming to grips with this turn of events. I'm planning on spending the whole of August at home this year, hopefully starting a new job in September. I'm just hoping that in time this will be easier for me.

April 10, 2016

Another year has come and gone, time really goes by so fast. I thought I'd post some updates about what I've been up to. I'm just writing down whatever comes to mind so don't mind the random order of things.
I went back to Estonia in March last year like I mentioned in the previous post. I stayed home until October when I came back to England for a new job. I now work in Redhill, near London, for a family with two children named Joseph (7) and Cynthia (2). The family is nice and I'm doing good, but I still miss my previous job taking care of Kacey. Maybe it's because I was there for two years, but that little boy came to be really close to my heart. I really want to go visit him soon. They live in Lincoln now, and it's a long journey from Redhill, but at some point I really do want to go see him and his mom Alicia.
This is my first job with more than one child and I'm handling it very well. I do think that in the future I will choose jobs with only one child whenever possible, but now I know I can manage more than one just fine.
I didn't really do terribly much when I was home in Estonia, mainly just spent time with family and friends. I helped out around the house, and basically just had a really long holiday. I enjoyed it, but definitely felt the itch to go back to work towards the end of my stay in Estonia.
Right now I'm really looking forward to June when I can go home for two weeks. Because I do miss my family, I just don't want to be without a job for a long time, and unfortunately there really aren't a lot of great jobs to choose from in Estonia. So I like living in the UK, but I also get very excited when I can go home. I haven't booked my tickets yet, but I have to be home for the 21st for sure, that's when my younger brother is graduating high school. So I will take two weeks off work around that date.
I don't think I've mentioned it here, but I'm currently very into Postcrossing. If you love sending and receiving regular mail, definitely go check it out. Basically you send postcards to random people in the world and get postcards back from someone else. It's really fun and so great getting something nice in the post.
I think that's all for now, can't think of anything else to write about at the moment.

March 7, 2015

Wow, another year without any blog posts, I think it's time to accept the bitter fact that I'm absolutely horrible at this :)
I've had this new layout ready since the beginning of October last year, but I'm only now getting around to putting it up. The layout features a picture of the frozen sea around my home island in Estonia. My mom took the photo when she accompanied my dad on an ice-fishing trip a few years ago.
I actually might have taken even longer to update the layout if it weren't for the fact that I'm leaving England early tomorrow morning, and for some reason I want to finish up a couple of online things before I go.
I've spent just under two years being a mother's help with this family, but the little boy has grown up, he's 3 and half now, and I really want to try my hand at looking after a younger child. Lately I've been thinking of making this my career, not something I do while I figure things out, and I would like to include taking care of a baby in my childcare experience. But before finding a new host family I'm going to spend some time at home. I've planned to stay home until August, and start looking for a new family maybe at the beginning of the summer for an earliest start date of August 1. I might not find a family for that exact date, but I'm willing to wait for a little while until the right family for me comes along.
I'm mostly packed for my trip home, there's just a few things I need to do before I can pack up my room here comletely. I have to clear my things out by about 10 tonight, because the new nanny is arriving around that time. I'm going to miss little Kacey, but I can't stay forever.
I might make a post summarizing my life in England since the last post, but with my track record who knows :)

April 24, 2014

Another couple of months have passed, so it's time to post a little something here. The last few months have been quite uneventful. At the end of January I did spend a week in London, though, which was pretty great. I stayed at the Royal Docks Apartments in a flat of my boss' old schoolmate. It was a great location, because the DLR was only a 5-minute walk away.
I did a lot of walking around London in search of bookstores. I went to three different Waterstones, one of which was huge. It had some 5 or 6 floors, and I ended up spending a little over 100 pounds in there. I also discovered a great store near Waterloo station, I think it was, called Book Warehouse. They didn't have a terribly big selection, but they did have awesome deals. As I was doing a lot of walking around the area between Waterloo station and the London Eye, I went to the Southbank Book Market. It was a rainy day, so it wasn't very busy, but I did get one book there that I had wanted to read. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough free time to go looking for any independant book stores, but maybe I'll do that next time. Overall, I ended up buying 25 books during my week-long stay, which weighed down my suitcase considerably, but I definitely wasn't complaining.
Other than trying to go to as many different book stores as possible, I also went to Leicester Square for the first time. Even though it was raining most of the time I was in London, it was always very busy around that area. I went to eat at T.G.I. Friday's, and after that to the Häagen-Dazs place, where I ordered a mix-your-own concoction of mango sorbet and Baileys - it was delicious. On other days I also went to Giraffe and a Chinese place that I can't remember the name of. Now the reason why I find it important to write down these places is that I had never been to any of them before. And years from now I know I'll find it interesting to read when I first experienced these things.
Of the usual touristy things, I went on a river cruise, but I had done that once before last year. And one other place I went to that I think qualifies as a usual tourist must-see was M&M World. I knew they had Disney stores, they have one in Leicester, a mere 20-minute walk from where I live, but I didn't know M&M's were such a big thing. It was fun though, I did the What's Your Color? test, even have a video of it so I could remember for the rest of time that my color was dark green. Plus I bought two adorable mugs from there.
The only other noteworthy thing to happen since my last post is that I'm staying with the same host family for another year. My first year was up at the end of March, so now I'm staying at least until March 2015.
And that's all, my life isn't all that interesting, I'm afraid :)

January 4, 2014

Wow, I've really been neglecting this site. In all fairness, it's not only this site, but my fanlistings, as well. I've been popping in every 2 months or so, but haven't felt like posting anything here. But the last post was over a year ago, so I figured I needed to write at least a little something.
I feel like the biggest factor in me not paying that much attention to my sites is the fact that TFL went offline. It's still not online now, but they opened the forum again and that kind of helped get me back into the swing of things.
So much has happened since I posted last. I got a new job as a mother's help and moved to England to look after an adorable 2-year-old named Kacey. For the first few months we lived in Bury St Edmunds, but we moved to Leicester at the end of July. I've also had a chance to do some travelling in the UK, I've visited Peterborough, Cambridge, Manchester, London, and Birmingham. Oh, and also Nottingham, where I went to a first aid course for child-carers with the British Red Cross. It was a great course, I learned a lot, but I hope I never have to put any of my new knowledge to use.
In June I also went to Copenhagen, Denmark. It was an awesome trip. I did a lot of sight-seeing, including seeing the Little Mermaid, the Royal Naval Museum, the Blue Planet Aquarium, a bunch of churches and palaces, and taking the Canal tour on a river boat. One of the most memorable things from that trip is going to Tivoli, the huge amusement park in Copenhagen. I went on some crazy rides: the Dragon, the Demon, the Star Flyer, the Monsoon, the Odin Express, the Spinning Top, and the Golden Tower, which is the single most horrible thing I've ever experienced, but I'm still glad I tried it. My favorite rides were the Demon, and the Monsoon.
In October my best friend got married, it was an amazing wedding, and I'm so glad I got a little break from work to go. We had a hen party for her in September, which was a blast. We drove around the island stopping at various locations to have the bride complete silly little tasks, the last being shouting some funny vows from the top of the lighthouse. We then continued the celebrations in a little house near the beach. The actual wedding was so beautiful that I teared up a couple of times. My friend was a truly gorgeous bride. The ceremony and festivities were modern with a mix of old traditions from our home island.
Those are all the highlights from last year, I had some amazing experiences and I hope to do some awesome stuff in 2014, as well.
My holiday is over in a couple of days, I'm flying back to England on the 6th. Of course, I'd like to stay home a little bit longer, but I also miss Kacey. And I obviously need to go back to work to get money to fuel my addiction of buying books :)

December 15, 2012

After months of downtime Confessions is finally up again :) Thanks so much to the lovely Misaki ♥ for hosting me.
I'm really busy with all of the Christmas preparations right now, so a bigger post is coming in January.