It is quite funny to look back on my photos prior to coming to Europe in 2022. Before this big change in my life, I hadn't even left the country; not even for a small vacation in South East Asia!
Visa applications, choosing the best layover country for a longhaul flight and even the most basic skill of itinerary-making are all foreign to me. Who would have thought! I am quite sure that sixteen-year old me wouldn’t even believe half the stories I would be telling her. She was dreaming of all these European cities she read from books (borrowed from the library or bought from Booksale), thinking with a fluttering heart that there might be at least a sliver of chance to see them during her twilight years. But even then, she felt a bit arrogant to dream about that. ‘How can I afford that?’, was a resounding question in her mind. How dare she dream when even a university degree that usually leads to a good job wasn’t even guaranteed.
But, life IS truly unpredictable especially when you don’t really have a lot to lose. My mindset has always been to gamble what little I have; always thinking that I will be okay no matter what. There was also that matter of the heart. One seems to be fearless when love is involved. I used to think that the saying, ‘Love can move mountains,’ was an overstatement. It actually wasn’t. We can truly do amazing and surprising things when backed by this feeling.
I was quite lucky to be chosen by this Swedish family to be their au pair for a year in Stockholm. It wasn’t really the plan, believe me. Prior to looking for a host family in Europe, I’ve tried applying for an Erasmus Mundus scholarship but it didn’t work out. I would just like to add that I got the program acceptance and some promise of financial support from the institute but that’s it. Given that I don’t have the means for the show money for the student visa application, that option was truly not for me. That was actually a painful blow and I remember how I cried and cried thinking that there was no way for me to go to Europe because I was so freaking poor. To calm myself, I just tried to internalize that the Erasmus program wasn’t really for me. That there is another MSc I can do later on in life: something that I actually would like to do other than a forced program just to get somewhere. I already did that with my Bachelor’s. I reminded myself that I should do better with the next program that I would take.
Then I remembered the au pair program. I have stumbled about it around 2016-2017 but I thought that only people without prospects do that. And I had prospects in 2017. I just got my license as a Geologist after passing the notoriously difficult and ‘sieve-like’ board exams and I was also a DMTG Scholar of a mining company. Life was promising back then. I thought I was all set for a nice career. Until it wasn’t. But that’s another story to tell.
It was quite easy for me to get a host family. I began my research around April 2021, mere days after I got the result of my Erasmus application, and I matched with a Danish family not even two weeks after making my profile live at Aufini.com. We gathered all requirements between May and June 2021 (after the Easter holiday) and I appeared at VFS Makati on the 22nd of July 2021. The interview went smoothly but it was quite fast. Even the security guard was puzzled by it since most applicants usually have longer interviews. Mine probably lasted only three minutes.
I was quite confident. Unfortunately for me, I received a rejection letter on the 28th of July, just two days after my birthday. I was quite devastated and the reason given by SIRI, the Danish Ministry of Immigration didn’t make any sense. For the second time, my dream of going to Europe came to naught. I was truly losing hope. My Danish host family wanted us to appeal but they wanted me to pay for it. It was around Php8800 around that time. I hesitated but I was like, why not? Maybe the result could be overturned. While waiting for that, I activated my profile on Aupair.com and looked for other families in other countries. I was booking interviews but a friend I met through Facebook, another au pair hopeful, told me that she gave my contact to a Swedish host family that she also met through Aupair.com. Around that time, she was already processing her paper to Sweden so she was okay recommending other hopefuls to other families she was speaking with.
The Swedish family was nice. We only talked a couple of times via messaging and an interview was scheduled 9th of August 2021. They began the interview by telling me that they would try to get back to me after a week because they have at least 50 hopefuls to look into. I said it was okay and of course, I could wait. I guess the interview went well because I received a message while I was sleeping that they wanted to call me again the following day. The Philippines is 6 hours ahead so we had a call again the 10th of August in the evening for me. The couple told me that after interviewing two more people after me, they were quite sure that I would be a perfect fit with their family because of how articulate I was. ‘Why prolong the search?’ the dad said. So, we started the processing of all documents on the 11th of August and got my approval on 25th of October 2021. Truly a whirlwind thing and the rest is history after that.
I guess wherever I am right now was because I just let things be. There were a lot of struggles and a lot of unnecessary suffering because I focused too much on my fears and worries that I won’t ever reach my target, my destination. Often we forgot how discoveries were made by explorers a long time ago. They navigated uncharted territories because of unforeseen wind changes, storms that broke loose all of a sudden and sometimes even rogue waves hitting them. They let things be, because what can you even do whilst facing turbulent waters? At the end of the day, everything will pass. The day will break again and what you’re facing is the destination that you are meant to reach. Embrace it first and all the potentials will appear. We are here and that’s the most important thing.
You might be wondering what I did with my appeal with the Danish Ministry of Immigration. I rescinded that and I got my money back. Was my Danish host happy about that? I don’t know. She never really contacted me again. We both know anyways that the appeal can take between 6 to 12 months with no guarantee of an approval. I couldn’t really wait that long and neither could she.
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