Loriane De Coninck is an au pair. She spent her first American Christmas in New York where everything is excessive.
Living cultural experiences abroad, discovering other mentalities, refocusing on yourself, leaving the worries of everyday life, relieving the stress caused by decisive challenges and enjoying a getaway for a while before returning to studies, that's it. many reasons to go as an au pair to another continent. This is what Loriane De Coninck wanted, to discover the country with the intriguing “American dream”.
A year ago, this Laderne resident, freshly graduated from her baccalaureate, was doing her research to embark on this American adventure: “I spoke with people who had had this experience and I took English classes from August until my departure, to be more comfortable communicating in this country. I was contacted by a family from Pennsylvania. I took care of 3 year old twins“. So it was in mid-December that Loriane flew to the United States, just before Christmas…
About American Christmas, Loriane says: “I went to New York twice at Christmas. Everything is excessive. The sizes and quantities are excessive. There were storefronts with huge clocks. In a wealthy American neighborhood, I saw a house wrapped like a gift with a bay window where a large fir tree took up all the space. The houses were as if connected to radio stations where, depending on the music playing, the lights flashed rhythmically all night long!”
She also went to the plant garden or Central Park while under the snow: “It was magnificent. It made me think of a series I was watching in which we see superb decorations, but we don't realize the size of them. I'm super happy and grateful to have been able to actually see all of this.”
As for the Christmas Eve evening, Loriane says: “I went to a church on the evening of December 24 and I heard a choir there. Everyone was singing, it was beautiful. On the morning of the 25th, it was like in France, in the family in which I was: the children opened the presents, except that once again, there was an excessive quantity. Otherwise, in terms of traditions, I found that there were fewer Christmas markets than in France. anyway, where I am aisle On the other hand, there was a Santa Claus riding a hoverboard! “
Finally, the young lady who braved the intense cold of the North American continent, loved seeing all these details but she admits to having been “ surprised or even shocked because either they do nothing or they are in the smallest details. There, they don't do things by halves“.
