anyone tried au pair before as a way to travel and possibly learn

>>1251398
>because I'm a male

lel just forget it senpai it ain't happening

>>1251486
u serious or just a bitter fag?

The problem of travelling as an AuPair is the dad always tries to fuck you.
>OP is a guy AuPair
Same problem, it's just harder to find a good dad.
Have a nice trip.

>>1251492
He's serious any job you get as a male aupair is going to be strange.

Just teach english m8o. It's the same thing but probably more fun, better money and you're not a slave to some family.

>>1251648
if they didn't want a male au pair, they wouldn't accept your application. some websites even filter the hosts who specify "female-only". so you're not going to be paired with somebody who doesn't want a "son". what would be the problem?

also
>teaching english
I mentioned having no degree in the OP. I'm poor, which is kind of the point of this

>>1251398
>it looks appealing to me, as someone with no degree or job prospects for a visa, to get to stay a while in a foreign country. however I am worried that my chances will be low because I'm a male
Well, you screen the families who want to hire you too. Do you have anything to speak about in child experience? Some church bible camp, babysitting references, much younger siblings, or something like that? Are you intelligent at some industry..what did you parents do for a living? Were you a whiz in school in one particular language? Computer skills insanely good, where you can offer your ability to tutor something like for teenagers? Could you promote yourself as gay friendly? They might have trouble. Are you a great driver? Do you have a passport that poses no issues for certain country travel? Market yourself, and place your own ads, or online stuff, if agencies scare you.

>>1252714
I've been a family babysitter all my life, and volunteered teaching arts and crafts classes for kids. no professional experience though. hopefully if I sell myself and make a good impression, that won't matter right?

agencies don't bother me, just wondering if anyone has had any experience doing this or tips on what its like, how to make the most of it, etc

>>1251398
>>1251486
I've met one male au pair. His situation was a bit unusual, though, as he had prospects and unusual qualifications--he was a dedicated student of Chinese, and he was a native speaker of German. So a German journalist friend of a friend of mine hired him to take care of her kids in Beijing. Over dinner with my friend she told me that she worried about him--he did almost nothing but study when he wasn't working, had no friends as far as she could tell, and he seemed to have no fun. But his Chinese was supposedly getting very good. When I crossed paths with him a few days later I noticed that his English was not very good, which may have fueled his isolation. But his accent in Mandarin sounded very accurate.

I don't know if he had a degree--I think he had just completed one, and I think some au pair agencies actually expect you to be a recent university graduate.

My only personal friend who's been an au pair is, coincidentally, another German, but largely raised in the US, so basically bilingual in English and German (she has a nearly undetectable, hard to place accent in English, but she is functionally totally fluent). She got hired by a family in Paris right after college, with the intention of improving her French, in which she had no more than U.S. secondary school proficiency (which is probably somewhere between negligible and poor, on average, although since she was nearly a native bilingual I think she was probably a little ahead of her peers) when she went.

Her French pronunciation remained terrible; she spoke French with the same, microscopically Teutonic, American accent she has in English. But her fluency actually became pretty impressive after about two years, and people could understand her OK.

But you and all the snarky posters above are right that childcare opportunities are going to be negligible for you as a male. Males are not trusted with kids. A sad prejudice and an unfair one, but not exactly baseless.

>>1252841
Forgot to finish with the optimistic note--if it's something you're really dedicated to doing (not just the getting out of your country part, but the working with kids in another country part), you should absolutely try to do it. Someone will probably hire you eventually, and it's bound to be at least an interesting experience.

The only caveat is that au pair work doesn't typically give you a lot of free time. The hours may be very long and the time off very little, and your employers will presumably want a contract of at least a year, so you probably won't be doing a lot of traveling.

But you'll be immersed in a place and getting to know some kids and kids' entertainment/environments/education, which will probably be good for you if you're a novice speaker of whatever language it is.