Hanlie describes herself as an introvert. The kind of person who would rather read a good book than work a room. The kind of person who, on the face of it, might not seem like the ideal candidate for moving to a foreign country alone, living with strangers, and building a life from scratch.
She went anyway. And that decision is the entire reason Guide to Gap Year exists.
The Application
Hanlie applied for the au pair program in 2017. She was 22. She had childcare experience, a clean criminal record, a genuine love of children, and a growing sense that South Africa — much as she loved it — was not going to show her everything she needed to see.
The application process was long. The interviews were nerve-wracking. The match with her first host family, when it came, felt like a miracle.
First Family: Virginia
She landed in Virginia in 2017. A suburb. A quiet street. Two children, aged 4 and 6. She had everything she needed and was miserable within a month.
Not because anything was dramatically wrong. But because the fit wasn’t there. The communication style, the expectations, the daily rhythm — it all grated. Small frictions became large ones. Hanlie lasted three months before requesting her first rematch.
“I was devastated,” she recalls. “I thought I’d failed. I thought everyone would judge me. I thought about coming home.”
Why She Stayed
She called her agency. She cried. She spoke to other au pairs in the same region who had been through rematches of their own. She discovered that rematches — while stressful — were common. That they didn’t define you. That asking for a better fit was the right thing to do, not a shameful thing.
She stayed.
Rematches Two and Three
The second family had a different problem. The third had yet another. Without disclosing details that belong to the families involved, Hanlie describes each rematch as a different kind of lesson: in communication, in boundary-setting, in understanding what she needed to thrive.
“By the third rematch, I had become someone I hadn’t been before,” she says. “Tougher, clearer, more self-aware. Every difficult placement made me better at navigating the next one.”
Read Part 2 to find out how Hanlie finally found her family — in the city of her dreams.
