By Tamara Jones
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 16, 2005; D01
The new nanny's crying jag began in Times Square and didn't sputter to a stop until two families, four children, dozens of transatlantic phone calls and way too many cigarettes later, when she finally settled into her new life in a McBasement on the outskirts of Leesburg. This wasn't quite the America that Antje Waleschkovski anticipated when she painted her fingernails red, white and blue before leaving Germany for her year abroad. But then again, a tattooed 20-year-old with a tongue stud, an affinity for rap music and a fervent desire to hit the casinos in Vegas probably wasn't quite the Mary Poppins her host family expected, either. Officially, the State Department calls this a cultural exchange, a government-regulated year in America for young foreigners willing to baby-sit 45 hours a week in return for about $135 plus room, board and a few college credits. Unofficially, it's the scariest thing Antje has ever done, not just a leap of faith but a blindfolded skydive. She lands in a dreary Holiday Inn in Stamford, Conn., with 200 equally stunned au pairs undergoing four days of training before fanning out to their host families. Autumn is peak nanny migration season, and once Au Pairs in America has trained Antje's group, a new flock will arrive for orientation, then another and another until the rush subsides later this month. The Stamford-based agency is among a handful authorized by the State Department to place and manage au pairs. Nationwide, more than 15,000 au pairs are issued 13-month visas each year. Sandee Plescia has flown in from Chicago to train Antje's class, and she scans the ballroom counting heads. Across the rows of jet-lagged newcomers, giggly Portuguese flows into anxious Polish, which crashes into earnest German, which sideswipes murmured Thai before Sandee commands attention in English from her lectern. She offers a key to the mysterious American psyche: "We love to fix problems in the United States!" She could use a good problem now. Missing suitcases, anyone missing a suitcase? A Brazilian raises her hand. "One?" Sandee is surprised. "Last week, American Airlines lost 40." A bag isn't all that's missing this time, though. An au pair seems to have vanished, too. * * * Antje finished high school and scanned a gray horizon. College isn't free in Germany anymore, and unemployment has soared to a 60-year high. Her East German parents have both worked two jobs since the Berlin Wall fell. Antje knew that fluent English would give her an edge no matter what career she eventually chose. Her family had visited an aunt in New Jersey a few years ago, with a side trip to Washington. "We saw the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and the big place with water where Forrest Gump ran through it," Antje says. Back home, Antje promised herself she'd return someday. Antje applied to the au pair program and added her profile to Au Pair in America's database. She jumped at her first offer, from a couple in Bethesda with two daughters. Arriving in Stamford, Antje finds the hotel's front desk buried beneath flowers, goodie baskets and FedEx envelopes from host families eager to welcome their new nannies. Girls coo over crayoned love letters and show off new cell phones and T-shirts and scented bath oils. But no gifts await Antje, and no one calls from Bethesda. There are so many incoming au pairs this time of year that the group is split between two ballrooms, with Sandee and fellow counselor Joan Barth following the same government-mandated lesson plan. The girls quickly form cliques, Canadians and Aussies, Swedes and Danes, two French girls (one chic, one panic-stricken). Pierced noses, ornate tattoos and peekaboo black bra straps suggest that some of mommy's little helpers are more familiar with mosh pits than sandboxes. Now, on this first morning of orientation, Antje listens to another American culture newsflash from Sandee, whose unfailing good cheer comes with the public confession that she loves Disney World so much she's been 32 times: "It is not unusual for American children to say 'I hate you,' " she announces. "If the children you are caring for say 'I hate you,' pat yourself on the back and smile, because that means you're doing a really good job." The child-development handouts and videos drone on about "extrinsic goals" or glumly reveal that playtime is so vital "it occurs even in times of famine." Sandee offers more pragmatic advice. "If a policeman pulls you over for speeding, I want you to speak in your native language and cry," she instructs. Also: "There is no insurance coverage if you go crazy in the United States." Ditto for eyeglasses and pregnancy, though discovery of the latter means instant cancellation of visas. Lunch rolls around, and there is a commotion in the back. The au pairs are trapped! Sandee scurries to the rescue. ("I forgot to show you how to open doors. Push the bar in.") Liberated, the au pairs immediately confront another obstacle: The taco bar. "This is the bread, yes?" someone asks, waving a tortilla shell. "Salad," another decides, heaping shredded lettuce onto her plate and dousing it with hot-sauce dressing. Sandee and Joan huddle. The trainers still need to cover a lot of ground -- first aid, surviving the DMV, rainy-day craft projects. Meanwhile, they confirm that the AWOL au pair was indeed aboard her scheduled flight from Brazil, which did, in fact, land at Newark the day before. So where is she? Cold feet? Wrong shuttle bus? She could be in Maine by now. After lunch, Sandee briskly outlines the three unpardonable au pair sins: abusing drugs, alcohol or children. "If you do any of these things and you are not in jail, you can be on a plane back to your own country at your own expense within 24 hours." The ballroom falls silent. "Now, anybody here from Holland?" Sandee asks. "No. Okay. . . . What if you go to a party and everybody is doing drugs, what do you do? Go home! Leave the party." A Swede in the back wants to know what drugs look like. "If they're smoking and it doesn't smell like cigarettes, it's probably drugs," Sandee replies. "That's marijuana. If they're bringing out a mirror and putting powder on it, that's cocaine." As for drinking, Sandee says, "you cannot get so drunk you pass out face down in the host family's front yard. I have to tell you this because it's happened." Finally, she warns, "you can never, ever, ever hit the children in the United States." The Swede has another question. "What if the children go berserk and you can't get them to the car?" "Oh," Sandee assures her, "you can drag 'em; you just can't hit 'em." She dims the lights to show a video starring a squalling baby. "Remember," the somber voice-over intones repeatedly, "never, ever shake a baby!" At the break, Joan gets a call from the missing au pair. She's at the Newark airport, torn between flying home to her lovesick boyfriend and joining the American family that paid $7,100 in fees to bring her here. Stuck in emotional baggage claim. "There's a lot of confusion in her life," Joan notes. The agency sends her back to Brazil. The motivation to move to a foreign country, live with strangers and take care of their children for a year is relatively easy to grasp, Sandee thinks. She quickly deconstructs it with her unscientific poll of trainees: "How many came because you want to improve your English?" Everyone raises her hand. "How many came because you hope to find a rich American husband?" Half the hands in the ballroom shoot up, amid giggles. "How many came because you wanted to have an adventure?" Most hands up. "How many came because you want to take care of American children?" One hand. * * * That evening, Joan and Sandee put out Tupperware bowls of M&Ms and invite the au pairs to visit them in the staff suite. Girls flip through the maps, travel books and brochures on the table, chattering excitedly. How far is California? You can drive to California for the weekend from Illinois, no? The au pairs have the night free, and those who aren't sleeping plan to hit the nearby mall. Jeans and shoes are so cheap in America! Local boys have figured out that Tuesday evenings are the time to troll for pretty au pairs. A few ambitious ones were even loitering outside the ballrooms when the afternoon session ended. Sandee reminds the girls not to accept rides from strangers, not even the hotties. This she underscores with dark allusions to kidnap, rape and murder in isolated warehouse districts. Alexandra Lilja Nilsson, 24, swirls into the counselor suite wearing a gauzy skirt. The bubbly Swede has already impressed Sandee and Joan with her smart questions and flawless English. Now Joan admires her glasses, and Alexandra whips them off for her to try on, and Alexandra gushes over Sandee's shoes, so Sandee indoctrinates her into the cult of TJ Maxx. Alexandra is going to a family in Chapel Hill, N.C., "which I think must be beautiful," and she doesn't usually like sports, "but I am very excited to see American football," and she prattles on before leaving for the mall with a cheery, "Well, I am off to duck American boys!" On their final night of orientation, the au pairs board buses for their $55 tours of Manhattan. They cruise past dingy high-rises and littered sidewalks. At a stoplight, a German au pair points outside with a shriek: "Oh, is he fat! Is that a fat arm or what?" She raises her camera and shoots a picture through the bus window of a large man in a dirty white undershirt. At Lincoln Center, a tour guide jumps aboard and gives the group 15 minutes to get out and have a look. "If you come back late, I will kill you," he says, adding, "Don't stand on the fountain. They'll yell at you." At the Empire State Building, the au pairs spend most of the allotted time in line or on elevators, wedging their way to the edge of the observation platform to marvel at the glittering metropolis below. In Lower Manhattan, they peer through the darkness to glimpse the Statue of Liberty and fall silent as the bus rolls past the gouged scar of Ground Zero. They stand in the middle of Times Square while the tour guide makes them pretend it's New Year's Eve and shout out a countdown while watching the ball not drop. In the neon bewilderment, Antje pulls out her cell phone. It's 4:30 a.m. Germany. "I'm standing in Times Square!" Antje tells her parents. She begins to cry. * * * Before meeting the families, the counselors have the au pairs list typical American character traits. American women, are "crazy, superficial, friendly, independent, desperate housewife shopaholics with plastic surgery." Men are "rich cowboys who like beer, bowling, big cars and big breasts." American children are "noisy, spoiled, smart, busy, happy, curious, talkative and religious." The counselors field questions. "Can you have guy friends over on the weekend?" (Yes, but not overnight.) "Do you have real dark bread? (No, but your host mom loves to bake, so maybe she'll make you some.) "Can they pay us with cash?" (Yes, but the host father cannot put money in your back pocket and fondle your fanny, which Sandee says one au pair silently endured for an entire year.) The counselors try to explain how hyper Americans are. "We have 1-year-old children with social calendars," Joan says. One au pair is going to a family whose 2-year-old twins take private Italian lessons. There are host families who give au pairs cars and laptops and TiVo, and ones who monitor how much orange juice is being consumed. Rematches can come at the request of either side. One German was so unnerved by crickets in her basement bedroom in the District that she had to leave, going to a Fairfax couple seeking a rematch after finding Thai porn downloaded on their computer by an au pair who said she wanted a "more exciting" family anyway. Orientation over, Antje takes the train to Washington. Driving through Bethesda's neighborhoods with her new family, Antje remembers being pleased to see her stereotypes reinforced: "America means big houses, big cars." She is appalled to find her host family's home cramped and messy, smelling strongly of what Antje suspects is cat urine. Her basement room proves dim, her powder room has no mirror. Antje presents the gifts she had brought from Germany, feeling hurt when "all they give me is a welcome sign written on the back of a cereal box." Antje cries through the night and into the next morning, when she calls the agency to demand a rematch. Antje tries to soften the blow for the family, confessing that she misled them by claiming to be a non-smoker. She wasn't able to quit , and in fact is now smoking more than ever before. The hosts don't consider this a deal-breaker, so Antje admits that she can't stand their house. It takes two tense weeks for another family to choose Antje. Scott and Heather Pospichel arrive to pick her up for lunch at the mall with their two kids, Andrew, 2, and Katrine, 5. Everyone seems to click, but when Heather ducks into a store for a few minutes, she comes out to discover Antje weeping. Heather wheels on her husband. "What did you say to her? She's only been here 10 minutes!" Scott is equally dismayed. "I didn't do anything!" he protests. Antje can't stop crying. An only child away from home for the first time, the mere words "father" and "mother" can set her off. The Pospichels take her home. Their 5,000-square-foot house is brand new. Antje counts five windows in her sunny basement suite. The Pospichels give her a boxed set of CDs, cable TV and a blue Kia. They also give her a pick, because Andrew loves to lock doors. "He's a little devil," Antje says with a laugh. The Pospichels have had four au pairs, including the Brazilian who rarely came out of her room and the Pole who announced upon arrival last year that she would be looking for an American to marry. She left, six months pregnant by an unemployed boyfriend who had dumped her. She told Scott on the way to the train station that she planned to overstay her visa and give birth to an American citizen. "There are 10 million illegal aliens here already," he remembers her explaining, "what's one more?" The Pospichels are worried now that the children will get attached only to have Antje bail. "The phone would ring, and Antje would cry," Heather recalls about her first couple of weeks. "We'd mention something, she'd cry. Her parents were calling four times a day. We'd just get her calmed down and focused on something else, the phone would ring, and it would start all over again." Scott sits Antje down. What are the top five things she wants to do in America? (Go to Vegas, see German native Dirk Nowitzki play for the Dallas Mavericks, see Formula One racing at Indianapolis . . . .) Scott buys tickets for a Mavericks game. It's in March. "Now you've gotta commit," he jokes. Heather talks about baking Thanksgiving pies. Didn't Antje's application say she loved to cook? Antje thinks of her grandmother's honey cake and tries not to cry. But things are getting better now. Antje follows her favorite TV show, "The O.C.," and reads Nora Roberts novels. She makes friends with another German au pair. Her mother promises to send her favorite German coffee and chocolate. Antje and a classmate from orientation even talk about going to Florida on spring break "because we want to see how American students get drunk." At the very least, she is confident that she can hang on until January, when she turns 21. The Pospichels have dropped hints about a trip to Las Vegas. It would be such a shame, Antje thinks, to leave America without gambling.