From Instagram to the Aupairtrip app : my au pair story in Chicago 🇺🇸

In 2015, I moved to Chicago to become an au pair. Like many au pairs arriving in the USA, I was excited, curious… and completely unaware of how intense the experience would be 😅. My first host family had two kids, but after some time things didn’t work out and I had to go into rematch : a stressful moment for any au pair living far from home. 🍀 Luckily, I was able to stay for one month with the host family of my best friend, the friend I had originally traveled to the USA with. Shortly after Thanksgiving, I found another family near : this time with four children 😮‍💨.

Even though that year was quite crazy : between my rematch, the challenge of taking care of four kids (and two dogs!) and the very harsh Chicago winter, it still became one of the most beautiful years of my life 🤩. My parents came to visit me and spent three weeks with me, I was able to visit a longtime friend in Los Angeles, and I even went on vacation to Miami with my host family ✈️.

That year was full of unforgettable moments : cultural discoveries, funny situations, chaos with the kids, homesickness… and everything that makes au pair life so unique 😍.

The Instagram account that connected au pairs 🌟

During my au pair year, I started an Instagram account just for fun. I posted about the daily struggles of au pair life : the awkward situations, the cultural differences, the exhaustion, and the little victories that only other au pairs truly understand 💛.

The account was mostly made of memes, and I also shared polls in my stories to see if I was the only one experiencing those situations ! Very quickly, something surprising happened.
Au pairs from all over the USA started messaging me saying things like :

"This is exactly my life" - "I thought I was the only one going through this"

The account slowly became a small au pair community. But one type of message kept appearing again and again. ✨ Girls asking :

“Is anyone traveling to New York this weekend ?” - “Any au pairs going to Miami ?” - “I’m looking for travel buddies !”

To help them, I started sharing their travel requests in my Instagram stories so they could find other au pairs to travel with. At first, it was only a few messages I shared… but over the years it grew a lot. The account became more and more known within the au pair community 🥹.

When loneliness became more visible 😔

During COVID, the messages increased dramatically. Many au pairs were experiencing loneliness, isolation, and homesickness while living abroad 😣. I started sharing the situations of these au pairs who were feeling desperate. I was receiving so many messages that I couldn’t share them all 🥺. The Instagram account became a space where they could share their feelings and find support from others going through the same experience. After COVID, the messages didn’t stop : they increased even more ! Every day I received travel requests from au pairs looking for friends nearby or travel buddies for their next trip. On average, I was receiving between 30 and 80 messages per day. If I skipped a day, it simply wasn’t possible to catch up.

At some point, I realized something : I was spending almost one hour every day reposting travel requests on Instagram 🫠.

At first, my boyfriend was helping me share the stories, but eventually he also realized how time-consuming it had become... too 😂

That’s when the idea became obvious. Instagram wasn’t the right tool for this. We clearly needed a real tool ! So I decided to do something I had been avoiding for a long time : go back through the last ten years of Instagram stories to better understand what au pairs truly needed and build something useful for them. 🤓

Why I created Aupairtrip ✈️

Au pairs needed something simple : a way to find other au pairs nearby and travel together easily. That’s how Aupairtrip was born.

It took about one year to build it : working with developers, creating a company, and financing the project through my work as a community manager 🥹. I didn’t know anything about building an app at the beginning 😂. After all, it had only started as a simple “au pair memes” account… but the au pairs following the page, and the young girl I was ten years ago, deserved a tool that would help them never feel alone again ! 🫶

Today, the app allows au pairs to :

• Find travel buddies : to go on road trips across the USA, but also in Europe or Australia, where we are expanding more and more ! It also helps share expenses like hotels or car rentals, and most importantly, it means never traveling alone. ✈️

• Connect with other au pairs nearby : because making friends shouldn’t only depend on the agency you’re placed with, but also on where you live. Who knows, maybe another au pair from a different agency lives just around the corner 🥹.

• Share tips : because au pair life can sometimes feel difficult, and everyone can share advice or ask for help 🤗.

• Talks : a space designed to discuss specific topics like homesickness, rematch, childcare tips, and many other subjects. We continue improving the app every day to help every au pair have a magical and unique experience beyond their host family 💛.


Because being an au pair abroad is an incredible experience : but it’s even better when you don’t have to do it alone 🤩.