KRISTYN

Our family is BUSY and FUN. I am a Finance Manager and my husband is a lawyer. We both work full-time.

We are looking for a big sister to look after our girls. We are looking for a caring, responsible and independent individual who speaks Mandarin fluently to help us take care of our girls, help us around the house and become a wonderful addition to our close family.

We are looking for an au pair to live with us for 12 to 18 months, but will consider shorter periods (say 9 months).

Our eldest daughter is 4 and our youngest daughter is 2 ½. We’re raising them to be bilingual in Mandarin and English. They attend a Chinese childcare centre in Canberra, and both understand Mandarin and speak it reasonably well for their ages. We are learning Mandarin as well, so we need an au pair who can speak Mandarin fluently to help our daughters (and us!) continue to learn Mandarin.

Their daily routine is straightforward – they go to pre-school 4 days per week (Monday to Thursday). However, outside of pre-school they love to play, have stories read to them, play lego, draw, go to the park, ride bikes, play with a ball, sing and dance. Both generally sleep through the night. The girls have swimming lessons twice per week, as well as Chinese classes and playgroups.

We live in a large 5-bedroom house that we built and moved into a year ago. You will have your own large bedroom with your own private ensuite (shower and toilet) away from the girls rooms and our room. Our house has excellent heating and cooling, superfast internet, large living room, large playroom for the girls and a backyard where our little dog lives. Like all residents of Googong you will also get free use of a gym and 25 m pool. We are also a 3 minute drive from Lake Googong, which is great for boating, fishing, hiking and picnics.

Canberra is a medium-sized funky and cool city of around 400,000 people with loads to offer young people in terms of culture, sport, history and activities. It has lots of great national parks to do hikes in, is only two hours from the ski resorts and two hours from great beaches. We go skiing at least a couple of times every winter, staying in our holiday ‘shack’ in the Snowy Mountains. Our eldest daughter can already ski and our youngest will learn this year. You would be welcome to come with us on our skiing holidays.