Sunday, February 21, 2010

Don't know what to do...

After my freshman year in college, I went to Germany to be an au pair maedchen (nanny). I lived in this quaint little town where people didn't really speak English. It was so fantastically German -- picture great German houses, hills, a bakery and a meat store? Blanking on what that's called in English...metzgerei in German. Oh.. maybe butcher's shop?

Anyways -- green, rolling hills, surrounded by trees and vineyards. I lived with an LDS family with five kids (practically unheard of in Germany) and loved it most of the time. I had a hard time because I hoped to spend more time with the kids, really perfecting the language, learning the songs they sang, etc. Instead, I spent a lot of it learning "household management" for 200 euros a month.

So, the second to youngest was a 4 year old girl named Tabea, who was fairly difficult to take care of. (yes, this long story is leading somewhere). I didn't end up staying as long as I was supposed to, but I still have very fond memories of my time there and learned a lot from my experiences.

It's been almost 8 years since I was there, and the 4 year old is now 12. On my birthday in November, she called me on my cell phone, which surprised me. Apparently, she had had difficulty getting me to call HER (after harassing Michael for weeks on FB to the point that he blocked her) she finally called my mom. All in all, it was really sweet of her to call, even though I was struggling with my German.

So, here's the problem: she kept calling me after the first time and I wasn't sure if she had a calling card, or if her parents knew about it, or what. And then she started calling at 4 or 5 in the morning, and eventually I stopped answering, and was setting my phone to silent every night so that at least it wouldn't wake me up.

I tried to send her a message on Facebook, to tell her that we should just "chat" on Facebook, because it was so difficult for me to understand some of her German over the phone. She got angry, and I apologized and still told her I thought she was very sweet; I thought that was the end of it.

But the calls kept coming.

So, I wrote her mom a message on Facebook, telling her what was happening and if she could help me take care of it. She never wrote back, but the calls stopped. At least for a month or so.

Now, she calls every two weeks or so, usually on Sunday morning and it wakes me up, 4am, 5am. I'm not sure what to do...her mom doesn't write me back on Facebook -- and even if she told her to stop calling, would it really work? I think she may just be stubborn enough that if I ask her again to stop calling, that it will get worse. Then I started thinking that maybe I should just change my number, but does that make me lame, that I can't take care of a 12 year old on the other side of the world who won't quit calling me?

(sigh)

I need help.

3 comments:

Momma H. said...

Can you check with Verizon and see if you can block her phone calls?

Jenny said...

I wish -- It always comes in "Private number" so it's not an actual number I can block. Like if someone uses a calling card or something.

Unknown said...

yikes! can we say....psycho?