A year and a half ago I spent a rushed morning tidying my University room, or just the part that would show on a Skype webcam, as I prepared for my interview with Mômji.
I’d applied for the six-month online communications role which would see me work at the Mômji community alongside the team and directly with the community of babysitters. I spent an hour-long interview chatting with Alice, who would be my boss, in French and a few days later I had been accepted for the role.
Come July, I walked into Mômji’s new offices in Paris’ 12th arrondissement for the first time. Full of nerves, I was introduced to my team, as well as Antoine and Julien (the company co-founders), and start to settle in.
That was a whole year ago and now I look back on my six-months with Mômji as some of the most surreal of my life. The friends I made through the company, the experiences I had and the countless skills I picked up through my work stay with me today. During my internship, I remember writing a few articles for the website in which I mentioned Antoine and Julien’s expatriate experiences which resulted in their desire to share language and culture as far and wide as possible.
It was a philosophy I always bought into whilst working in the Speaking-Factory but now that I have left Paris and reflect on my time in the French capital, I too see my foreign experience as something so positive that I want to encourage others to do it.
Fundamentally, that’s what Mômji is here to do. Every day thousands of families welcome a foreign-speaking babysitter into their home and new bonds with the child and the family are made. I may have never babysat, but it’s that same culture of exchange that drives the team at Mômji HQ too.
During my time in the job, I made life-long friends from across the world. A 37-year-old woman from Los Angeles with an up-for-anything attitude that saw everyone from young Erasmus students like myself to long-time employees vying for the seat next to her at the lunch table. In fact, after her experience with the company, she was so driven to discover new cultures she saved up enough money to leave on an unforgettable month-long exploration of Europe before heading back State-wards. I met another British student who was on the same Year Abroad experience with me and underwent being thrown in the deep end of Parisian culture together, which created a friendship that saw me visit her in Italy earlier this year. Those are just two of 40 strong people who make Mômji tick.
And on top of all the international connections, I made a bunch of French friends who helped me perfect the language and showed me how to live like a real Parisian. Now, when I visit Paris, I feel I have a space in the city. I meet up with my old colleagues and have local restaurants and bars I can recommend to any friends who plan on heading over the Channel.
By far the best way to experience a new country is with the locals. It sounds obvious, but so many Erasmus students I know stick with other foreign students and lived in their own bubble. It’s a great way of having fun, I ended up in an Erasmus student cycle earlier this year in Barcelona and although I loved it, it was far from the same experience that Mômji provided me in Paris. It’s so important to insert yourself into a city’s day-to-day life.
And the way Mômji provides invaluable links between foreign-speakers and French families is a route to doing so that you’ll struggle to find anywhere else.
It can be a daunting experience, leaving you feeling like a fish out of water. Another great aspect of Mômji life is the events. As hard as Antoine Gentil works, no-one knows a party quite like him. In my role I had the chance to work alongside Antoine and Noelle, the offline communications boss, to pull together some of the Wine & Cheese parties you may be familiar with. Meeting the diverse range of employed babysitters and teachers and hearing of their endeavours in making their way in France over a glass or three of wine was always work that didn’t seem like work.
I got the chance to organise internal events too, pulling together a full 40-person raclette for the office Christmas party alongside another intern is a fete that should probably be plastered on my grave. Sitting with Antoine in a meeting room watching YouTube videos on how to cook 16kgs of potatoes in a microwave is one of the most bizarre memories have and one that never fails to make me chuckle today.
My Mômji experience was made up of countless moments like that with people who I just wouldn’t have met anywhere else. Calling my six months in Paris life-changing is a cliché that sounds impossible to believe, but it really was exactly that.
