I guess I should have noticed something was wrong when the Di Bella family refused to pay for my ticket to Italy and my ticket to come home, they told me all of their au pairs had paid for their own tickets, but they agreed upon my arrival to pay for half of my ticket.

When I arrived there was a very awkward vibe in the home. When I mentioned it to them they told me that they were going through a divorce, but were staying on good terms and keeping up appearances for the sake of the children. This was the first time I had heard of any divorce, in none of the emails or phone conversations was it disclosed to me that they were going through this.

Beatrice has a very harsh personality. She likes to yell at the “help”. She doesn’t yell at her children, but my second day there she began to snap at me and she would scream at the housekeeper. She snapped at me a lot for asking questions. I was trying to learn my way around and figure out what I was doing, she did not like to be bothered it seemed. On my third day with the family she told me I was to drive the girls to school, in an old stick shift Jeep. The clutch slips and the emergency break does not work, but she didn’t tell me that. She screamed at me the entire way to the girl’s school, because I did not feel comfortable driving a car that didn’t work well on streets I didn’t know. When Beatrice would get mad at me or yell at me she would immediately call up two or three friends and go on and on in Italian about how awful I was and how incompetent I am. I deiced to ask her not to yell at me so much or to find a better way to tell me what I am doing wrong. She took that as a personal attack. She screamed at me in Italian and fired me on the spot.

When I told her she needed to pay for my ticket to go home she told me she didn’t have to pay for anything. Then she would not allow me to use the phone to call home and make arrangements to get home. When I asked her if I could use the computer to try and find flights she told me that I had two days to get out of her house and she didn’t care where I went or what happened to me.

I was able to find a way home, but on the night when I was to go to the air port she went out with her friends. Which she did every night till about 1 or 2 am.

Well on this night her daughter got sick, so when I went to tell her this when she got home she started to yell at me. I told her I was just trying to help. She told me to shut up and called me some very nasty names and then called a cab and kicked me out of the house at two in the morning. She would not pay for the cab ride to the air port and she would not let me wait in the house until the cab came. She literally put me out onto the street. I had very little money on me and I had to stay up all night in the air port. Her husband meanwhile is off in Mexico City, and will not answer his phone. I was not able to reach him the entire time I was there.

They still have not paid me or my family back for the money that they owe us for air faire.