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[quote=Anonymous]We are about to finish the year with our first au pair, and she's had a lot of visitors from abroad.   Boyfriend for  2 weeks, sister for 10 days, parents and sister (again) for 2 weeks, and boyfriend again for 2 weeks.   Her parents stayed in a hotel for all but one night.  Otherwise, we hosted all of this in our home.  It has its moments of feeling crowded or annoying, but for the most part it has been fine.  We liked meeting her favorite people from home.  We never asked them to cook for us, but all did cook at least one meal while staying with us (excpet the sister, a seemingly fairly entitled teenager).   They also all did a mix of eating out and eating in our home.  I have also felt a bit petty asking them to pay for food or to buy their own groceries.  I never really felt too taken advantage of, though.

Here are a couple of stories about all this:  the boyfriend came and made a traditional meal from their country.  We enjoyed it, complimented him, thanked him.  AP the next day gave us the receipt for the groceries they bought to make the meal.  Still makes me laugh.  Yes, we paid it--wasn't worth it to us to make a big deal out of it.  Ok, I guess the next story isn't as funny:  the sister.  She was here around Thanksgiving.  I love to cook and really go overboard on this holiday  (for example, I bake the bread myself that I use to make the stuffing, I make 6 kinds of pies. . .).  I do love it, but it's a lot of work and very tiring.  What I hope for in return is that my guests will enjoy it, express that they enjoy it/ some appreciation, and maybe help with the set-up and clean-up.  Well, AP and her sister showed up as we sat down to dinner, sister picked at a few things, then immediately went up to her room.  Came back for dessert and did the same.  Said nothing, helped with nothing.  Our AP is not normally like that, so we did feel like her sister brought out poor behavior in her. . .

Anyway, what have we learned?  I am updating our handbook to make clearer our expectations that guests for more than a night will buy their own groceries.  I won't enforce it per se, but I just want to make clear that we expect AP's guests to contribute a bit.  
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