JANELLE KIRKLAND
This Nordic nanny might bake Swedish birthday cakes, sing Swedish songs and speak in a thick Swedish accent, but she could easily have been mistaken for a Kiwi girl after nine months in New Zealand.
Au pair Anna Thorsell, 24, picked up everything from local slang to a taste for
hangi to a love of rugby league.
Also an All Blacks fan, she became known as ``Anna the Winger'.
When previously in New Zealand, her house backed onto a sports field and, in a moment that spawned a long-term love of league, she wandered over and asked to join in. She then took a passion for the sport back to her university team in Sweden.
Rugby league was her life while in Taradale, but living in Central Hawke's Bay this time around exposed her to a new side of Kiwi life which included machinery, cows and sheep docking.
``It's not as cruel as it sounds,' she said.
She lived at Drumpeel, an Otane beef, sheep and grain farm owned by Hugh and Sarah Ritchie.
As an au pair, she was paid a weekly allowance plus board. She helped care for David, 3, Hannah, 2 - they call her their ``other Mummy' - and twins Megan and Sarah, 9 months. The twins were born only a week after she arrived.
Though looking after four kids under 5 was obviously a handful, it was ``the hardest thing to leave them', she said before farewelling the family yesterday.
Ms Thorsell returns to continue a 4-year engineering, environment and aquatic degree which she is halfway through.
``I just wanted a break,' she said.
``Last time I left New Zealand I promised I would be back. I wanted to come back to Hawke's Bay because my friends were here.'
Au Pair Link, the agency which arranged the match, said many families employed au pairs to expose their children to another culture.
However, the Ritchies have been surprised at how much Anna embraced Kiwi life.
