Gathered at their usual round table, the young women sipped coffee, sent texts and chatted.
Their kids were in Christmas plays; their families were getting ready for Christmas; they were looking for someplace fun to go out that weekend.
The kids weren’t theirs in the usual sense. Neither were the families. And they were looking for Chicago nightlife suggestions with particular interest, since they were not from anywhere near Chicago.
They were from Spain, Germany, France, Mexico, the Netherlands and Serbia — au pairs here on cultural exchange visas, living with American families and taking care of their children.
On this Wednesday night, and most every Wednesday night, near west suburban au pairs meet at the Starbucks on Lake Street in River Forest.
The Starbucks meetings have been going on for four years, said Tanja Saarinen, the Oak Park coordinator for Cultural Care Au Pair, a Boston-based agency, and au pairs met at another area coffeehouse before that.
The gatherings are so well-known, and considered so essential to au pair life, that new au pairs go there almost as soon as they arrive in the near west suburbs.
“I came here on my second day,” said Ainhoa Indurain, 24, who is from the Basque region of Spain. “I didn’t know anyone. I was terrified. But everyone was so nice.”
“When I came here I felt lonely, but after I went to the meeting, I made friends,” said Gulen Alkan, 21, who is from Germany. “It’s very nice. Everyone is welcome. If there is a new au pair, everyone talks to her. It’s really nice to know that you’re not alone.”
There is a similar gathering every Wednesday at the Plaza del Lago Starbucks in Wilmette, said Laurie Murlick, the Cultural Care Au Pair coordinator for Winnetka, Kenilworth and Northfield.
“At this time of the year, especially, they do get a little homesick, and it’s nice for them all to have the camaraderie of all the other au pairs,” she said.
The River Forest meetings draw au pairs from Oak Park, River Forest, Elmhurst, Forest Park, La Grange and Riverside. The word is spread by agencies, host families and departing au pairs who take their replacements to the meeting to introduce them.
Some Wednesday nights, especially in summer, there are as many as 30 young women (almost all au pairs are female), talking animatedly in English, the language they have in common.
“The first time I was here, I got like 20 phone numbers,” said Saskia Hohberg, 19, who is from Germany.
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Starbucks staffers have come to know the au pairs so well that if a regular doesn’t show up, they ask about her. They sometimes put a “reserved” sign on the group’s usual table.
The tradition was begun by au pairs, said Saarinen.
“The girls started it, and I think it just grew,” she said. “Every time a new au pair arrived, they would tell her, ‘OK, the girls meet on Wednesday nights.'”
Meetings often turn into parties. “For a year, I think, every week it was someone’s birthday,” said Katarina Milovanovic, 25, an au pair for a Riverside family, who is from Serbia.
Other gatherings are goodbyes, as au pairs heading back to their home countries spend one last Wednesday night with their friends.
“It’s kind of sad,” Milovanovic said. “You make friends — you make really good friends — and then they have to leave.”
The weekly meetings are a comfort to the young people, said Saarinen, who sends all her agency’s new arrivals there.
“It’s really important for them to find friends,” she said. “For most, this exchange is the first time they’re on their own.”
And some of the friendships cemented at Starbucks become lasting ones. Two recent Oak Park-area au pairs, one from Austria and the other from Germany, are now going to school together in Switzerland, Saarinen said. And a male au pair from Mexico and a female au pair from Sweden started dating here, she said, and are now living together in Sweden.
Many au pairs had never been in the U.S. before they arrived for their stays, which last one year but can be extended for up to another year. They are drawn by the opportunity for travel and adventure, but sometimes encounter loneliness first.
Indurain found the move here unexpectedly rocky in the beginning, but at the Starbucks meetings found solace.
“I was very homesick the first weeks,” she said. “The veterans really helped. They said, ‘I know you’re homesick; I know how you feel.’ … They told me, ‘Don’t stay at home. Try to come to the meetings. Don’t stay in your bedroom.”’
She followed the suggestions, and now is happily ensconced with her Oak Park host family and their three children.
Much of the conversation at the Starbucks meetings is social, from what everyone did over the previous weekend to what they plan to do during the coming one. The weather is also a major topic — Alejandra Torres, 24, who is from Mexico, can’t imagine what she was thinking when she chose to come to frigid Chicago.
But they also talk about the stresses of caring for young children and being in an unfamiliar country.
“You are all day working with the kids and being in the house, so it’s nice to go to a place and talk to other girls who have the same problems, and maybe they can help you or you can help them,” Torres said.
Her host family in Oak Park is delighted she has that place. Being in a house all day caring for young children can be stressful, said Mary Slater, whose two children are Torres’ daytime charges.
“By Wednesday, they need a break,” she said.
“It’s hard for them,” said Colleen Campbell, a mother of three from Oak Park and host mother to Alkan. “They’re coming to someplace they don’t know. They don’t have family here.
“This is how they meet their friends; that’s who they hang out with throughout the year,” she said. “Even with a great host family, they have to go out and live on the weekend. They’re 20 years old at heart.”
In preparation for the newcomers’ weekend, Milovanovic, a veteran in her second year here, offered a detailed description of the bar scene in Wrigleyville and a nightspot downtown. After more conversation about what their families would be doing for the holidays and where to buy German chocolates, the au pairs headed out.
The goodbyes rang out across the parking lot, the conversation to be resumed the next Wednesday night.