Rosh Hashana

Thursday, as some of you probably  know,  was Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year). My grandmother is the matriarch our large, tight-nit family, and every year she puts on a grand dinner for all of us. There are always thirty or so people, kids come in back from college, some out-of-towners come in, and everyone brings their children. On of my uncles has an Au Pair (a nanny) for his three children, and she comes every year to keep the multitudes of children from killing each other. She's a young student from Croatia going to college at OCC. She's really nice, witty, and just fun to be around, yet my family treats her like crap. It's nothing overt, but they just tend to ignore her and treat her as much as an "employee" as possible. They always call her "Au pair", never by her real name; they rarely look her in the eye when they talk to her. My aunt came down, sat next to the au pair, and started a "conversation" with her. Really, my aunt started talking about herself, nothing about the Au Pair, and then when my uncle sat down on the other side of the Au Pair, she directed the whole conversation to him, and didn't say another word to her. They were literally having a conversation over her, without including her.
So, I did my best to make her feel comfortable. Hunter (my sister) and I helped her out a little with the kids and talked to her about college and life in Croatia, and I feel we had a pretty good time. We tried to make her feel, at least, like she was part of the family. I just can't stand that the rest of my family just doesn't care about making her feel welcome.