Into the wild

Aid week was pretty cool, 2 days off in the middle of the week and what best way to finish such a cool week then to go into the wild with your friends.

So I went for a 2 days trip/volunteering in Kroumirie Mountains. First stop was Farm Gisele where we had a nice picnic and after enjoying the nature we helped to build back the wall that has been destroyed by the rains.

After a nice afternoon we continued to Beni Mtir where we spent the night. It is a very nice and quiet place, it kind of reminds me on Marčani (but Marčani without 20 crazy people), and if there was no cafe that was playing the Tunisian music so loud that you could hear it in Algeria, it would be a perfect getaway to chill out.

Next day we were supposed to enjoy warm sources but we woke up too late so we missed out on that, but at least we had a sleep in instead :) Later on we went to the Ain Draham to plant the trees in the forest that burned out in August. Forests and landscapes that I had the opportunity to see on the way were just breathtaking...

Last thing on the agenda before leaving back to Tunis was barbecue in a little cottage in the middle of nowhere, again, sounds kind of familiar... Of course, the bus couldn't get us to the cottage so we also had a nice little walk and even some rain wannabe couldn't ruin the moment :)

Cultural shock

Coming here for the third time this year, I thought that nothing can really surprise me any more.

But... well I was wrong. One of the biggest religious celebration in Tunisia is Aid el Adha or ‘’Festival of the sacrifice’’. There is a custom of sacrificing a sheep/ram that is following this celebration. Just writing about it doesn't really sound so shocking and my parents are wondering right now why would that shock me cause I saw plenty of animals being killed on the farm of our family. However, I never expected to hear beeee from almost every apartment in my building in a fancy neighborhood of a 4 million people capital city.


After the initial shock I wanted to explore this custom a bit more. So, according to Wikipedia, Aid el Adha is an important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God, before God intervened to provide him with a ram to sacrifice instead. The meat is divided into three equal parts to be distributed to others. The family retains one third of the share, another third is given to relatives, friends and neighbors, and the other third is given to the poor & needy.

My boss, Mr. Zouhair, invited Julia and me to spend this day with him and his family. By the time we arrived, ram was already sacrificed and we witnessed only cleaning of the animal. For me it was not a big deal, but Julia on the other hand had a bit hard time watching this :) just look at her happy face. We spent a lovely day with Mbarek family and thank you once again for having us there. We really had a great time and it was pleasure meeting all of you :)

3idkom mabrouk to all my friends celebrating this holiday

My first days in Tunis

Almost two weeks have passed since I started my life in Tunis and so far everything is going according to the plan. I started my job, my colleagues are great, I moved into my new apartment with my cool room mates Jula and Mouna and I'm enjoying my life with the people I love :) Sure, I miss you guys back home, specially my family and my girls ;) but my life is pretty awesome right now.

Finding the apartment was not easy at all, but we managed to find a perfect one. And now you will see why...










The living room.


My room.

This apartment wouldn't be ours if we didn't have some help from couple of very nice people :) there were a lot of people helping us look for an apartment (driving us around) and helping with getting the furniture but there were 2 special people that are main responsible for the awesome apartment we have now. Wael, you were like a big brother to us and thank you for taking care of us :* and Yosra you turned our empty apartment into a home :*

I also have a new friend, his name is Baileys and he is a very cute little cat :) I'm not a big fan of cats usually but he is very playful and he likes to be petted so he kind of got underneath my skin.

Concerning my job, I'm still getting into it and it's becoming more and more busy but interesting. One of the funny things here is that I still don't speak French and people in Tunisia are not very comfortable with their English. So it happens that I send a request for an offer in English and they send the offer back in French... A big black French/English dictionary is becoming a very good friend of mine, almost like Google Translate. But that's not the end of the story, it get even more interesting... So I got the offers in French, I translated them, but now I need to call for some additional information. And what happens, I call the guy at the hotel, I introduce myself in English and the guy is responding to me in French, I say I'm sorry what did you say, and he responds in French again.... Seriously???

So the lesson of the week is that I need to start learning French for real!!! (business French that is, not the things my friends have been teaching me)

In the upcoming weeks we are planning a moving in party and a trip I still don't know where so I'll keep you posted :*

Love you all
Pusa iz suncanog Tunisa :*

P.S. For my friends back home who are wondering where I am and why am I not writing anything, at work I'm quite busy lately and at home I still don't have internet. We're planning to get it asap and then you'll hear from me more often ;)

Goodbye Croatia

Saying goodbye to friends and family is never easy... as expected there were some tears and sad faces but also a crazy party and planning of some awesome visits :)

It all started with THE Party on Saturday in my weekend house. It was my goodbye party mashed up with 2 birthday parties, Bonny and Fićo once more, Happy Birthday! We had some parties there over the years and it never went without the damage so I was kind of prepared for it. However, I could have never imagined that my dear friend Fićo would bring Drinkopoly....

So can you imagine what happens when people start to play this game at 11 am? Before having a lunch.... If you think you can, you're wrong! The result of it was a broken toilet, a broken chair and couple of almost clinically dead people at 1 pm! Other then that it was a pretty much awesome party :) and I'm really going to miss my crazy friends. Here is a glimpse of how it was like on the party...

As I already mentioned, it started pretty early, we gathered around 11. Boys hit the game right away and well... you know how that ended up :P After two rounds of the game (I know only for two, but there might have been more) they decided to start preparing the barbecue, hm... But then the girls went mad. As soon as the game was free from the boys, they hit it on as well. But this was something different, something you can't see every day...

It was a crazy house and it was still morning! Then I saw my dog laying in a corner and since he's the only full time resident of that house, well I guess it was not very easy for him to see all that...

Anyway, to cut the story short, people got "happy" very fast, barbecue was great, there were some cool conversations, there was a lot of dancing and singing, chicha and some Tunisian food, couple of tears and a lot a lot of fun.

After a weekend of recovery it was time for me to finish up everything here and spend some time with my family. My mum is quite emotional (like all mums I guess) so it was not easy at all having with her even random conversations.

The time for me to leave was approaching and my feelings were really mixed. I was looking forward to meeting my Tunisian friends again but I also started to realize how much I'm going to miss my friends and family back home. So I just want to remind my Croatians that a lot of them promised to visit me and I'm expecting you to do so ;)

Yesterday I arrived in Monastir and I want to thank again the guys for picking me up. I had a really long but funny ride to Tunis :) and arrived to Yosra's place again :)
I'm in the cafe now, having my first direct with my dear friend Wael and looking for an apartment to rent. Tomorrow I will go to my company to meet the people I'll be working with for the next year and a half so I'll keep you updated...

Bisoux :*

Preparations

It's 12 days before I leave for my one and a half year internship in Tunisia and I officially started to prepare for it. One week ago I bought my ticket and 2 days ago I bought a bag. Excited as I am, I decided to start packing, but 2 kg of Cedevita and 0,5 kg of Vegeta are still the only things in my bag. Why? I’ve travelled a lot in my life, but I was never going somewhere for such a long period and the question I need the answer to is: How do I pack for 1 year of life in 1 bag? So as I sit on my bed looking at my brand new, red, empty bag it’s starting to hit me – I’m leaving Zagreb for a long time. And as much as I'm excited that I'm going there, I'm starting to realize I'm really going to miss some people. Luckily I don't have too much time to think about it, because together with all the things I have to manage before I leave, I'm still working every day which makes me kind of busy all the time.

On the other side preparations in Tunis are going well. I heard that reception coordinator will pick me up on the airport and that he doesn't really speak English so well, I guess we'll manage somehow :) My future roommates found a great apartment and they will let me know today the date of moving in :)

I'm going to finish this first post with a quote of Denis Waitley that reminded me of Tunis instantly :)

"Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be suprised."