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 ;)