Trip to Sidi Bouzid

I finally went to visit Sidi Bouzid. It is a city in the central Tunisia, from which revolution have started. Although the feelings are divided on the subject of Mohamed Bouazizi, some consider him a hero, some are seeing him as a guy whose ego was hurt by the fact that a woman slapped him on the street, some say he was drunk, some say he was a good boy trying to support his family. I didn't know him so I can't really say which story is true, what kind of a guy he was, and what was his motive to set himself on fire on the December 17th . But the fact is, weather it was his intention or not, in a way he moved Tunisians to get out on the street and ask for a better future. They were on the street for different reasons, as my friend D'ali would explain. People in the central and south Tunisia were protesting about poverty and unbearable life conditions, whereas people in the capital were asking for the right to express themselves, to read, to talk, to share ideas, and to work without the fear of being arrested or hurt for having a different opinion of those in power.

We have visited the building of the national guard that has been burned to the ground, the place where Bouazizi burned himself, and his house. We had the close encounter with one of the neighbors which claims that journalist have been and still continue to, rob her house when they visit the Bouazizi family. The true story is a bit more realistic, she is simply jealous of her neighbors because they are getting so much attention and journalists are always coming to them. So she just got home when we were there and she started screaming for us to leave, that she can't live like this, that they always steal from her... bla bla bla... seriously???

By now you are probably wondering why there is only one picture when I always have a lot of them on my posts, well since the wake up was at 6.30 and I went to bed around 4 the previous night, I forgot my camera :/ It was hard enough to think about how to walk and get myself to the bus, so there was no place in my head for any accessories :)

All in all it was a very nice road trip and I'm happy that I met yet another part of this beautiful country :)

A night at the Roxbury

Have you ever got inspired by something very ridiculous?

Well my roommates and me have :) We watched THE best trash movie EVER "The night at the Roxbury" and decided to have this as the theme for one random Friday night. So we invited our friends and made a proper party at our place, and when I say proper I mean it. The last one before this was Wael's "surprise" birthday party.

This time though, we were a bit smarter :) we made some rules for the party and we stuck improvised ashtrays and trash bags around the apartment.

Mouna was responsible for the decoration and Rihab was helping her. I should probably mention that they were also supported by a bottle of vine :)

For those who know the girls, it's not very hard to imagine how our living room looked like when they were done with it...

Wade and me were responsible for shopping since our passports have a very special role on Fridays.

Playlist was also aligned with the theme, meaning we went back to the 90' and we had a blast. We also encouraged our friends to dress according to the theme and some of them took it pretty seriously.

The title for the best outfit goes to...

...

...

Ali and Saleh :)

We had a special guest joining the party, Hafedh was there too :)

All in all it was one hell of a party and even cleaning afterwards didn't seem so hard.

Until our next event, your hosts:

Wade, Mouna, Ines, and Ivana :*

The election day

It was a very special day today in Tunisia. It was the day of the elections for the constitutional assembly. My friends went to vote for the first time in their lives and my facebook is filled with pictures of blue fingers :) The information that I have is that the turn out was amazing 80% The only thing I can say is: Mabrouk Tunisie :)

Now, we are sitting in a cafe waiting to hear some news about the results and despite all the worries they had last couple of days, today the word to describe the atmosphere is POSITIVE :)

And me, I'm just so happy to be here and live this moment with my friends :)

Summer time

It has been way to long since my last post.... I wasn't really in the mood to write anything up until now so I'll try to sum it up :)

The visit

The most important thing happening in the past couple of months was my parents coming to Tunis. It was amazing and they proved once again that they are totally crazy, even for my standards :) We did some sightseeing, they met my friends, we had an interesting evening with Rakia, we went bowling of course, and they even experienced the curfew... They were here for a week and it went by way too fast :/ Their first impression was not the best but with a little help from Mr. Cherif and my friends, they found Tunisia quite charming and they are planning to visit again. And imagine, they didn't even see the south ;) so for the next trip it's going to be a desert adventure baby!











Summer in Tunisia

June & July in Tunisia.... hmmm... a lot of sun, awesome beaches, parties every day, and a major lack of sleep :) it sounds cool ha? well yes if you're not working the next morning... and we all do... and we are not so young any more (except for Rihab :P she's still young) but we all managed to get through it without any major consequences (and Wael getting measles was in no way influenced by our way of life :))
So let's take a look....

Hammamet trips: beach time & amazing DJ Youssef ;)



























Shut up and dance (80's) + random fun



























And after two months of craziness, I'm about to experience my first Ramadan. I'm not planning to fast but I'm excited to finally see what everyone has been talking about, the atmosphere they have been describing, card games and coffees, everything being open and alive the whole night, and well my organism is looking forward to cutting down on alcohol :)

And one more very important thing to look forward to is September.... To my friends back home, you can expect me in Zagreb on the September 17th ;) yeeeeeey can't wait!!!! and no I'm not coming back to stay it's just a holiday :P

Changes

February and March were months of big changes in my Tunisian life. At first I was a bit scared and didn't know what will happen, but it turned out to be quite awesome :)

I changed my internship and my new job is great. For the first time I can say that I really have a lot of work and that I'm learning a lot. My new company is Integration Objects and their core work is something completely different from anything I've done so far. My new colleagues are great, we are going in the gym after work twice a week (one of the benefits of working for my company is a free gym), we started salsa classes and generally we have a lot of fun :)

Also, Julia decided to go back home in April, so me and Mouna are currently looking for a new roommate (if you know anyone that is looking for an apartment in Tunis and wants to live with 2 awesome girls let me know). In any case, cross your fingers for us :)

Most of you know, or at least should know, that I celebrated my 20something birthday in February. We had a nice dinner at my place (I cooked) and although one piece of meet was not cooked properly, it ended up on my plate so no damage was done :P Guys made sure we had an awesome desert too, they brought a delicious cake (they forgot to get candles but as usual they managed, with matches :))

Upcoming weekend we went to the pub again, and they say that a picture is worth 1000 words, so I'm leaving it for your interpretation





























For the end of this post I just have one message: Ivica KRALJ!!!! :)))

p.s. for my non Croatian speaking friends - hint: google translate :P

Fun times leftovers and recent news

As I promised last time, I will write about some fun times I had here in the past 4 months. Lets start with Christmas...

Christmas time for me is a time for family, I'm not one of those that gets drunk on Christmas and goes partying. This year was no exception, we trimmed the Christmas tree, decorated the apartment, I cooked my grandmothers risotto calamari, Christmas music was playing all night long, we had our friends come over for dinner and we even went to church for a Midnight Mass.














Yes you see it correctly, we had 2 Christmas trees this year, the little one we bought and the big one was a surprise present from a special someone :* (p.s. don't kill me for this pic, but I liked it so much, I had to put it)

After the Midnight Mass we had some random fun while opening our presents













Next thing on our agenda was New Years Eve. We were planning to go to this awesome, private party and the theme of the evening was Movies. We were talking about the ideas for costumes for weeks, at first we wanted to have a group costume, cause we were a big group actually. Girls really liked the idea of going as a group from a Bollywood movie, but guys didn't like it and since they didn't offer any alternative the whole idea of a group costume was canceled.

So Julia and me were starting to brainstorm about the costumes and at the last minute, as usual, we figured it out. We will be a Mafia couple, husband and wife :)

Mouna decided to go with a Whoopi look and it looked great.



We were ready and we were on our way to Hammamet. We were among the first people that arrived to the party (and of course later on we were almost the last ones to go home) so we occupied one table we put our drinks on ice and the crazy night was ready to start. I had so much fun and for me it seemed like the party lasted only 2 hours (and yes alcohol might have had some influence on me not being able to tell time but that are just details, totally not important). There is not much to tell about this night, only that we were most definitely the craziest bunch of people there, that we had awesome time there and that the party absolutely fulfilled our expectations!











After the new years, it was time to get get ready for Waels' birthday. We decided to throw him a surprise party in our apartment. And it would really be a surprise if I didn't fuck it but, but those are details again so no need to talk about it, and if people that came with cars didn't park them right in front of the building so he saw them before coming... Still, he was surprised by the amount of people and all in all we had a lot of fun. Much bigger surprised was waiting for us when we woke up in the morning and realized how our apartment looks like. One friendly advice, if you ever get the idea to give mousse chocolate to a bunch of kind of drunk people, think again or simply forget that you even have mousse chocolate!!!! As you can predict by now, some people had o lot of fun with the chocolate including our guest of honour, so he decided to clean with us too :*

This were the higlights of the leftovers I promised, and now lets get to the recent updataes.

Most of my freinds here and at home already know, but for those who don't tomorrow is my last day of work in Batouta Voyages. Since the revolution in Tunisia started, tourism sector in Tunisia was quite effected and not in a positive way and so my company was faced with some challenges and some difficult decisions to make. One of those was to cut my intership short and February was my last month working for them. I was determined to find new job, and of course I did.

I start on 1st of March my new internship in the company Integration Objects. So far I heared only good things about them, they already had interns before and they even have one intern working for them at the moment. The office is located in Lac and most of my friends work there too so I will finaly learn to enjoy my 1,5 hour lunch break :) I'm really looking forward to my new internship and you will hear more about it next time.

One other kind of big news is that we don't have the curfew since two weeks I think, and last night we went out to the pub. As usual, a lot of random fun acompanied with good music and couple of drinks ;)













Until the next time, stay good and have fun ;)