My first days in Croatia during May 07

For me, this blog purpose is also to assure that by the end of my experiences abroad I have my own testimonies in place. So, it makes sense to post an old e-mail I have sent in May during my first days in Croatia:

“Bok!

I’m writing you directly from Zagreb, Croatia. The city where I will live for one year in the next term. These last week has been amazing and there is a lot that I would like to share with you guys:

The City: I haven’t seen much, but it’s very green, I haven’t seen traffic until now and there are people in the street until very late, which is great. An interesting thing is that from 9pm on no one buys tram tickets because they know that there isn’t anyone at that time checking heheh.

The Language: These will be definitely my biggest challenge. I have learned some key words, but the pronunciation is quite difficult for me. Just a curiosity, there is a girl who people call “Keka”, so you can imagine my reaction when I first heard it, and what goes through my mind when someone calls her :)

The People: I think that in general they are similar to Portuguese (from my perspective until now): going to the coffee doing nothing after lunch, not being that much worried about time, sometimes is difficult to people to be focus, they also in a discussion start talking at the same time as others, are friendly, are very often saying jokes.The main differences until now are the ratio of smokers, in this country is huge, at least in young people! They say more jokes than we do, they have an amazing capacity to laugh from themselves much bigger than Portuguese, the men seem and act more as gentlemen’s, they eat a lot of sweets, most women use make up everyday…

The MC 07/08, my team: One of my main expectations was concerning my MC team. For those that don’t know, we are by now 7 people (MCP, VP Finance, VP ER, VP Exchange, VP Talent Management, VP Communication and IS Coordinator): 4 from Croatia, one from India, one from Serbia and me. I only knew the VP ER, so I have really looking forward to meet the rest. What I can say by now is that they are mature people, committed and able to deal with time pressure. I also feel that we are aligned with what we want to achieve and there is team cooperation. By now, we had a great time together and I already have a lot of good memories to take with me :)

AIESEC Croatia: The other main expectation that I had was to meet the real AIESEC Croatia (the people, the attitude …) and in the last 4 days I had the opportunity for that in the National Planning Conference (very similar to Start). There are a lot of differences in the processes and in the state of AIESEC Croatia, but on the other hand, there are many things that are exactly the same. I don’t have much time now (we are already late heheh), just would like to share the main difference that I noticed, the honesty, transparency towards others: they admit their mistakes in front of others (whether MC or EB, doesn’t matter), they talk easily about their problems, they say what they think, they are not political as AIESEC Portugal, as far as I can see. And the parties, well, everyone dances a lot and many people don’t sleep at all :) They also have the “Azeiteiro” party, but with another name heheh.

Last thing, I already have a new LC for which I will be responsible for this term: LC Split :) They have a very strong culture and challenges, but I really feel I will be able to deal with it and contribute to support them. Can’t wait for it.

I think that it’s all for now, miss you all and see you soon. Pozdrav.”

14-05-07