Who stole Christmas? :)

A little sidenote- this weekend I remembered why I chose to come to Tunisia for my internship during the winter. The weather has been simply amazing! I mean nowadays it’s not that hot that you’ll go around in a T-Shirt but almost. It’s about 20 degrees and there’s sunshine. In Sousse I could just put on my “ballerinas” and walk out of the house without a jacket! In Tunis it's a bit colder but it is not anywhere close to what I am used to during this time of year. I hope it stays that way and I can imagine that it will be a bit of a shock going back to cold, cold Vienna in January.

The downside to having no real winter in December is the fact that normally this is Christmas time and now I cannot feel the spirit at all. I’ll probably only realize it’s Christmas when we start cooking the Christmas Eve dinner and when I buy some presents. If it wasn’t for my roommates I might end up missing Christmas this year because here it’s not present at all! I kinda miss the snow and the decorations. Oh, well, I’ll guess we’ll decorate the house a bit in the next days and start having dinner with Christmas songs playing in the background. That might help to bring in the Christmas mood. At least there’s no Christmas stress here! :)

Internship Highlight- The Enterprise Days 2009

I just got home after 4 amazing days in Sousse (a touristic city in the south of Tunis). What took place was the congress that I’ve been working towards since I started my internship- The Enterprise Days. I don’t know how much I talked about it already but it is a big international congress, which happens annually in Tunisia. The topic this year was “The State and the Private Sector”. The congress hosts about 800 participants who are businessmen, politicians and representatives of international organization. Until December 10th I only imagined what the congress could be like but this weekend I actually got to experience it and guys, it was awesome!

First, though, let me give you some info about what it was like to be part of the organizing committee of this event. When I arrived here in September I started contacting Tunisian companies, as well as European associations and potential speakers for the congress. So at the very beginning it was pretty calm and although I had some dynamic situations and deadlines, it was not so stressful. As the event approached things started to get pretty stressful. The team ended up staying in the office until late at night, sometimes even midnight and this really reminded me of AIESEC conferences where this is, of course, really normal. Luckily, like for AIESEC conferences, we managed to make the work fun and there were lots of laughs and pizza orders in the middle of the night. :)

On Thursday, December 10th, we headed to Sousse. The congress took place in a super nice 5-star hotel. I lived there in a huge room during the congress and it was great! There were some really interesting and important people and the media coverage was really good! So I got to see close-up how such an international and formal congress is organized. Having participated in several AIESEC conferences surely helped, especially when it came to dealing with stress, with stressed people and with the lack of sleep.

Apart from the official sessions there were really nice sponsored lunches and a beautiful gala dinner! It was pretty cool to sit 2 meters away from former European Commission president Manuel Marin, for example. :) Everything was really great! Of course, there were unexpected situations and some troubles but this all happens behind the scenes!

After the conference Maja and I got to stay one more night in the amazing hotel and we saw parts of Sousse and even experienced night life there! It was awesome going partying with our colleagues and our boss (!!!). It’s really cool when you can work together but also have fun! I’m really happy to be in yet another team where this works out.

Eid

A few weeks ago there was a very special Muslim holiday: Eid. It happens 22 days after the end of Ramadan and it’s a pretty big holiday. In order to get an idea of its magnitude just think of Christmas. People are THAT exited about it! There are no presents but there is a special ritual that takes place during Eid. For this holiday a sheep is sacrificed. A lot of families buy a sheep and kill it in their house. Those sheep are pretty expensive, around 300 Tunisian dinars, which is about 160 EUR. The family gathers and the men kill the sheep. I actually got to see the poor animal before and I can tell you it surely knew what was going to happen to it. :) I also saw it after they killed it and I saw them pretty much taking it apart. I could describe this in much more detail but I won’t. I’ll spare all the vegetarians reading this, especially my dear sister! :) (Love you too, Schnuffy!) Before you start thinking “eeeeeew” and getting all disgusted by the image of somebody skinning an animal and taking out all its insides you have to understand the reason for this tradition. It’s a religious reason. So here’s a little background if you feel like reading about it (thanks Wikipedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_al-Adha

Just for you to know I thought I would be really freaked out by seeing a dead animal but I managed to deal with it pretty well and had a lovely lunch! :) We had a really nice BBQ and stuffed ourselves like crazy! As far as I understand on the day when the sheep is sacrificed you BBQ the meat and the next day you make a special kind of couscous dish where you also include the insides of the animal. I tried that too and it was pretty delicious although I had some trouble with eating the stomach part.

Anyway, I had an awesome time and I’m thankful to Mehdi from LC Bardo who invited me to join his family on this special day!