For those of you who don’t know Croatian, that mean’s “I don’t speak English”…yup, that’s about all I know. I’ll get to why in a second. Well, I know that and the name of the capital where I will live: Zagreb.
Tuesday morning we all received our evaluations, and every one of us passed (which is VERY rare)! We were all excited about that, so you can imagine our anticipation when our HR manager said we would be finding out our country placement that afternoon as well. I literally couldn’t sit still – you know the feeling on Christmas morning when you’re about to open that HUGE package you’ve been waiting to open for 25 days? Multiply that excitement times 100, and then you can start to imagine how I felt. I was called into the conference room, and my sales coach asked me where I would like to go, what I had learned, my skills, etc. I said I would like to go to South America so I could use my Spanish, or I would love to stay in Europe. She responded, “well you get to do both”, which I was confused about until she explained I was being sent to CROATIA with a native-Spanish speaker as my partner! (so I can still practice Spanish)
My roommates are in some insane places too: 1 in Botswana (luckyyy gets to go to the world cup), 1 in Panama, 1 in Malaysia, 2 in Bulgaria, and 1 in Romania. I am happy that 3 are in Eastern Europe; we have already started planning weekend trips to visit each other!
I am working for The European Times, which is my favorite BMG publication! You can check it out at http://www.european-times.com/. My partner, Pedro, is already in Croatia; I have spoken with him twice through Skype and he seems AWESOME. Exactly the kind of person I want to work with – he’s Colombian, studied in the UK and Italy (and lived in Madrid!), really funny and nice, but hard-working as well. He has already been so encouraging, and I know he will be very supportive and understanding of my inexperience. He also said he’s excited to help me perfect my Spanish.
My hotel and car service is all set up; now all I have to do is individually make at least 5 but preferably 10 appointments with the CEO of various companies in Zagreb. Pedro sent me a list of companies in the financial sector and the production sector, as he has already met with the Minister of Finance and the Deputy to the Minister of Economy to receive support for our Croatia publication of the European Times. So for a little while yesterday and all day today I called company after company to try and set up meetings with the President or CEO of that company. Plain truth: cold calling is pretty tough. Cold calling a Croatian bank named Trcin Vrijednosnice and asking for Zvonimir Maric is tougher. (which is why I definitely got a few “Ja ne govoriti Engleski jezik”’s) It’s funny, every time I would say thank you they would respond with “nothing” and every time I would ask them to spell something out, every single person would use country names to explain what letter they were saying! Regardless, I did end up setting 3 appointments yay! Only 2 more and they will book my ticket to Croatia. They never said this was going to be easy, but I do love the utter craziness of what I am doing. I love sitting across from Lydia as she struggles with Botswana addresses, and next to Elliot screaming “HABLA INGLES?!” to every Panamanian he encounters over the phone. Keeping a sense of humor throughout this entire process is undoubtedly necessary, and I think I will be able to take this job on with a couple of laughs.
Tomorrow we are all road-tripping to Amsterdam for our last weekend together. We are staying with Cherise, one of our roommates, whose parents live right outside the city. She is Surinamese, and her parents are going to cook us yummy Surinamese food (not that I have ever had Surinamese, but sounds like it will be pretty fantastic). I’m excited to explore a new city before taking on my new life in Croatia.
Always trekking along, that’s how I like it.
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