After only fifty days I began to occasionally catch myself thinking in English… After nine hours in the hairdressing salon, I would sometimes go to the children and talk in English or throw an English word into a sentence, even when writing a blog in Croatian. I heard that after a while people start to dream in a foreign language, I’ve not yet reached this stage but this is totally unusual for me. So far I do not feel concerned about the fact that people often say the first year abroad is the toughest. Well, I hope I will not get hit by some crazy nostalgia in the future. It probably helps that we live in a cute picturesque neighbourhood and that I work in a beautiful place with precious girls. Ok maybe they are not all adorable but they at least act like they are if nothing else.
Today was a particularly good day for me, the reason being that a couple of clients asked to be booked with me exclusively, on the daily client table sheet next to their name stood a big “R”, which means “Request”. So happy… The more of these the better as it means the safer my job will be in the future. The process is long, one by one. That is how I built my own business in Zagreb. It seems quite easy but try to imagine how difficult actually is “to attract” clients from all the hairdressing salons in town to come to you instead and to make your clients happy with you and your service so they continue to return over and over… So it’s a matter of doing that a few hundred times per month. Not as easy a task as some people may imagine….
But enough about me, let me talk a little more about the Irish. In addition to their love of travel, they love to live abroad, far from home… Every day through the stories of some clients or through conversations with colleagues, someone brings up the subject of their close relative or a friend who relocated to Australia, the United States, Fiji or Korea and so on… Today a football player who I asked “Were you born in Dublin?” replied, “Unfortunately “. Hahahaha… He described how he lived in New York for two and half years but due to his visa expiration had to return to Ireland and strongly wants to go back to New York, to “live” again.
According to my personal evaluation, his life doesn’t appear that heavy, so I guess there are just people (I amongst them), who are in constant need of new challenges and who do not want to calm down and accept the path that most follow. I’m married and a mother but I did none of it simply because it was expected of me and because sometimes in life these things have to happen…blah, blah… On the contrary, nobody expected this kind of thing from me in my twenties. Interestingly, no matter what, I’ve always worked on my own and people were always able to understand that from me they can expect the unexpected, yet they were all shocked when I announced my final decision to relocate to Dublin….
I’m still enjoying discovering new cultures and I still have not visited any tourist places in the city as of yet. I still have an earache and I still hate to work while I’m sick. The only thing that has changed is that I am trying to be more organized. I am not late to the dart, I’m on time to work, I try to eat a more diverse diet, I simply have no choice. I am planning to start jogging along the beach, which I have promised myself around twenty times already 🙂 The bay is right next to the apartment. I love sport but don’t get time to think about it very often, with all maternal and work obligations in my way.
The Irish like sport very much, at least by my observation in my two familiar neighbourhoods. In Zagreb I’ve never seen two old ladies speed walking at six am, conversing animatedly and smiling. Here I see them every morning on my way to the dart station, every afternoon and evening boys and girls, young and old, run, walk, and exercise. My boss who is in her fifties is actively engaged in recreational riding and goes to Pilates three times a week. The woman by the way had a heavy operation of installing an artificial hip just last year. Which does not prevent her from working ten hours on her feet a day and engaging in various sports. Well done her….!!!
Now I’m going to continue reading my favourite English chick-lit book, which I borrowed from a local library. Free membership, free internet, free book loans, free play area and library for children, we love to go there, it’s big, beautiful and at the top floor has a Citizen’s information centre where you can get help with anything related to residency, bureaucracy, legal issues etcetera, all totally free, of course.
Good night, lovely people….
Yours, Ana…
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