Gift Giving in Slovenia - Christmas around the Globe.

-
Hi! We continue our Christmas Around the Globe series with another guest post by the lovely Isabel from The Sunny Side of This.  As of this post I will no longer be available to comment, As I must focus on packing and getting the house ready for vacation mode.

Honeymoon, frustration, adjustment, and mastery are the four phases you go through while living in a foreign country, I can go through all of them in one same day. .My main rule is to build a large amount of empathy and understanding to help me just keep going. 

Compare the gift giving culture in Slovenia vs Mexico
A while back I talked about how similar Slovenia and Mexico are, and today it’s time to talk about one of my biggest cultural shocks I've encountered while living abroad, and it's in regards to...

Gift giving in Slovenia

In Slovenia you will get gifts for New Years, Easter, and St. Nicholas day (celebrated December 6th and it is usually for kids--it is like the Western equivalent of Christmas Day). What I find fascinating is that adults also get a gift on St. Nicholas day. 

People will usually give you chocolates, wine, shower soap, coffee and sometimes fruits. This is mainly because during communist times people would rather give you something that you were already going to buy so you wouldn't have to spend money on them. At the beginning, I found it really strange. But later I realized that this is something really thoughtful in its own way.

But here came the Mexican girl who received coffee, shower soap and deodorant while she was giving clothes and jewelry.She didn't have a clue what was going on until her husband explained it to her after.

Receiving gifts in Mexico

This is because in Mexico, if you are giving a gift to someone you care about you usually give them something they might like -something nice and thoughtful-like a perfume, a pair of earrings,a bracelet, a book, a purse, a watch, a shirt, underwear, a nice bottle of Scotch or wine. 

Of course, it also depends on how well you know the person and the occasion. 

For example, for Christmas you could get red or yellow underwear to wish you good luck for the New Year.  Red is to attract love and yellow is for money (you have to wear them on new year's eve, lol). 

Birthday gifts

in Mexico, different friends will give you different things as birthday gifts. In Slovenia, your whole group of friends will pitch in to buy you something bigger like a day trip or a nice memento.


I love the fact that living abroad gives you the opportunity to see your own culture with such different eyes. I'm a huge believer that everyone at some point should live abroad. It makes us realize all the opportunities we have to grow, increase our empathy and helps with our creative problem solving.

Have you experienced any cultural shocks living abroad?

From the sunny side of this,
Isabel

Bloglovin Facebook Twitter Instagram




This month's sponsor:
The Morrell Tale - Every life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Get to know me.

-
Image
     Hi Everyone! it's been a while since i posted anything to my blog, and i opened blogger today and found a couple of drafts, this one I had done as a guest post on a friends blog and figured I'd post it here to! Have you been following along on instagram? I post on my stories almost daily and it's so much fun for me!    List the top 5 cities you've visited and why. I've already done a post on this, 5 Places I'd like to revisit go check it out and tell me if we have any cities in common! What do you like doing in your spare time? I enjoy spending time on the computer and watching stuff on Netflix. when I have time I like challenging myself to do puzzles. What are you reading? I just finished reading Accidental Tourist and am currently reading The Girl on the Train. What is your favorite food to cook? My all time favorite recipe is Enchiladas Suizas , but sometimes I settle for Chilaquiles (as tortillas de Maíz/corn tortillas) aren't found...
Read more

From Cologne to Boston

-
Image
I read Rachel's post: liveblogging  a 12 hour flight to Bangkok and loved it.. granted not every flight is a good one but I figured I'd give this a go and try doing a similar post. I decided to record happenings on my most recent flight, even thought it was less than eight hours it seemed to go okayish and so i'm sharing it with you today. Here's how my flight went down: Before the flight, we were kind of worried about not having any in-flight entertainment since we booked our transatlantic flight with eurowings. 13:03 Board the plane. We get happy the plane does have in flight entertainment. We also noticed that every seat has a water bottle. Sadly only the ones with extra leg room get a blanket/pillow. 13:17  Find out the in flight entertainment requires a 9,99€ payment. 13:44  Time for the safety procedure demo. 13:53  Prepare for take off, then eventually take off. 13:56  Kid behind me says: "guck mal da unten die kleinen Autos." ...
Read more

Life happened.

-
Image
I know I haven't posted anything in a while but I felt like I needed some time off. Lately I haven't had much free time, yet I haven't done much. Allow me to take you back and tell you what happened these past few months.. In July we took a trip to attend a conference in Boston and then stayed an extra week to visit the big apple. I loved getting to revisit this city and got to knock a lot of items of my NYC bucket list. Once we got back from our trip, Avi went back to her last week of school, and my cousin came to visit.. but I kinda screwed up and Avi ended up missing the last day of school (we took a day trip to Berlin instead). We had all of August free, and we took advantage of this (and a wedding in our hometown) and went to visit our family in Mexico. We had a packed two weeks in Mexico, during which we were able to catch up with a lot of friends, visit the BBVA Stadium and  Avi took an intensive swim course, she was able to get the basic done, but she...
Read more