How to lift a duck?
As a volunteer you get to live and share the office with people from all over the world. What does this mean in practice? A big part of it is about having all sorts of weird conversations. I am sharing an apartment with an Ecuadorian and Sri Lankan. Besides that I am working on a daily basis with the same Sri Lankan, two –loud- Dutch 
, one Belgian – strangely he is also loud, although according to Belgian stereotypes he shouldn’t be – and until recent there was also one guy from France here. And let’s not forget that I have none of the above mentioned nationalities, since I am from Slovenia -however Bosnian in origin just to make things a little more complicatedJ -.
Tips for nice hair from Asia and Latin America
Sometimes this very nice company is enlarged with a visit from someone from yet another random country. Not so long ago it was a volunteer from Indonesia. Over a cup of a coffee in our apartment’s kitchen the conversation went from the topic of the taste of snake to why it is that people in Sri Lanka or Ecuador have traditionally good hair. The conclusion was that Sri Lankan people put coconut and other herb oils in their hair starting from their early childhoods. When going to elementary school it is even compulsory to put such oil on your hair every morning – and if you are a boy you need to always comb your hair on side-. In Ecuador women use avocado cream and other stuff for their hair.
Animal lifting
During lunch break, while eating kebab in one of the many Turkish restaurants in Antwerp, the topic of conversation can suddenly turn into the correct way to lift an animal. When you lift a duck you are supposed to hold her by the neck. And there are some general rules that should always be followed when lifting animals. The main one being: lift the animal as its parents would do. So, if a cat lifts ‘her child’ by grabbing it by the neck, you should do the same… If this rule is not applicable – ducks don’t really lift their offspring – the indicator for lifting the animal correctly: you are doing ok when the animal is not moving (protesting) – however, I wonder whether this could also mean that you are holding the animal in such a critical position that it can only think ‘if I move, I die’-
Sri Lankan Coffee
And then just before leaving the kebab place, conversation wraps up with another intercultural exchange of information: in Sri Lanka coffee can be drank with an egg in it……So I guess I still have many new things to try out…
By Lidija Jularic, Slovenia
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