Written by: Kirstie Pena-Cintron (Student)
My list for Croatia begins like this:
• No regrets
• Love passionately
• Learn everything
• Experience without expectations
• Live by the moment
• Enjoy every moment
‚Ä¢ ‚Ķ and no “what if’s”
Croatia: Osjnik Village & Dubrovnik
It is a clear sign that if you are ready to fall, the common sense says to fall when someone is ready to catch you, right? In my case, I jumped at multiple opportunities without no one willing to catch me (or it so appeared). Arriving to Dubrovnik, my head and my heart were a little distracted with multiple things, but all I needed to make me feel better was adventure, adrenaline and a sensation of life to make any unwanted thoughts to go away. Sometimes all you need is a person or somebody to help you through the process, I call this person a friend. So the first thing my friend and I do as we walked out of the port is we went exploring the area; unfortunately I wasn’t dressed for an adventure of that kind. We hiked for little while until we found a bridge that entered to the city of Dubrovnik.
As we walked through the city, we decided to stop and get some liquids into our system. We also found out that bread is very popular as well so we decided to give it a try. In my case, it was an excuse for eating bread. And let me just say that trying to tell the vendor that I wanted a small piece of bread, it was just hilarious. She didn’t understand me, and I definitely didn’t understand her, until we finally came to the idea of pointing at stuff. Remember the good old days where you didn’t read the menu and just pointed at the images? Yes, that’s what I did for 5 minutes trying to explain to the lady what I wanted.
After that we went our way to Osjnik Village where we were assigned a tour guide. We arrived there around 2pm the hottest time of the day, at this point I was not regretting my decision of wearing my dress. The tour guides took us to the chapel and told us the legend of St. Jordi and why he is the village patron. In case you were wondering, Croatia is Catholic, and the legend tells the story of a dragon that was going to attack a village in Montblanc, Spain. The king announced this to the village and looked for someone who could killed the dragon and save the princess. The brave St. Jordi killed the dragon, saved the village and the princess and gained the respect of the king and everybody in town. Now every April they commemorate a St. Jordi day where females give a book to the males as a sign of knowledge and males give roses to the females in remembrance of the bravery of St. Jordi. I was surprised by how a legend from Spain could be this influential to a small village in Croatia. As we walked out of the chapel, the tour guides directed us towards a couple’s family home were they welcomed us with homemade food and figs. They showed us the traditional clothing, the traditional folk dance (in which we got the opportunity to engage in) and showed us the crops that they were growing in their surroundings such as grapes, onions, and corn.
They also gave us sticks to fry our hams and gave us a cold drink. After appetizers and breads, it was time to head to the dinner table located under the house in a cave-looking place giving the illusion of dinning inside a cave. The food was delicious and the conversation was interesting. 
We debated about women's rights and questionable morals. In my opinion, it felt great having this long conversation on how important women’s rights are and how progress has been an improvement of society. After feeding the donkey, walking through the village, and watching the panoramic sight of the port we headed back to the port. An amazing day in Croatia!
