Evening everyone!
This week’s gone by fast. We started at our workplace on Tuesday and our days have been full of learning everything new.
Last Sunday we traveled to Mosta, which is a city about 9 km to west from Msida. We wanted to see how Maltese people celebrate the Easter Sunday and we weren’t disappointed! Our destination was Mosta Church in the city center. The celebration started at 18.30 and before that there was a normal Easter service in the church. The church itself was amazing. It was kind of weird listening to the service because it was all in Maltese and I haven’t figured many words out of that language (just yet).
After the service people started gathering outside the church. Of course we just imitated everything all the local people did, so we followed the mass.
Outside the entrance there was a marching band preparing for their performance. They played two songs and afterwards children started to come out of the church dressed as the characters from the Bible.
After the children there were men dressed up as Pontius Pilate’s soldiers. It was so cool. They all looked so majestetic with the gear they were wearing.
After the soldiers had walked through the ”aisle” with the band playing, there were only left the men who carried crucified Jesus.
After all the people had gone through the aisle, they kept on walking through the crowd and the streets of Mosta for the next (at least) thirty minutes. It was pretty cool to testify all this celebration and the happiness of Maltese people. While some of the citizens followed the marching band, Susanna and I went underground! There was an entrance to old bomb shelters and halls from World War II that led us obviously under the ground. When we walked along the chilly and surprisingly spacious corridors, we could read through Malta’s history from the times of WWII. There were old pictures and info tags on the walls. It was exciting and I learned a lot more about this country’s history.
Now back to reality. On Tuesday it was our first day at work. We were pretty excited in the morning before we left our apartment. We had a few problems with the buses but luckily we had a lot of spare time (learned from past experiences: always have spare time).
When we finally got to Britannia Tours Ltd’s office in Valletta, we introduced ourselves to everybody present and our boss Kris assigned us to our computers. The first job we had was filling in Hotel Fact Sheets in Excel. After filling them in, we sent them to the hotels to make sure all the facts were right. When I was sending the first email, I had a great trouble: I couldn’t find the ”@”-sign anywhere. Indeed, I searched for it like five whole minutes. Take a look at the keyboard I use below.
I have been learning to write with that thing ever since Tuesday morning. It’s pretty weird but I will hopefully get used to it soon. I keep also forgetting that there are no Ääkköset here.
Today we filled in Tourist Route Sheets. Oh, what does that mean? It means you look at the Britannia Tours Brochure 2017, pick a tour and write it all in Excel. Not actually all of it, just the distances between place A and B, B and C etc. Also you have to look up on the Internet all the extra fees during the tour and write them down as well. It sounds very simple but it’s actually very precise and time-taking.
Nonetheless, I’ve enjoyed my first three days at work. All the co-workers are very friendly and even the managing director jokes with us!
I guess that’s all for now. Thank you very much for following this exciting journey!
Sincerely,
Remu ☻
