From Croatia to the Vineyard

Editor’s note: As part of an ongoing series, The MV Times is sharing the stories of some of the hundreds of students who received permission to work in the country under the exchange visitor visa, commonly known as J-1. We started with Tinatini Dvali, who came to us with the idea for this series. Her hope is that Islanders and visitors understand that J-1 students are more than workers, and an important thread in the fabric of Island life and culture. This time, we spoke with Nola Božić, the only J-1 student so far who is experiencing her first year on Martha’s Vineyard. 

Nola Božić, a 21-year-old J-1 student, grew up in a historic coastal town in Croatia called Rovinj — a popular vacation destination in the summers. She’d never been to America before, but thought the Vineyard might be similar to her home. 

But when she arrived on the Island for her first year on the work-visa program in late June, she got to her house in Aquinnah and thought she was in the middle of nowhere. She looked around and saw only full, emerald trees and her rental home in the center. It was only when she started work, visited the Island’s beaches and downtowns, that she saw how busy the Island was, and saw the parts that reminded her of home. 

“On the internet, you can’t really see how it looks,” Božić said. “I love it now — the Cliffs, the ocean –– it’s beautiful. But it’s a shock at first. We came right at the start of the season — it was really busy, really chaotic, but we had a lot of co-workers who showed us the ropes.”

Božić is going into her fourth year at the University of Zagreb in Croatia as a journalism and politics major. Out of the hundreds of J-1 students who come to the Island each summer to work, many are, like Božić, experiencing America for the first time. 

Božić sat down with The Times recently at a picnic table in the Tisbury Marketplace to talk about her experience as a first-time J-1 student, and all the memories she’s made here that she described as “magical.” 

“It’s really different,” she said with a laugh. “Everybody’s so relaxed here. And everybody loves to talk. You just go to the store and people start talking to you; you can start a conversation everywhere. I never go into the bus and put my headphones on, because somebody starts talking to you. People are really, really friendly here, and I love it. And I think I’m going to have cultural shock going back home.”

Božić grew up watching American sitcoms like “Friends,” “Dawson’s Creek,” and “Gilmore Girls,” and said she always thought it was unrealistic the way everyone in the towns were friends with one another. In Croatia, she said, people are kind, but don’t go out of their way to start conversations like they do here. 

Božić works at Cliffhangers during the day and the Chilmark Tavern at night. She lives with a friend and fellow J-1 student, also in her first year. They live in a house with seven roommates, and said most of her housemates are older, and have been on the Island for a while. 

In the mid-morning hours, five days a week, Božić takes the bus from Aquinnah to Cliffhangers, a “food shack” on the Aquinnah Cliffs, where she works the counter, taking orders for lobster rolls, sodas, and soft-serve ice cream. At 3 pm, she packs up, gets on the bus, and goes to her next shift, as a busser and food runner at the Chilmark Tavern, where she works until at least 11 pm, six days a week. She said her second shift is much more taxing, since it’s so busy. 

“Once the guests start coming in, that’s it — we don’t stop. Like the other night, we hit 340 people — the new record –– and that was crazy,” Božić said. “At home, I’m exhausted, but it’s not that much physically, more mentally. So it’s a different kind of exhausted. But here I love it, because when I have my day off, I don’t have to think about anything. At home, I don’t have days off … Here, I do.”

On her one day off, Božić said, she goes to the beach and to downtown Oak Bluffs, where she says she feels the most magic. It’s not just the newness of the town that’s exhilarating — it’s the fact that there are so many other J-1 students there. 

“I have to watch what I say, because every 10 ears, someone can understand me,” she said as she pointed to her ears and laughed. “Every shop you enter, there’s Balkan people … It feels like home.”

Božić is a self-described planner, and back in Croatia, she fills her day to the hour with her to-do list. She wakes up early, goes to school, rushes to work, hits the gym, and attends sports late at night for her job at a news T.V. station. She’s an aerial dancer by hobby, a journalist by trade, and a full-time student. Here, she said, she gets to be spontaneous. 

“When I’m home, I have a hundred things I have to do, and here I don’t have to worry about anything,” Božić said as she looked out to the water from the bench where she sat. “I’m a person who is afraid of missing out, so I just like to experience everything.”

Her attitude about life comes through in every story she tells about her apex summer on the Vineyard. She described days by the ocean, the time she encountered a tick on her beach towel, which she had been adamantly warned about, walking the roads of Aquinnah to her friend’s house next door, learning about the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) from working on the Cliffs, and endless conversations with strangers. Her bright-eyed willingness to dive into the Island traveled with her from the shores of Croatia, and she said she’ll be coming back next year to explore even more of the Vineyard.

“I don’t know how to even describe it, the words cannot even match what you see,” Božić said. “Everybody’s like a big family here.”