Maghrebian showdown: Morocco vs. Tunisia

Hello friends! Due to a sad lack of WiFi, I wasn't able to blog about Morocco while actually in Morocco. I've been home for about a week now, battling lingering intestinal problems (dr's verdict: not a parasite! yay) and intellectual, post-travel burnout, but I'm about ready to get back up on that blogging horse. Overall, Morocco was a blast, especially because I got to share it with my Mom (who also conveniently footed the bill). I was really surprised at how different from Tunisia it was, though...both in its Arabic and its culture. It felt much more "foreign" than Tunisia, much less Western, and also much less-developed. Its people were equally as welcoming, though, and its culture almost richer. I'll be posting pictures and descriptions over the next few days, but because I'm a total nerd, here's a basic comparison chart to tide you over....

I pretty much just wrote things as they came to my mind, and as you'll see, some are more significant than others. The bolded column indicates my favorite when I had a preference.

Morocco	Tunisia
Fresh squeezed orange juice	Fruit smoothie “cocktails”
Ceremonial, yellowish mint tea, poured from a silver teapot at a high height into ornate glasses	Often oversteeped, brownish mint tea, usually kept in an industrial-style water boiler…but it often comes with pinenuts
Shisha illegal at cafés	Shisha EVERYWHERE
Comparative sampling of dialect: Jooj, bzehf, bshal? (two, a lot, how much?)	Zooz, barsha, bu qaddesh? (two, a lot, how much?)
Coffee with cinnamon	Coffee Arabiya with too much sugar
Tajine= a sort of rich stew, made with onions and either a meat (beef and prunes, or chicken and almonds) or vegetables	Tajine= a sort of quiche-type thing, made with egg, potato and spinach. This is a hard call for preference, but I’m gonna go with Tunisia, simply b/c Moroccan tajine is too dang heavy of a meal to eat during the summer.
	Tuna (on EVERYTHING)
Bigger cous-cous grains (easier to eat AND less messy)	Smaller cous-cous grains (drier and more delicious)
Breakfast: yogurt, berber pancakes (baghreer and Msemin) and corncakes	Breakfast: French pasteries, bread with fig or apricot preserves
Spanish and hilariously red-faced, overheated British tourists	French tourists
Locals don’t use silverware; scoop their food with taboona flat bread	Locals don’t use silverware; scoop their food with French baguette
Toilet paper! And flushable.	Toilet hoses and BYO TP, non-flushable
Street food: kebabs, or really disgusting sandwhiches with processed meat, rice, and….ketchup?	Street food: delicious sandwiches with fresh vegetables and fries, harissa or salata mushwiya for a dressing, and your choice of tuna, chicken, schwarma, kefta, tajine, omlette, merguez….all for dirt cheap!
Better carpets—variety, color and quality	Better jewelry souks—quality, craftsmanship, prices
More elaborate mosaics and fountains	Cooler painted doors and cast iron gates/windows
Better ceramic tiles	Better ceramic bowls/platters
“Salad”—rice with peas, carrots and peppers Salad Moroccaine—tomato, onion and hard boiled egg	Salad Mshwiya—“burned” peppers and tomatoes, puréed with harissa OR Salad Tunsiya—onions, tomato, cucumber and parsley in a lemon vinagrette
Seemingly efficient and well-loved King, with a castle in every major city. I would need more time to scope out the situation fully, but YouTube and Gmail both function without any problems.	Seemingly resented and corrupt “President,” with a well-guarded house in every major city. YouTube and many other sites are blocked, internet is screened, and freedom of speech/press in general is questionable.
French spoken by pretty much all people, although it still correlated with education. English and Spanish also widely spoken.	French spoken by most people, but a definite trend of more educated = better French. Italian and German also fairly widely spoken.

Bisalaama Tunis!

My last few days in Tunis were a blur. On Friday, Akira, David and I made a solemn pilgrimage to our favorite sandwich shop for the Last Supper of our regular orders—for me, a tuna taboona (with a lot of harissa, of course) and a fruit smoothie “cocktail.” I absolutely rocked my Arabic oral a few hours later, and (much to the apparent surprise of the program director) scored an unbelievable “Advanced” level on the ACTFL scale. Considering my pretty basic level of competence, I’m sure that isn’t accurate and won’t be replicated in my coming phone interview (yuck) but it is flattering nonetheless. I think the key was just comprehension and circumlocution—my first impressive moment was when the testers asked me how long I had been studying Arabic before I came to Tunisia (an odd question considering they knew we were all beginners, and asked quickly and with a weird tense). When I answered right away, the tester turned to his colleague and quickly said something along the lines of “wow, she’s the first one to get that question—she understood,” to which I responded “of course!” After that, it was actually a lot of fun. I fulfilled my worst fear when I accidentally slid into French, and had to literally clap my hand over my mouth, but I was able to explain in Arabic “when you ask me about French literature, I want to talk in French. Can I have the next question?” without any problem. I even talked about DC and Obama, and when asked for my opinion of Michelle I was able to compensate for not knowing “intelligent” by saying “Michelle graduated from the same university as Obama but their teacher said that she was a better student than him.”

After the oral I headed immediately for celebratory gelato with the girls, a quick final hour of beach with Akira and Tyler, and then home to change for the banquet. Kate and I split a bottle of wine and chatted like true “ochette” (sisters) as we got ready; I wore her necklace, she wore my dress, and we made promises to visit each other fi Mustokbol (in the future). We arrived to the banquet on Tunisian time (read: an hour late) and sat at a table with one of our feminist lecturers, who had amusingly disgusted responses to Mustafa’s run-of-the mill misogynist comments. During dessert they showed a little retrospective video that included the performance of my harissa poem from Dougga and my bus acceptance speech, which got a great reception from all of the Tunisian tutors and parents that knew me who hadn’t seen it live. My own parents were shocked to hear that I could actually speak some Arabic (I never really tried at home, because they just made fun of us) and found my class nickname “fil-fil” (Pepper) to be equally hilarious.

I caught a taxi to Marsa Plage Saturday morning and browsed the little shops and open-air book market before getting the train into Tunis for some last-minute souk action. Over the course of 4 hours or so, I managed to speak French, Arabic and English and even Spanish, and by the time I left, my brain was so muddled with code switching that I could hardly communicate at all. It was gratifying how much Arabic I was able to understand, though, especially compared to my previous, jetlagged experience in the souks on the day of our arrival. My best adventure was a shopkeeper who, after trying to help me find Akira in the impossible maze of shops, lead me on a little tour through the shoe-maker’s souk before brining me back to his own perfume store, where he served me mint tea, gave me a perfume-making and testing demonstration, and insisted that I sample almost all of them before settling on a little vial of jasmine oil. That night, Kate and I had our final dinner with the family, which was appropriately delicious and even more awkward, then caught a cab out to the snazzy “Lac de Tunis” area for smoothies and shisha with some students and my teachers. I got home around 2:30am—just enough time to get two hours of sleep before we left for our flight. Sam’s host brother Eshem came to see us off and gave me a Tunisian soccer t-shirt as a parting gift, which was a much-appreciated gesture in light of my own family’s suckage.

Paris a few hours later was pretty chill—literally. After Tunisian heat, the 70-degree days felt almost like winter, and I spent the two days I was there wrapped up in jeans, tennis shoes and a jacket. With the flurry of finals during my last few days in Tunis I wasn’t successful in setting up appointments to see apartments, so I just relaxed and enjoyed the all-is-well-with-the-world feeling of being in France once again. I got a cheap hotel room with another boy from the program, Anthony, who is waiting to meet up with his sister for a backpacking Eurotrip. (Ah, the good ol’ days…). He doesn’t speak any French, and might have the worst sense of direction of anyone I’ve travelled with, so I felt very useful (Inch’allah his sister has a better internal compass than he does). He didn’t have to wait long to speak a language he knows, though—we were on the RER from the airport to the city when we had our first Arabic conversation, thanks to the t-shirt from Eshem that had a little Arabic on it. Our hotel was in an Arab part of Bastille, too, so we spent our evening browsing Arab butchers and bakeries, looking for telltale Tunisian foods as an invitation to try our “Asalaama. Le bess?” on for size.

We spent a good chunk of yesterday in the Centre Pompidou, Paris’ relatively new modern art museum, housed in a controversially odd building that has exposed, color-coded pipes on one side (blue for air, red for elevators, green for water, yellow for electricity) and six floors of inclining hamster tubes of escalators on the other. Somehow I had managed to never visit this particular museum, but after this trip it will always make my list. The hamster’s-eye view as you go to the top is a great panorama of Paris, and the two special exhibits were completely my style. The first was a Kandinsky collection, arranged by time and space to track the influences of his time spent in Germany, Paris and Russia on his work. Rufus Wainwright provided a great soundtrack as I freed my eyes to move along the dark lines between splotches of color—such happy paintings! I’m totally going to make a habit of music-and-painting visits when I’m living there…it’s like do-it-yourself Fantasia. The second exhibit was called “elles”—a Guerilla Girls-inspired exhibit that “might be taken as a manifesto: women artists are now numerous, and in their radical, complex and cross-disciplinary work they are writing a new history of art to challenge the old, tackling head-on the great issues of the day. Yet the new hang is neither female nor feminist in point of view, being primarily intended to show and to pay tribute to their work.” Bottom line? Super cool WGSXy heaven, organized into sections that celebrated/challenged the body, domestic space, domestic arts (sewing, cooking, interior design), etc. complimented by great feminist literary quotes on the walls. Highly recommended if you find yourself in Paris anytime soon (and if you’re reading this blog, you’ll have an excuse to come to Paris starting Sept. 7th. My couch calls…)

On the homefront...

The homestay continues to be a challenge. There’s no getting around it: my family is just weird and unpleasant, but at least my interactions and conversations with other Tunisians have helped me realize that it’s just a personal thing and not a “Tunisian” or cultural disconnect. My roommate Kate and I played the “trying to look on the bright side” game last night and came up with this:

1) Food at our house is amazing. Our mom is a great cook, and takes a lot of pride in her “hospitality” of making a variety of authentic Tunisian meals for us, (although her begrudging and bitter attitude spoils my appetite a little). Our meals are much better than the harissa-and-tuna diet that a few of the other students seem to be on at their houses.
2) I can’t remember if I’ve said this before, but our host parents are obsessed with mosquitoes. This means that they blame us keeping windows open or lights on every time they find one, and killing one becomes an intense affair that puts a frighteningly murderous gleam in Mustafa’s eyes and often ends in a marital argument if he fails. The upshot: we wake up with far fewer mosquito bites than a lot of our classmates, who bug spray-up before bed to little avail.
3) Our bathroom is nice. It’s clean, we have toilet paper (even if we can’t flush it), and even though our shower is still the kneel-and-hold-the-shower-head sort, it’s spacious, clean, and has decent water pressure. Kate and I also have our own bathroom (the rest of the family uses it for bathing, but they have their own toilet/sink). After visiting other homestays with questionable bathrooms, I have grown to appreciate ours (especially in a climate that makes showering a daily necessity and with a diet that plays games with your stomach at times).

On the negative side…it is unbearably hot, stuffy and muggy in the house—ALWAYS…even when it’s nice outside! It’s particularly terrible now that the daytime temperature is up above 100; I’m pondering secretly migrating to the couch tonight because it’s much cooler in the living room and I kept waking up last night drenched in sweat. Also: Lubna ranks up there with the most passive aggressive people I’ve ever known. We had pretty crappy towels from the beginning relative to theirs, and as we continued to shower daily our towels began to disappear. For a while, we had to tromp down to the laundry line outside to retrieve them in the morning if we wanted to shower. At some point last week, they disappeared altogether. I finally got into a cupboard and stole a new towel for myself—a bigger one, this time. I’m also in a constant fight over territory in my own room, which is full of Lina’s stuff. I’ll often come home to find my books/belongings shoved into a pile to make way for stuffed animals or toys, or one day their was body glitter all over my bed and I was sparkly for three days afterwards. The most recent manifestation of this has been the epic Closet Wars. The wardrobe in my room started out half Lina’s clothes (why any 5-yr old has so many I can’t understand…they’re almost all pink, and she wears the SAME skirt everyday anyway…) and half space for me. As the summer has progressed, one new pair of little girl shoes and one new pink puffy winter coat per week (again—why so many near-identical coats? Does it even get that cold here?) have been illegally immigrating into my half of the closet. Before this past weekend’s trip, the coats were taking up about half of the space. When I came back, there was a coat that broke the Becca’s back: a girl version of the suit in Where the Wild Things Are, fuzzy, pink and long complete with ears, mittens and a tail. Irked, I took all of the coats out of the closet and hung them up on the little coat rack. I returned from school the next day to find them back in the closet. I moved them again last night. We’ll see what happens when I get home…if she has put them back I’m going to start dressing the unwelcome stuffed animals in puffy shades of pink.

Fortunately, when I step back from the situation I find it all kind of hilarious. Kate’s not quite as adept at detaching herself, but we help each other find the humor, and we generally stay away when we don’t have to be home. We had a great time last night, though, which is what inspired me to write this post…our host parents decided to go out to a café (for once!) and left us home alone. I immediately took the opportunity to soak my tevas in hot soapy dishwater in the kitchen (it really bothers me how stanky my feet are), and my underwear/bras in the bathroom (Lubna won’t wash our underwear, so we have to sort of secretly do it in the sink at night and let it dry in the window) while Kate sat in the corner of the house to mooch off of the neighbor’s wireless to Skype her parents. Then we dug out the bottle of wine Kate had stowed away and took to the balcony to drink it in the cool night air with some Simon and Garfunkel, laughing at how jumpy we were every time a car-that-might-be-them pulled onto the street.

Music--the better "universal language" than math

This week’s “language socialization” took us to the ancient ruins of the amphitheater in Carthage for a joint performance by the Tunisian and Moroccan orchestras. The atmosphere was perfect—a cool night with a slight breeze that jostled through the blue- and purple-lit foliage of the trees on either side of the stage, seemingly to the beat. We opted to skip the VIP chairs in the front that the program had paid for in favor of the stone “bleachers,” which provided a better view of the orchestra as well as an authentic ancient feel that complimented the subject of the Tunisian symphony: “Hannibal Barka.” I found the symphony itself to be surprisingly Western. There were brief interludes of more Tunisian-inspired percussion (which elicited cheers from the audience every time), but other than that, the music sounded pretty similar to other classical music I’ve heard. Even though I didn’t understand more than a few words, I enjoyed the Arabic storytelling narration at the beginning of the show, which set the stage for an epic battle that the later march-like tempo and dramatic score of the second movement followed up on.

We had an interesting moment of cultural contact with a snack vendor before the show. Jonesing for something sweet, I called him over to buy some candied peanuts. I was digging for change in my pocket when he suddenly said “Aiiee!” and grabbed his finger, which had just been bitten by two huge wasps. Trying to help him, David came over, only to begin flailing as the wasps changed their focus to him and left him with a matching red welt. The Tunisian women next to us laughed at David, and a few people took pictures as the vendor and him commiserated over the stings…an odd moment, but I suppose shared pain is as good a way as any to break the ice.

The latest “lecture” in our Monday series also had a music-theme. The guest speakers were a pair of academic musician sisters; the elder used to be a somewhat famous local musician but gave it up to study American literature with a focus on African American lit (this seems to be an interest I’m running into again and again among lit scholars over here…I wonder what the attraction is? Do they identify with the racial identity? Or as the ex-colonized, is it more of a sympathy for the marginalized group within a dominant culture?) The younger is a still-famous local singer, who shares the AA lit focus. The sisters brought along two male accompanists—one on the darbooka, or Tunisian ceramic drum, and the other on a Kanun: a stringed, hammer-dulcimer-looking instrument that is plucked with the fingers like a flat harp. They performed a range of beautiful Tunisian folk songs as we clapped and danced, and (much to my delight) talked a lot about the relationship between music, storytelling, and women. Apparently it is becoming much more P.C. for women to be musicians these days, but the transition is pretty recent—the eldest sister cited the disapproval of her father and the threat of scandal as her reasons for retiring her early music career in favor of the more reputable work of academia. Even today, she said, women who want to be musicians must have a respectable education or job on the side if they expect respect (although recent changes in the Tunisian public education system have made music study mandatory for all Tunisian children…which you could argue is better than the states, where arts and humanities are increasingly being cut from curricula when budgets get tight). This sister also published a book about Tunisian women as storytellers, for which she interviewed three old women, translated their stories and analyzed how the themes of their stories both overlap and reflect their individual lives. I stole a copy from the community bookshelf, so I’ll let you know what I think in a week or so…

Postpourri

And now, a list! Random things about Tunisia that I haven't yet mentioned:

1. For once in my life as a traveler, it’s fun to be an American. People here have so little experience with Americans that I become immediately rare and fascinating as soon as my nationality is announced (this is especially true outside of Tunis). The few Americans that do make it here are not the standout, overweight, white tennis shoe and fanny pack wearing, English-demanding type, so the only bad reputation I have to overcome is the slutty commercialism of pop culture. It’s also fun not being recognized—shopkeepers trying to lure me in usually guess French, German, Czech, Danish, Norwegian, etc…roughly following the order of tourist density. When I finally admit American, they usually repeat it back to me followed with the one or two things that immediately come to mind: “America…Obama!” being the most common, with “America….Las Vegas, Miami, New York!” (what can I say, they watch a lot of CSI here) as a close second, and “America! Ooohhh…Michael Jackson” accompanied by a sorrowful glance and “allah yarahamu” (God rest his soul) being a recent alternative.
2. There are several chickens and a rooster living in the empty lot next door. I never realized that roosters don’t wait until dawn to make noise. They kept me up for the first few nights but now I hardly notice any more. On the days where I happen to wake up in the wee hours, though, I hear our rooster answering the distant calls of neighboring roosters. The echoey effect is rather like a siren. Other night sounds: cat fights. (Cats sound creepily like crying children sometimes). Weddings. Darboukas (Tunisian drums) Mosquitoes buzzing around my ears.
3. We have a weekly lecture about some aspect of Tunisian culture, usually by academics that are accustomed to speaking/reading academic French but who lecture in English. It’s amusing for me to watch them make the same false cognate mistakes in English that I’ve been making for years in French…our lecturer yesterday kept saying that families in the Northwest drink milk from proper cows (propre in French= “[my] own”) and I’ve heard quite a few people talk about “popular” opinions or locales, when what they’re trying to refer to is not the popularity but the working-class that it’s associated with. Others include “actually” instead of “currently,” “history” instead of “story,” and “achieve” to mean “finish”—slight shades of meaning, to be sure, but still an esoteric moment for me when I make the connection between the French and English words in my head and realize why what they’re saying sounds a little off.
4. Even though I spend most of the day cooped up inside, I am turning the nice toasty brown of a better-take-it-off-the-bonfire-or-it’ll-combust marshmallow. My feet are particularly nice, with their Teva tan. The sun really is stronger here.
5. Tunisians handle medicine like the French—with frequent antibiotics and at least five different prescriptions for even the slightest ailment. Since the beginning of the program, my guess is that we’ve had at least 15 people see a doctor who has been brought in to school, for problems ranging from intense stomach issues to ringworm and lice.
6. I have eaten more melon since I’ve been here than during the rest of my life combined. Not only is it better here but they have a Lebanese kind that looks like a larger cantelope on the outside and a yellower honeydew on the inside that is absolutely delicious. Also: when you’re hot and sweaty, melon is the most delectable, re-hydrating dessert you can imagine.
7. Eating has its own interesting culture here. If you ever see a Tunisian eating, you will undoubtedly be asked to join, even if it is obvious to both parties that they don’t have enough to share. You often have to refuse three times before they will reluctantly leave you alone—which also holds true at dinner. Sometimes it’s insulting if you don’t accept at least a little bit—a date, perhaps, or a glass of lemonade. Even after a month and a half of insistent orders to “Kul, kul!” (eat, eat!) and insulted complaints that we’re not eating enough and are going to wither away, I’m still having a hard time accepting these as regular, friendly parts of the meal ceremony (which they are, but to an American they come off as overly aggressive!). Also, something I’ve learned the hard way: if you make the mistake of pronouncing something “benin” (delicious!) at the end of the meal instead of the beginning, you will immediately have your plate seized and re-filled with food, as this is interpreted as a polite request for more.
8. Tunisians have “dumb Libyan” jokes instead of dumb blonde jokes.
9. Black and green olives come from the same tree. And almonds grow Russian doll style inside a brown skin inside a fuzzy green shell. The actual almond itself is white before it oxidizes to become what Americans used to.
10. Jasmine grows everywhere here. I’m usually particularly sensitive to smells, but for some reason I’m not getting tired of its flower/honey scent—it almost seems, at times, that its aroma is just an inherent quality of the quivering summer air and not the result of a plant. For the rest of my life, the smell of Jasmine will always bring me back to this summer. I’m hoping to find some Jasmine perfume or soap before I leave to heighten that nostalgia…

"Off to Zanzabar, to meet the zanzabarbarians...!"

Off on a real adventure this weekend--fairly impromptu and largely unplanned, as they should be. Post midterm (phew!) I am running home to pack, training into Tunis to try and pick up a Louage (mini-van taxi) to El Kef, over about 40 km from the Algerian border. We'll get in about 10 pm, find a hotel, then get up tomorrow to explore the town, taxi to the next town and then make a two-hour hike to the plateau Jugurtha's Table which boasts roman ruins and small caves. We're planning to spend the night there--apparently a group of students last year was able to convince the shrine caretaker to let them sleep inside there--but if not, we have blankets, bug spray, and heart, and we'll make up for our air conditioned luxury tents in the desert by having a real night under the stars.

Love you all!

-Becca

The Epic South

So I got back “home” from our four-day trip South late Monday night, but I’ve been putting off writing this entry due to an overload of both things to say and work that prevents me from finding a way to say it. Bottom line: the trip was absolutely awesome. Yes, I did end up getting sick, but just a pretty minor cold, and I was so extremely optimistic and high on life the entire time that I think I forced myself into a quick recovery. Everyone around here has been spending a lot of time sick, due both to our close proximity in the school and the high stress level, but I think I’m really benefitting from my more laidback, I-just-graduated-so-screw-grades-I’m-not-going-to-kill-myself attitude—in terms of health, at least.

Anyway, back to the awesome trip. We left early on Friday morning and headed to Kairouan, a town in the middle of the country known as the “Mecca of the Maghreb” due to the springs it was founded around, which were discovered after a goblet said to be from Mecca was unearthed at the same spot, and which are said to be fed by the same holy source as the water there. Appropriately, we visited two of the town’s mosques. The first was a prominent sandstone structure, with high columns and vaulted ceilings and mats carpeting the floor to accommodate the praying men that were already starting to arrive for the afternoon’s service. The second was smaller but in my mind more beautiful, as it involved walking through a number of courtyards and passageways all covered in elaborately hand painted tiles that put the atrocities I’m creating in my ceramics class to shame. I also liked that I saw a few women in the second (although Tunisia is fairly progressive, its Islam still discourages women from coming to mosque, telling them to pray at home, and when they do come they’re usually relegated to a separate area). I had to cover my legs, arms and head to enter them both, which gave me a lot of sympathy for the women that do the same on a daily basis—I came out drenched and eager for the air-conditioned bus.

We spent the night in a town called Tozeur, which was really cute and fun to walk around. While walking around I tried traditional Tunisian cookies made of orange flowers, figs and pistachios and I tasted water drawn from a deep well by a camel. One of my biggest triumphs all weekend was interaction with local shopkeepers. With my more advanced level of Arabic (in comparison to the last trip) and my better sense of prices, Tunisian mannerisms/personal space and the bargaining process, I found my conversations with shopkeepers both rewarding and fun. It’s still a little intimidating at times, especially as a woman, but I have grown to enjoy the back and forth process (and I managed to score pottery, a scarf, and a shirt for what I consider to be great prices!).

The next day, we visited a museum and took a horse cart ride into the Tozeur oasis. Standing in an oasis, it’s easy to understand why Islamic visions of heaven always take this form—after the desert, the shady, sweet-scented haven of date palms, pomegranates, figs, and bananas was almost unbelievable. A date picker explained the process they use to fertilize the female trees with male pollen, then scrambled up to demonstrate the picking process (which we got to sample—delicious!).

En route to our camels, we stopped off at too many scenic overlooks to count: at an immense salt flats that looked like the surface of the moon; at mountain shrines; at crumbling sandy rocks; at arid, mountainside villages, where the squat stone houses blended into the dusty land dotted with black wells. By the evening we had reached the edge of the desert, where we were met with camels for our short sunset ride into our “camp” site in the Sahara. For those curious, yes, camels are a little bumpy (and my thighs were sore the next day) but you get used to it pretty quickly. The only unnerving part was the lurching up from the ground at the beginning and the drop back down at the end (they are some long-legged, gangly animals after all). The campsite was more along the lines of a hotel, with huge, air conditioned (!) tents and full kingsize beds, running water toilets, and a bar. We had a rotisserie cooked lamb, tajine and watermelon for our dinner before dancing to the music of the traditional Tunisian band. Then Akira and I followed David, the group’s unofficial photographer, out to play around with super-long exposures in the darkness of the desert, where we used a flash to freeze momentary images of ourselves that we then drew around with a flashlight. It was the most fun I’ve had with photography in a while, and we vowed to try and shoot some more before the end of the trip. I stayed up chatting and watching falling stars until about 2am, when the dunes suddenly turned cold and I crawled happily into my gritty bed.

I didn’t appreciate how sandy I was until the next day when I had to put my contacts back in. Ouch. The line of us blind people crying and cursing together at the sinks was admittedly pretty funny. I spent the day like PigPen in Peanuts, with a little cloud of dust forming around me every time I moved (the Saharan sand is surprisingly
fine and light—not like beach sand at all). We hitched a horse ride back to the bus, then continued east; stopping at a few sites where Star Wars scenes were filmed (surprisingly not as cool as I expected, but interesting fact: Tatouine is a real city in Tunisia), eating a traditional cous-cous lunch in a troglodyte (mountain cave) house, and finally ending up on the historic Jewish island of Jerba. After getting a long-awaited shower, we spent the rest of our time enjoying the beach, browsing the souks, and visiting a historic synagogue.

Checking in and heading out

Fun fact of the day: Sahara means "desert" in Arabic. Sahara, therefore, is not its name but its description. The way it sounds in Arabic is almost an onomatepia; it really evokes the dry wind over sanddunes, parched feel of the desert... "eh-ssss-aherr-ahhh....EH!"(the EH at the end being the hamza, a little glottal stop that sounds like a small gasp).

We leave tomorrow at 8am for our 4 day trip South, which will include camel riding, desert camping, visits to historic mosques, beach, and the oh-so-cool sounding Isle of Jerba. I'm excited. This week was one day short, but has felt just as long as the others, although the workload has definitely become a little more manageable as the Arabic starts to finally click a little. The only problem is that I feel like I'm getting sick. It would be terribly ironic (and unpleasantly dehydrating) to have a cold in the desert. Inch'allah I'll wake up tomorrow feeling fine. I don't have real high hopes, though...I'm one of the only people left on this trip that hasn't been pretty sick already, although most of the problems so far have been stomach-related and are sort of ongoing as we continue to munch on sandwiches from vendors full of super spicy harissa.

Nothing terribly interesting to report otherwise. The homestay is a continual challenge, and Kate and I are taking to staying at school until 8:15pm or so in order to take advantage of homework space and internet away from our undisciplined brat of a sister and our judgemental, unpleasant parents. I've also been enjoying the cafe culture of Sidi Bou Said, taking my book and a friend or two to go get a cup of mint tea and share a chicha. Afterwards I catch the 8:20 bus back, get home just in time for dinner, go to bed not long after, and get up early to finish work and enjoy the peace of the sleeping house. The routine is getting a little tiresome, but this weekend should be a nice escape.

Until next week!

Roaming the Ruins

On Saturday I took the TGM train a few stops over to Carthage where I met up with one of the guys on the program, Akira. The sites were oddly spread out and not that well marked, so we kind of just trekked around to see what we could see, with Akira identifying the components of every column and statue we came across (he’s a geological engineer). The coolest part was the roman baths area, which had the most complete ruins over a larger area, although my mind wasn’t as much on the history as it probably should have been. After a grueling week of work I was really just enjoying the exercise and fresh air, as well as the half hour plus conversation we had with an old Tunisian museum worker who taught us how to put a pen between our teeth to pronounce خ and forecasted that we would soon be married, taking a photo of us to “show your grandchildren someday, inchallah”.

After we got tired of sightseeing, we slipped away from the hoards of bus tourists and followed a few locals down a little path to a “beach” of big rocks bordering the sea. We found a place among the rocks to stash our stuff and stealthily changed into bathing suits. Standing on the rocks waiting to jump in, I felt a pinch on my foot and looked down to see a crab dangling off of it. In the process of trying to shake it off, I ended up slipping and hitting my hip on the algae-covered rock before splashing into the chest-deep water. Akira laughed at my clumsiness and totally didn’t believe me about the crab. Later, when we got back out and were sitting on the rocks to dry off, we saw about twenty more. Ha.

We took a taxi back to Akira’s place, where I was invited to have dinner with his mom and brothers (Mediterranean salad with olives, tuna and egg; cous cous with fava beans, meatballs and liberal amounts of the spicy harissa; dessert: this delicious melon that’s kind of a cross between a cantaloupe and a honey dew that I’ve never seen in the states). I talked for a long time in French with Akira’s mother and her friend, who was apparently Tunisia’s first woman lawyer. After my experiences with my own traditional host mother, it was fun to interact with an unabashedly smoking, gaudy-jewelry wearing, French-poetry spouting, overall spunky old lady. We had espresso in the living room following dinner, after which point I begrudgingly returned home to shower the salt out of my hair and head back out to a house party hosted by Nathan and Justin’s host parents: a Tunisian artist and his French wife.

Their place was AMAZING—a bright, airy celebration of a house, with yellow walls overflowing with the dad’s artwork, light fixtures sculpted from driftwood, and knickknacks from various corners of the globe. In short: everything I want my house to be assuming I ever grow up and settle down long enough to get one. The music was similarly eclectic—I recognized some Cuban rap from my Spanish class alongside traditional Tunisian tunes and Michael Jackson. My FLTA Ashraf taught me how to dance like a Tunisian, and the host’s huge dog Starsky joined in the dancing with the mother as his partner (apparently dancing is Starsky’s favorite past time). The food was also great, (Tunisian brique, tarte, watermelon, sausages, and even wine! Yay French wife) but since I was still pretty full from Akira’s, I stuck mainly to almonds, which in Tunisia come fresh in their fuzzy green shell. It’s almost a social activity to sit around eating them, as it takes quite a bit of effort and jaw strength to bite through the green covering and the tan shell, then peel off the skin to get to the fresh, moist, milky-colored almond fruit (apparently it’s the oxidization that makes them brown).

Overall, a great Saturday, and it was nice to see everyone looking so happy and relaxed for once. Sunday was pretty uneventful, but a nice chance for me to reorganize my notes a bit and review vocabulary. Today was work-work-work again...boo...although our time with the worse teacher seemed a little more productive today (she got on me for doodling though...grrr..I swear it helps me concentrate by giving me something to do with my hands). I also think I got something out of my one-on-one tutoring, even if it was a drain on my hw time. My this week's happy thought: our second excursion to the South starts Friday morning and ends Monday night. Translation: both this and next week will be only four days long! woohoo!

Linguistic reflections

Test #2 was Friday. I got the exact same score I did last week, not best, not bad, so I’m still feeling okay. Almost all the points I got off were for the writing section, though, so I’m supposed to talk to the program coordinator on Monday about how to improve my spelling. Judging by people that didn’t do so hot last week, I think that probably translates to a private spelling tutor, which, although it just means MORE work, should be very helpful considering my current frustrations with class time.

I have two teachers each day. One is incredible—enthusiastic, jolly, and great at not getting exasperated at incompetent Americans. The other—not so much. I don’t think she’s had much teaching experience, which doesn’t help, but she also just doesn’t seem to have a good concept of the efficient use of class time, or pace, and her version of “helping” is to rewrite your sentence for you or impatiently supply you with the word you’re in the process of sounding out. It’s frustrating, and in a program like this where speed and intensity are the name of the game, it feels like a major handicap. I’ve tried to refrain from snapping at her, but I have very little patience for bad teachers (or anyone wasting my time, really), especially because St. Mary’s really spoiled me in the teacher department.

It has been a lot more difficult than I imagined to learn Tunisian and FosHa side by side. In case anyone doesn’t know, Arabic takes very different forms in the different countries it’s spoken in. FosHa, or Modern Standard, is the “universal” form that is supposedly understood by all (it’s the language of academics, printing, news, etc) but spoken by none. The way I visualize the structure of Arabic in my head is like the dinosaur DNA in Jurassic Park—the basic structure, taken from the mosquitoes in amber, was dino, but they filled in the gaps with amphibian. FosHa acts as this ancient structure, but local dialects fill in the holes to create new and individual languages. With Tunisian, French filled a good number of those holes and so did Italian (ex. Pen= “steeloo”, like the French “stylo”; OK=“dack-wher-doo” like Italian “Dacuerdo”). Tunisians appropriate French so naturally that half the time they can’t remember the Arabic word for some things that they’re used to referring to in French. The longer I’m here, the more I just want to learn Tunisian, as it’s more the talking to people than the grammar that inspires me. Unfortunately, we only get about 30 mins of Tunisian a day, compared to 4 hours of FosHa.

Arabic itself is a mix of familiar and unfamiliar elements, and although the completely foreign writing system and sounds and lack of cognates make it harder to absorb/retain, the structure is actually much simpler than the languages I’m used to in many ways. Like romance languages, there are masculine and feminine nouns, although like Spanish (and unlike French) it is usually relatively easy to tell which is which from the sound/appearance of the word. There is no subject for formal address like the French “vous” or the Spanish “usted,” thank God, so it’s not quite so easy to offend someone by using the wrong one (although, interestingly enough, the Spanish “usted” comes from Arabic, where it is a title of respect for a teacher). Verbs are conjugated from BOTH sides, with a first person, second person and third person prefix and a suffix for plural. THERE ARE ONLY THREE IRREGULAR VERBS(!) (come, eat, and take) but there are oddly no infinitives—the base form is the imperative. Nouns are altered with suffixes to allow possession (walidy = mother, walidity = my mother) and, like romance languages, usually precede their adjectives.

I had a great lazy Saturday yesterday, but I’ll save that until later, because I need to use my precious café Internet to do my homework. Until then, here are the explanations for this post's pictures of the less touristy, less glamorous sides of where I’m living. Tunisia is like the Where’s Waldo of stray cats—they are literally everywhere, and if you stand still long enough you can usually spot several lurking under cars, in trash cans, etc. They’re fairly clean and tame, though, as many families leave out scraps for them (because they’re preferable to rats). Also, Tunis is a very littered city, with new apartment buildings next to piles of rubble and discarded trash, especially as you move into the more middle class areas. Last: the vendors who sell to tourists often use their children to try and boost sales, which is both cute and a little sad. Here are two boys who posed for me, who are selling little bouquets of Full and Jasmine--two wonderful smelling flowers that grow everywhere here, and whose aromas will forever after remind me of Tunisia. These little handmade bouquets are sold on every street corner here for about half a dinar, and are purchased primarily by men (either old men, who wear them behind their ears, or young men, who buy them for their lady friends).

Last but not least: I don't know if he reads this, but if so, here's wishing a very happy Father's Day to the best Dad I know.

All Sahel that ends well

Last weekend we took our first group trip, to a central coastal region of Tunisia known as the Sahel. We first stopped in el-Jem, where we visited the ruins of a roman colosseum. Having seen the colosseum in Rome and another in the south of France, I wasn't particularly excited. However, this one beat the pants off of the other two--first for the lack of crowds, but also how much of the structure remains AND is fully available to the public. Without Western ropes and guards, we were free to scramble all over (and under--this was where Gladiator was filmed, so you could go through the gladiator/tiger chambers). Here's a picture of me and Drew doing just that. I also bought a necklace in el-Jem, which I apparently paid too much for--I need to get better at this bartering thing. (Good thing I'll actually be getting bartering "lessons" tomorrow).

Next we stopped in Mehda--a cute coastal town whose local boys were enjoying diving off little rocks en masse into the beautifully blue Mediterranean. Several of our guys stripped down to join them, much to the amusement of the boys, as did one girl (much to the rather creepy interest of the men on the shore and the older boys, who all began swimming after her...I opted to stay dry). Here are pictures of one of the boys as as well as just a shot of the cute town, which was bordered by a field full of white graves bearing black and green (holy color) Arabic inscriptions.

After that, it was down to the resort town of Monastir to spend the night at a 4 star hotel--thank you, State Department. The hotel bordered on a white sand beach with crystal blue water that stayed shallow for a long way from the shore. It was weird to be in a place so clearly geared towards tourists. Not only was there toilet paper, but there was NO hose (FYI: by and large, Tunisians use a little hose to wash up in the bathroom. TP is sometimes available in touristed areas but is considered dirty here and can't be flushed) and there was a bar with (limited) alcohol, where I purchased the first beer I've had since I've been here (while progressive, Tunisia is still a Muslim state and alcohol is difficult to find and often prohibitively expensive). The beach itself was a weird contrast between the familiar site of lobster-red, leathery, topless/speedo-clad European beach goers and Tunisian families with mothers wearing Burquinis (I kid you not--look them up!) which are surprisingly stylish swimsuits that include sleeves to the wrist, leggings to the ankle, and a waterproof veil.

The next morning we visited the ribat (fort) in Monastir which was much like Oxford castles except, like with the colosseum, we were free to wander in and out of rooms and stairs without the hindrance of safety bars or any of that non-adventuresome nonsense. Here's the view from the top of the tower. We also visited the mausoleum of Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia's first and beloved president who lead the country through independence and is largely responsible for the non-secular, feminist nature of Tunisian poltics/society relative to the rest of the Arab world. I'm still trying to get a better grasp on modern-day Tunisian politics, which is proving difficult, as Tunisians are hesitant to mention Ben Ali (and when they do, they look around uncomfortably and end in elipses). At the least, I'm now very familiar with his face, as there is no shortage of images posted in markets, on the sides of buildings and in stores. On the one hand, I know that he's done a good job of continuing Bouguiba's policies towards religion/gender, which I approve of. On the other hand, the government blocks YouTube, which I definitely don't appreciate. It's a good thing I don't have any freetime here--I wouldn't know what to do with myself!

Hokay, back to homework now. Thanks to everyone who has been following along with me and leaving me comments from various corners of the world--and for those who asked, yes, the homestay situation is improving (although my French is only getting worse as my brain gets altogether over-languaged). !بسلام

I have clean underpants again!

Officially back from my first weekend excursion, which was a lot of fun. Pictures and details will be forthcoming as I have time this week. Returning home last night felt surprisingly comfortable, and it was nice to hear Lubna say that she missed having women in the house this weekend. I also have clean clothes again--Lubna finally got to our laundry while I was gone, with the exception of my underwear and bra, which I hand-washed at the hotel in Monastir (it's extremely offensive in Tunisia to have other people touch your soiled undergarments--apparently this goes for socks, too, which Lubna left untouched in the hamper). Feeling well rested for the first time since I got here, I was able to get up early enough to make my own tea this morning to avoid more of the disgusting whole-milk-and-Nescafé (instant coffee-like drink) that has been forced on me every morning so far, and even managed to avoid insulting my host parents with the (completely made up) explanation of how growing up in a Commonwealth country made me partial to tea. Here's hoping they take the hint.

Every Monday we have to turn in something called "Critical Incident Reports" detailing moments of revelation, culture shock, etc that we've had in Tunisia. Rather than give a full blog entry today, I thought I'd share what I'm turning in:

Mistaken cat calls

During the halftime at a Tunisian National futbol game I went up to the concession stand to buy a bottle of water. Rather than the many large, bright windows of overpriced hot dogs and beers that I would find in the States, this was a small, dark hole in the cement surrounded by a crowd of men shoving for their orders. Taking a deep breath, I dove into the chaotic crowd. After a few seconds, I started hearing the familiar harassing “Hey! You! English? Girl? Hey!” I did my best to ignore the calls, keeping my eye on the window, until I felt a hand shake my shoulder. I turned around, to see a man pointing at my butt, saying “watch, watch!” Uncomfortable, I pushed away, but he was near me again in a second, shaking and pointing: “watch it! Watch it!” Finally he found the word he needed: “money! Watch it!” I looked down and saw what the man had seen—not my butt, in fact, but a colored piece of newspaper sticking out of my pocket that looked an awful lot like a Tunisian bill. He motioned that I should tuck it in further, using “bad people” as his explanation as he motioned towards the crowd around us. I laughed, pulling the paper from my pocket to show him what it really was—the article from the daily paper saying that women could get in free to the game. He laughed too. I used the little bit of Arabic I could muster (this was only a few days in to the program) to introduce myself, before switching into French to thank him properly for his kindness.


My first big “whoops” and my first big “whoa!” in the same five minutes

One night, when I stayed after hours at SIT, a friend called me over to help him communicate with the cleaning lady (I’m fairly fluent in French, so I’ve been filling in where our developing Arabic isn’t yet sufficient). Confident, I repeated what the friend had asked me to say (“did you find my shirt in here last night?”) in French to the woman, who stared at me blankly. “Je ne parle pas français” she said.
I felt suddenly helpless—more than I had been anywhere since our arrival—and I realized how much I had been using my French as a crutch. After mangling Arabic trying to get the question across, I tried to excuse my inability to communicate with “Sorry, [my] Arabic is not good”—unfortunately it came out as “Sorry, Arabs are not good,” a pretty severe faux-pas if you ask me. Luckily, she was quick to understand that racism wasn’t my intention, and after an apology and another minute or so of gesturing, we were able to get the point across. My friend thanked the woman for the shirt, which she returned to him with a string of Arabic. “What was that?” he asked. “She says you left it out on the balcony yesterday,” I said. It took me a minute to realize that I had somehow understood her perfectly, but that she had been speaking Arabic. “How did you know what she said?” my friend asked. I’m still not sure, but what I do know is that it felt pretty amazing.

Cab ride revelation

I noticed the difference in license plates on my first day here—longer than ours, with some Arabic letters squished in between numbers. Not knowing how to read the letters, I assumed that they were, as ours are, randomly selected to create a wide range of possible combinations. On the cab ride home last night, after our first week of classes, I was staring absently at the car in front of us when my eyes fell on the suddenly meaningful letters: Tunis!

One week down...

I'm sure everyone has heard about the Egyptian method of preserving bodies by shoving a red hot poker up a corpse's nose, scrambling the brains, and pulling them back out in a melty mess. My Tunisian education thus far feels pretty similar (Egypt's only one country over, after all...). This week has been outright exhausting. I wake up at about 6:30 to get ready and get to school, which starts at 8:30. We have two two-hour sessions of class, a one-hour dialect lesson, and then hours of homework. However, what with the need for lunch in there somewhere and at least a little bit of down time, plus all of the activities we've had planned in the evenings, I never finish. I inevitably get home around 9, help set up for/clean up dinner, eat, and talk with the family, and by then it's about 10:30 and I have an hour or so to do what work I have the energy left for and get to bed.

We had our first test today, which I totally bombed (due to the time limit and not my Arabic ability). I'm not too concerned--I'm not getting graded after all. I feel pretty good about my progress thus far, regardless of testing. I can now read and write every letter, although I still have problems spelling, obviously, and I read at the pace of an electric company video from Sesame Street (Cuh----Aaaah----Tuhhh....Cuh--Aah--Tuh....CuhAhTuh....CAT!). I can also introduce myself, talk about my family, count money, order food, ask about the bathroom...pretty much do anything I would absolutely NEED to do. I'm also beginning to pick up words here and there in the conversation at home, which makes me sound rather like an idiot when I suddenly interject during dinner to parrot back the words I know (table! chicken! She doesn't want!). My host parents react as encouragingly as real parents would, smiling and repeating it back to me along with a string of other words I don't understand. Lina's five-year-old intellect has finally wrapped itself around the idea that my muteness is due to incomprehension, and she is now on a mission to correct everything I say, not that her choice of vocabulary is always helpful (she spent five minutes last night trying to get me to say something like Gahr-Gah Bool Zed...which turned out to be Dragon Ball Z, her favorite TV show). Asking her "shoowa hedda" (what's this) also has mixed results...I asked about a Tunisian flag and she said "aller aller!" (French for "let's go, let's go") and then started singing a Tunisian futbol chant. Ma'lesh. (Oh well).

Arabic itself is as fascinating as it is frustrating. I'm looking forward to next week, when we will progress beyond the alphabet and learn more about conjugating verbs and such. Not being able to string together sentences is killing me, as it's always the creative and structural aspects and actual conversation that I'm good at, not the memorization. As per usual, though, I'm still able to find ways to amuse myself, whether by the semi-orgasmic noises that emerge when a room full of students is practicing their "Huhhhh" (mine's getting pretty good, by the way), the fact that "sup?" translates into Tunisian as "penis," or that the Tunisian word for 15 is "mustache."

On the homefront: things are better, slightly. Kate and I are getting better about establishing our boundaries with Lina, and since we've been getting home around 9 we don't spend a whole lot of time with the family. Mustafa's brought up politics a few more times--apparently it's not just America and the Jews he hates, but also the French, the Chinese, the British... I slowly but insistently counter his opinions with "actually"s (actually, in America I have Chinese friends and....actually, I lived in Britain for a semester and...) Even if he's intolerant, he's at least giving me a little space to express myself--I just need to watch what I say, and not be the one to bring things up. On the other hand, I had a perfectly lovely (and long) conversation with Lubna last night about Islam--she was surprised to find out how much I new about her religion, and also surprised to find out that a lot of the Quaranic stories are also in the Bible and Torah. I'd love to pick her brain a little more...she's such a puzzle in my mind (educated and intelligent, but submissive, modern, but religiously traditional). I'm really looking forward to seeing where this friendship goes.

We leave at 8am tomorrow for our first weekend excursion to the Sahel--a central region on the coast. I'll check in again next week with pictures and a summary of how it goes!

The honeymoon had to end sometime

So the homestay is going to get harder before it gets easier, it seems. Lina is cute, but spoiled, and her brattiness is getting old quickly. She seems to think she has the right to anything she sees (translation: anything I'm holding) and has no problem going into my/her room to explore my belongings or even grabbing them right from my hand. If I refuse or take them away from her she starts tantruming. I'm learning some Arabic phrases today to discourage her...if her parents won't set the limits, I will, and I've already noticed that the Arabic "leh" has more effect than "no" so maybe broaching the linguistic barrier will help. We also got a hateful tirade from our host father last night about politics--how naïve we Americans are, how we believe Muslim stereotypes of terrorism that are ignorant, how the Jews are behind all of our politics, and are responsible for 9/11 and the war in Iraq...etc. Near the beginning I tried to divert him, but it became pretty clear that he was looking for an audience, not a discussion partner, and the fact that he was citing propaganda as truth made me realize that there was probably little I could do to change his opinions. The experience left me uncomfortable and Kate even moreso. We brought it up to the program leaders today, who have instructed us that next time we should just end the conversation when it starts, and gave us a number to call after hours if that doesn't work.

I'm determined to view this as a challenge, though, and an opportunity to let myself and my actions speak louder than the media when it comes to impressions of Americans. Inch'allah, maybe I can change some minds in the two months that I'll be here. Also, aside from political lectures, the family has been extremely hospitable, and the food is great--last night's dinner was a great Tunisian pepper salad called Mushiwya on bread, and a chicken and pea dish that reminded me of subsaharan african cuisine. Tonight is going to be some sort of Tunisian speciality involving spinach...mmmm!

And now, for the promised futbol summary:

After learning from a Mozambiquian guy from DC (small world, ain't it?) about the futbol match, me and a group of nine other CLS students climbed into our first Tunisian taxi (which was, like all others I have ridden in since then, a seatbelt-less, crappy-radioed, thrilling experience) and headed to the outskirts of town for the national Tunisia vs. Mozambique game. Women got in free--a little sexist, perhaps, but I was happy enough to save the five dinar. We decked out in headbands and Tunisian flags and did our best to follow along in the foreign chants, much to the delight of the Tunisians around us, who offered us commentary, snacks, and--in my case--phone numbers (from the taxi driver, then the widowed dad behind the cute Tunisian boy in this photo--I need to figure out an action plan for these sorts of situations.) It was cool to see Tunisian women and children cheering alongside the men (I see them much less frequently then men in public here), and curious to see tea and bread vendors instead of beer and hotdogs. Overall, a ton of fun, and I think we're going to try and make the next game in a few weeks.

Behi behi barsha

Asslema!

Here is my first official blog from o'er the Atlantic. So far, Tunisia has been "behi behi barsha," or very very good, which is a phrase I picked up over lunch at a cafe today (except at that point I was talking about my pasta--I'm still not sure exactly what was in it, but it was barsha nonetheless).

Our schedule has been hectic to say the least. I've yet to get a full eight hours of sleep since I arrived (and at this rate, I won't tonight, either) so I'm still a little jet-lagged. The unflagging enthusiasm of all involved sustains me, however, as does my inexplicably strong love of this country. Really, I absolutely adore it. Never in my travels have I ever felt so immediately taken with and comfortable in a country as I do here. Tunisians are incredibly warm, friendly people, all of my preconceived notions about the limitations of life in an Islamic country have been shattered, and I'm in linguistic heaven. Although I'm soon going to make an effort to avoid using it as I learn more Arabic, my French has been serving me well, and I am more comfortable striking up a conversation in French with a stranger here than I have ever been in France. Arabic is an intriguing and I'm playing with the few phrases I know to begin piecing it together (our formal classes start Monday). In the back of my mind, I'm already plotting ways to get back to the Maghreb after this summer is over...Peace Corps? Fullbright?....

And now, to cheat and use bullet points, because I'm tired.

Things I've done in the last not-quite-three days:
-been lost (and then found) in the bazaar-style marketplace (souks)
-been surprised at how much the main street Avenue Bourgiba and the view of the mediterannean reminds me of Nice
-toured the city extensively and loved my Tevas in the process--until today, when I started hating their still-faint-but-probably-going-to-get-worse-quickly smell
-seen many, many more women without veils than with them. My favorite so far is an elderly mother, completely covered, accompanied by her preteen daughter in booty shorts and a skin-tight, gold-lettered spaghetti strap shirt.
-eaten any authentic Tunisian food I can get my hands(mouth?) on, including an eggy pastry called a Brik El Medina, Harissa (a spicy red pepper garnish), Mechouia (spicy pepper/onion/tomato appetizer), Couscous, Schwarma, and, of course, loads of delicious mint tea
-visited the intensely fortified American embassy and resisted attempts to be recruited for the Foreign Service or the State Deparment
-attended a dressy reception at the ambassador's house and gotten my first glimpse of the GOREGOUS neighborhood I'm soon be living in
-had at least one quadralingual conversation (Arabic, English, French and Spanish)
-played a gambling game with some Tunisian teenagers in an alley near our school, using a combination of gestures and bad Arabic to understand the rules
-been laughed at by the ten-year-old son of a shopkeeper for my butchering of "bu Kaddesh" (how much) due to my inability to pronounce the throaty "K" sound (as well as about 5 others...*sigh*)
-exchanged Arabic for English phrases with one of the restaurant workers at the hotel...and made a "date" to do the same tomorrow
-been grateful to the shopkeepers who have helped me count their unfamiliar currency from my outstretched hand--and slightly irked by the few who have already scammed me into paying a few dinar more than I should through whatever tourist trap method (just you WAIT 'enry 'iggens...I'm learning your language and I'll be BACK for revenge)

That's all for now. I'm moving into my homestay on Sunday and am excited to meet the awesome family, inch'allah (god willing), that I'll be living with for the next two months...