Dorm Inform

So first off, I’ve added a picture to my last post of me with all of my crap in front of the super classy sign of the Super Hotel that I stayed in for two nights. The photo comes courtesy of my friend the Super front desk man, and doesn’t really do justice to my huge backpack, which you can hardly see. It doesn’t really do justice to my face, come to think of it. I was going for a tough woman look and it came off more like pissed off chipmunk. Alas. It’s a good thing it’s my brother who’s the actor and not me.

Housing update: I am now a resident of the Fondation des Etas-Unis at Cité Universitaire at the south end of the 14è arrondissement, for those who know their Parisian geography. My address, school land line and new swanky French cell phone are all now listed on my Facebook page should anyone feel the need to send me some lovin’ (ie drunk text message…yes, you can still text me, although I have no idea if that’s covered under Verizon unlimited). Since my last post, I actually had a last minute opportunity to move into my choice of two apartments in the upscale 15th/16th arrondissments; however, due to price relative to size and merits and some really positive feedback about Cité’s dorms from a former grad student, I opted to schlep on over here.

The deal I have here is really a bargain. For 425 euros/month, I have a pretty big room to myself with a big closet, a bed, a desk and chair, a sink (!), some lamps, and more shelves than I will probably be able to fill (says the literature student who hasn’t even started buying anything from her five page long reading list yet). Shared toilets, showers and a kitchen are right down the hall. I’m up on the 4th floor, which in France actually means 5th (they start at zero) so I have a fair amount of stairs to climb (there is an elevator, it’s just slow and French) but luckily they’re pretty spiral stairs. Being this high means that I have sun in my room for almost all of the afternoon/evening, so I can enjoy my garden and ivy-wall view, as well as a nice amount of wind. After answering ads on bulletin boards right after I got here, I have already managed to score a used, medium-sized fridge for 70 euros, which was hand-delivered to me by the Benin(ese?) man who used to own it after I finally found his apartment, as well as a big red section of carpet (from a departing student) for 6 euros. I still need a few more things, like a shower caddy, floor lamps, posters, etc (admittedly, it’s a little bizarre to be repeating my pre-freshman year shopping trips) but so far I’m pretty happy. More good news: I can receive guests here willing to share my small space if I declare them in advance—4 euros a night if you want to crash on my carpet, and 8 euros if you want to use one of their loaner fold-a-beds. Pretty sweet, right?

The campus is designed as an affordable community for (about 60%) international students to live. There are houses representing each country, varying in size and quality by what seems to me to be based on how much France likes that particular country. The US, German, Spanish and British houses are all pretty nice, while Morocco is shunted to the very edge and housed in a decrepit, institutional building, Tunisia is shut indefinitely for renovations (it needs it) and Algeria…well…doesn’t exist (while other more obscure countries with less of a “history” are represented, Armenia, Cambodia, Liban). (I actually stayed on this campus for a week during a heat wave four years ago and I was housed in the French engineering house, which was utterly miserable. Logical conclusion: Moroccans > engineers > Algerians). The campus is pretty, with a lot of grassy quad areas and trees, and a big campus center with a bank, a café, a cafeteria, a theater and a pool. (The cafeteria is no Great Room, but dinner is only 2.90, so I guess I can’t complain). It’s not real centrally-located, although it’s pretty well connected—there are bus, tramway and RER (part of the métro system) stops within a five minute walk from my building.

The building itself is pretty old and cool, with black-and-white spiral staircases, a computer labstudy rooms, lounges and a lecture hall that remind me of my dorm in Oxford. My only real complaint is the thinness of the walls. My neighbor seems to be a party-er, so fingers crossed it doesn’t continue too long into the semester. I’ve only met a few people so far (the Parisian semester doesn’t start until late Sept/early Oct, so we’re still fairly empty), but most people seem pretty cool. There’s an intentional 50/50 split of American and “other” to encourage comfort and exchange. Most of us are grad students, although there are a few undergrads as well as a few adult professionals, who are here on a short-term basis as researchers and living in the fully furnished suites with their families. The floor above mine is the artist’s floor, which houses musicians on the main hallway and visual artists in the four loft-style “studios” in the wings. I love the idea, although coupled with the lack of sound-proofing it can be a little annoying—I’ve already discovered that there’s a pretty prolific bassoonist/pianist in the room above mine (on the bright side, he’s really good! I recognized Gershwin today…).

Spent today enjoying random French conversations with strangers around campus and buying as much as I could comfortably carry home in reusable bags at Monoprix (in other words, not much). I think I need to get me one of them old man wheeley grocery stroller things.

Paris, part I: The Apartment Odyssey

Well, I’m here. Wrestling my luggage through the Parisian metro was not fun (I sweated through a shirt even though it was only about 70 degrees at 7am…gross) but it was actually a little more doable than I had feared. For anyone that has seen Auberge Espagnol, I really looked like Xavier…I was wearing a backpacking pack with a little neck pillow bungeed to it on my back, and sling-style laptop briefcase on my thigh balanced by a large purse on the other side—or, sometimes, around my neck, when I needed two hands to carry my baby whale-sized rolling duffel up or down stairs. For those of you who prefer more classic allusions, I felt rather like Jacob Marley, suffering under the weight of my wanderlust. Getting from the airport to the RER is happily elevator-friendly, but as I realized when I took Sam to Paris, the metro itself is stairs stairs stairs. I had to transfer lines twice, and each time meant several ups and downs, which either meant that I had to grunt and use my iron woman skills or rely on the kindness of a stranger to grab the other handle on the duffel and help me carry (which seemed to happen un-requested, happily). I got stuck only once, for a moment or two (one hundred cool points if you get THAT reference) when I managed to get myself and the duffel wedged in a turnstile together for a full minute. I honestly thought I wasn’t going to be able to get out without taking out clothes to make it more mashable (meanwhile I’m holding up rush-hour traffic) but somehow me and the whale both sucked in our guts and muscled through. Haha.

After wandering the wrong way on the street for a while, I arrived at my little two-star hotel panting and frizzy, where I had to wait to be able to check in to avoid abandoning my luggage. Once checked in, I enjoyed a shower and a nap before I started hardcore apartment research. I’ve never done the whole apartment thing before, but it’s a harrowing and bizarre process. Overall I think I’ve sent a total of more than 50 emails, made about 30 phone calls (and gone through entirely too much cell phone credit). I’ve learned that in this market, my buying power isn’t really a commodity and I don’t matter even remotely. The demand for affordable student housing is so high that you have to respond pretty immediately to an ad to get attention, and even then, my lack of perfect French seems too much of a hassle for already exasperated landlords. When I do get a response, it is often to say that the room will be unavailable until (insert future month here, ranging from October to June 2010?!?) or that to be considered I must produce a stack of different French legal documents which, of course, I don’t have. One woman letting a room refused to tell me where her house was located because she wanted to “take her time” to see if she liked me. Lady, I’m living in a hotel—I ain’t got time.

My best hit so far was with a girl who has an apt in the 15th. We met for coffee, then, after I passed her roommate test, went to visit the apartment. I loved the girl, but much to my dismay (and to the contradiction of her ad!) the apt was a one-bedroom, and I was expected to sleep in the mezzanine above the living room. I feel like I can compromise on a lot in terms of housing, but I at least need a little bit of my own space.

Somehow I feel kind of shy and naïve walking around, I think more from inexperience with city life than with French culture. Although I’ve been here before, it’s always been as a tourist, and just the knowledge that I am a) alone, and b) in for the long haul give the whole experience a different vibe. St. Mary’s made me comfortable in small communities with a eclectic sort of routine (if that’s possible) and few variables, and city life is the opposite. It’s definitely stimulating, though. On my relatively brief wanderings so far, the highlights have some of the space invaders mosaic graffiti that my French professor at St. Mary’s has been tracking, a romantic couple composed of a huge, muscled Arab man and an Asian midget, (Word is telling me those races need to be capitalized—as if that makes the observation any more pc…) and an eerily gorgeous black woman with a hot pink fro. The food is also (of course) amazing—as far as grab & go items go, I’ll take a baguette sandwich and pastry over pretty much anything.

Today my shoulder muscles ached from the pack and my hands are red and sore (from pulling the whale handle with sweaty hands) in a way that gave me an odd-sense of déjà-vu, until I realized what it was reminding me of—monkey bar “injuries” as a kid. I will be incurring more of those tomorrow, I fear. Unless I hear something back about short-term housing by 9am, I’m going to be checking out of here and trooping on over to the international dorms at Cité Universitaire. Yes, I thought I was done with the dorm part of my life, but dorms in Paris > living at home, right? Wish me bonne chance…

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…)

One test down, one to go

This last week has been tense and uneventful as far as material for blog entries goes. Monday was my Tunisian dialect oral proficiency test—I did pretty well, so I’m happy. I just finished my three-hour written Arabic final, which only leaves the 15-minute MSA oral interview tomorrow. I’m a little nervous about it because it’s with official Foreign Service testers (and I hate oral anything anyway) but I feel surprisingly proud of my Arabic regardless of how well I perform under pressure. Having the last few days to review everything we’ve done so far has really given me an appreciation for the range of my vocabulary and my ability to be inventive with the language. I have the basic tenses and grammar mostly down, and I’m able to talk in some detail about why I’m here and what I’m doing next year—pretty cool accomplishment in a language I couldn’t even read eight weeks ago.

Other things from the last week or so…

*I FINALLY hit up Tunisian bookstores. The books I got for my SMP last year had to be ordered from France at high cost, so tracking down a few hard-to-find Maghrebine novels has been on my to-do list since I got here. I picked up a few novels I’ve been wanting for a while, as well as a book of coming-of-age short stories by Tunisian writers, a book of the famous Tunisian poet Chebbi’s work (in Arabic!), and some bilingual French-Arabic children’s books that recount the adventures of “Petite Anne.” At the recommendation of my new friend the bookstore worker, I also got a book by Tahar Fazaa, who is apparently a very popular and hilarious local writer à la David Sedaris. Last but not least, I found a poster of Africa and the Middle East that featured the names of all of the countries in Arabic. Woohoo!
I was surprised to find out how expensive books were (not so bad when you translate the dinar into US$ or Euros, but relative to the cost of other items in Tunisia, pretty high) and I wonder how many typical Tunisians are actually able to afford books. I know that my host family has almost none, and none at all for their 5-year old daughter. There was a separate children’s section in both stores, but it seemed rather limited (and also very French-heavy…there were almost no children’s books in Arabic). I also found the Tunisian bookstores to be much smaller and less inviting than American bookstores. Without a couch to sit on while I browsed through books, I instead opted to crouch Indian-style on the floor, which seemed to surprise and amuse the bookstore employee I had been talking to. (Tunisians are really weird about the floor—sitting on it or putting anything on it earns you some weird looks, as does putting your feet up).

*I went to Hammamet (literally: the baths) with the group last weekend, which is pretty much a classier version of Ocean City, or, in my mind, a less-classy version of Nice. Definitely the most “touristical” (in the words of our adorable guide, Hatem) and less culture-rich of all the places we visited (complete with a theme park “Carthageland” which is basically a less-intimidating, non-bargaining version of a typical medina market…totally weird). It was good considering how burnt out we all were, though…I didn’t do much except lay around on the beach and enjoy my first wine in WEEKS. I’m glad I’m doing my graduate work in a wine-friendly country. I’m convinced this whole thing would be much less stressful if I were allowed to maintain my wine-and-whine working routine (which is much healthier than the tea and shisha routine here).

*After not doing laundry for more than two weeks, and not doing our whites for over a month, our host mother FINALLY did some yesterday. Granted, it was so shoved in the machine it probably hardly got clean and will have fun detergent spots all over it, AND I got scolded for my pink skirt bleeding on a white shirt (who washes bright pink with whites?) but at least it means that I might make it to Sunday without having to do any emergency sink washings, inch’allah

* We had our last pottery class this week. Overall, I kind of fail at pottery as an art form—especially on the wheel—but I liked the cool earthy feel and the metallic smell and the fact that it was pretty much the antithesis of studying Arabic (and I only thought about Ghost a teensy bit). I made some Tunisian-esque tiles, a bowl, and some failed pots that I probably won’t waste suitcase space on. Our teacher, a really cool Tunisian artist, gave us all a piece of his own work as a parting gift...I got a really cool crackle-glaze and gold bowl with a bird in the center that would probably go for a few hundred dinar if he chose to sell it.

*I’ve been taking the bus home lately and really enjoying it. Once I climb in and pay my 450 to the man in the back (a dinar is broken into 1000 cents here), I put on my iPod and enjoy the small amount of “alone time” I’m allowed in this program. The ride itself is somewhere between the crowded sweatiness of the Nice buses and the reckless downhill speeds and sharp turns of British buses (think the African version of the knight bus, all you HP fans). The Tunisians have some inherent ability to remain still, looking on nonchalantly as I stagger around with each turn.

*I have learned a lot about myself as a student and a person in this program. Conclusions: 1) I’m a very auditory learner, at least with languages, although I also do pretty well independently when it’s writing-related. Classroom reading and computer exercises do very little for me. 2) I have a strong need for alone time and the ability to dictate my own schedule to a small extent at least; not having either makes me cranky. 3) If I can be aware of being cranky, I can take conscious steps to be more positive. 4) And last: to make positive thinking successful, I need to surround myself with positive people. Fortunately, they have been in no short supply in this program.

Tomorrow night is our banquet, Saturday will be a Tunis day, and I fly out Sunday morning to Paris to apartment-hunt for two days before I meet Mom in Morocco! Yes, my life is awesome. I just need to get enough rest to appreciate that again.

A bizarre and blustery weekend

This past weekend was, in the words of one of my guilty pleasure chick flicks, “surreal but nice.” It was dotted with strange moments and bittersweet overall—not only our last free weekend left in Tunisia, but also the end of any promise of real relaxation until the plane ride. Our schedule is going to really…well…suck…for these last two weeks. Somehow we have to write, memorize and perform a 15 minute skit and take a written test for Tunisian dialect, cover several more chapters of Al-Kitaab for MSA, sit one more regular weekly quiz, a written final, AND an oral evaluation of our language progress (and then, of course, there will be the phone interview we have when we get back to evaluate our fluency based on the standard scale as a reflection on the program and to determine our eligibility for future programs…).

I woke up early Saturday to meet Akira and catch a Louage to Cap Bon. Unfortunately, when I went to leave my room I found that the handle that has been tricky to use the entire time I’ve been here had finally decided to stop working altogether; I was locked in my own room. I tried to use a credit card to slide the lock open, but since the bolt part here is a solid rectangle and not the sleek, easily-manipulated triangle shape we have in the States, there was little I could do. Hearing my cellphone ringing in the other room (Akira, wondering where I was), I knocked on the wall to awake my host dad and tried my best to explain my dilemma through drywall-muffled French. I figured he would rustle up a screwdriver and pop off the plate for the handle, but lo and behold, he opted to just break the door down. I sat as calmly as I could on my bed for several minutes while he used his pent-up mosquito rage to break down the door (whose frame now has a chunk of wood ripped out of the wall near the still-nonfunctional handle...I’m using my bookbag to prop it closed-ish at night). A bizarre start to the day, to be sure.

Akira and I got in a Louage full of elderly veiled women (I love Louages! A new adventure everytime!) heading to El Houaria—a small town that somehow managed to be in the middle of nowhere in spite of its relatively close proximity to some of the most popular tourist beach towns on the Cape. Its one claim to fame is an annual falconry festival that we missed by about a month—outside of that, it’s a pretty sleepy town with its high proportion of falcon regalia as the only thing setting it apart from anywhere else. As was the case with El Kef, though, we enjoyed the chance to go at our own pace and be among “real” Tunisians free from the shadow of the tourist hoard on our program trips. Once there, we got a hotel recommendation from a group of French backpackers—48 dinar for the night, which was more than we’re used to, but it was cute and still a bargain by American standards. The hotel deskman gave us a little tour of the town, walking us to a sandwich café for lunch. We then hiked up to some ancient punic caves on the outskirts of the city, which served as limestone mines for the materials used to build the colosseum at El Jem and the ruins at Dougga that we had seen on early trips. I gave Akira an hour or so to get his geologist fill of the rocks before we went up to explore the cliffs and algae-rick tidal pools left by the angry waves that were smashing against the shore. Continuing trip tradition, we ate a melon and tossed the remains from the cliff face.

Later, after getting my soda snatched by the town crazy woman (bizarre incident #2), we caught a “taxi” (read: sketchy olive-colored car driven by the man who seemed to be generally recognized as the town “taxi guy”—we asked several people and they all referred us to him as if it should be obvious) to the beach. The beach was all Tunisians and not crowded at all. The water was the clearest we’ve seen anywhere so far, allowing us a good view of the little fish right under our feet, although the getting in-and-out part was surprisingly chilly. We missed the part in the guidebook where it told us that “Houaria” means “windy” in Arabic, and on our walk back to the hotel later we were both regretting not having brought jeans and jackets (what a shame, really…it would have been the first opportunity I’ve had to use the several that I brought). (Side note: one big benefit to the wind is that the hilltop turbines provide most of the town’s power). I stopped at a little boutique to buy a scarf to warm up with, and after trying unsuccessfully to rip me off, the woman decided that we were best friends, threw in the free “gift” of a hideously high-waisted pair of lacy underwear and begged for my number (bizarre incident #3). We got back to the hotel at about 8 and planned to rest for a few minutes before heading back out to dinner, but after waking up zombie-like at 10:30 we opted just to munch on some macroo cookies (the original fig newtons!) from the kind front desk man and catch up on some much needed sleep.

Sunday: not much to tell. Had to wait a while for the Louage to fill to head back to Tunis…learned how to make real mint tea from a sketchy table by the Louage station, walked around downtown a bit to find a bookstore for me to scope out French books (failure) and got some tea and shisha before we caught the crowded sweaty Sunday train back to our houses in the ‘burbs.

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.