6/12/11
One of the reasons that I hesitated to start this blog in the first place was because I wasn’t sure how much time I would have to maintain it. Which turned out to be a pretty legitimate concern, given the fact that I just now have a chance for an update, one week after my last post, and at midnight.
Anyway, I feel like I accomplish twice as many things here in one day than I do anywhere else (if you can believe that…), so I can’t remember everything that has changed since my last post. One major change, though, is that I changed homestays. I actually had no say in the matter, and it was extremely sudden. My last post was on a Sunday, and when classes began the next day, we were asked to speak in Arabic about our experiences with our families. I mentioned that I was disappointed that mine didn’t speak to me in Arabic, and the teachers must have mentioned it to Sonia, the head of the program, because a couple of hours later she asked to talk to me and told me that Janice (the other girl in my first house) and I were moving. She then gave me an hour to get home, pack everything up, and get back to the school to be picked up by the new family.
After a rather awkward goodbye to the first family (who were less than enthused), Janice and I met our new host mother at the school. She introduced herself as Umm (meaning “mother”) Kurthum, which I first heard as Umm Kulthum-- a famous Egyptian singer and an icon across the Arab world. Haha.
Anyway, Ummi (meaning, “my mom,” which is how I will refer to her from now on) was very sweet to us, and patient with our lackluster Tunsi (Tunisian dialect) skills as she drove us to our new house. It’s relatively comfortable, although the landscape drastically changes as you move away from the rich Sidi Bou Said area that we previously lived in. Now, we live in the outskirts of La Marsa, definitely not in the best neighborhood. As we drove more and more, I saw more and more trash scattered on the ground and in heaps, old abandoned buildings most likely left over from the colonial period, no parks/signs of any sort of municipal organization, smaller houses linked together, more stray cats and goats just roaming around, and fewer women walking around.
So far, most of my first impressions concerning the neighborhood have been correct. When I wanted to meet up with a friend at her house in the nicer part of La Marsa at 9:30 pm last night, Ummi told me that it was not safe for me to leave the house, even if I was just going to walk down the street to try to catch a cab. So I had to stay in, which was rather frustrating as I pictured all of my classmates on the program who were placed in better-off neighborhoods and therefore have more freedom.
At the very least, however, Ummi told me that she would give the same warning to anyone in the neighborhood—male or female. And even though I was initially worried when I didn’t see any women walking around outside as we drove to the house, I have been impressed. I still don’t see women walking outside very often, but I have not gotten nearly as much attention as I feared I would. And when I do get attention, it’s usually when I’m walking with Janice to catch a cab, and people see us and shout greetings at us in French, Chinese (Janice is Asian…Korean, but I guess they think that all Asians are Chinese), and English. I much prefer greetings to cat-calls, although I still try to ignore them because I don’t want to respond and encourage them.
Anyway, in addition to Ummi and Janice, I also live with Ummi’s daughter, Lamya (who I think is in her thirties), and Lamya’s nine-year-old son, Eskandr (named after Al-Eskandr the Great). Like I said, the lifestyle is definitely a step down from where I was first initially placed. No toilet paper again, no shower curtains, plastic bags instead of trash cans, a shower nozzle that you have to hold yourself, and smaller portions of less healthy food. At the same time, I have my own room (and two tiny shelves to store all my stuff), and they are very nice people who share what they have (although I’m still not sure how much the program is giving them, and therefore, how much it’s okay for me to use, etc). Eskandr is pretty shy, but Janice and I got him to open up by playing Chutes and Ladders with him the other day.
A typical day consists of me getting up at 6:45 am, getting ready and eating a quick breakfast of bread and cheese, coffee with milk, and sometimes yogurt, before leaving at 7:30 to either take the bus with Janice, or if the bus takes forever to show up, as has been the usual, take a cab to school. Cabs here are much nicer than those in Egypt, and they actually have meters that work (and are used). It costs about 3 dinars (multiply by 0.75 to get dollars) to get from my house to the school, which is a 15 or so minute ride, whereas the bus costs half a dinar.
After we get to school, the long day begins of Fusha (classical Arabic) and Tunsi (the Tunisian dialect) classes, lunch with language partners, and speaking practice. We’ve also been taking a lot of evaluations, which haven’t been particularly fun, but I think those are done for the moment.
My classes are pretty good. There are only 4 other people in my class, so I definitely can’t slack off. People also take this program much more seriously than I expected, in comparison with my last CLS experience two summers ago. The caliber of students here and the workload are both intense. Every day this past week, I haven’t gone to bed before midnight, and I’ve had to get up at 6:45. So given the amount of sleep I need, it probably is little wonder that I have been drinking so much coffee. Although, I am slightly scared of what caffeine-addicted state I will be in when I return to the U.S…
Speaking of food/drink…I have been eating so much tuna here. And actually liking it. It’s really different from the tuna that I’ve had in the U.S. before. But Tunisians put tuna on everything. Bread, salad, pizza, rice, cous cous, soup….you name it. I haven’t seen it paired with fruit or dessert yet, but I wouldn’t put it past them. Today was Sunday, so we spent the whole afternoon cooking. We made a really yummy cous cous and vegetable kind of stew and mint tea. I also got to see raw almonds the other day (still green…I had never seen that before), which we then put in a sort of lemonade drink and in tea. My only complaint, other than the fact that they don’t have a lot and I feel bad eating what they do have, is the overabundance of oil in everything-- (yes, welcome to the Middle East), especially on the salads, which basically consist of light green lettuce, a tiny bit of tomato, and a lot of oil and lemon—and the lack of fruit. But I’m getting more than I did in Egypt, so I appreciate that at least.
Okay, it is almost 1 am now, and I have to get up at 6:45 for class tomorrow, so I am going to end this post here. I’ll try to post again sometime soon with updates on what I did this past weekend.
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