Monday, June 15, 2009

Second Monday down!

Hello all! I thought it was time for another post--a report on the lazy (my weekend), the long (my school today) and the hyped (me after three cups of super sweet Tunisian mint tea, yum!). So, I ended up having a wonderful weekend, even though I didn't go on the excursion. On Saturday night my host sisters and I wanted to go walking. I thought it was just going to be a short walk around the neighborhood, so I didn't change out of my sweatpants and t-shirt, but when I got to the living room they were all dolled out in their cutest outfits. Needless to say, I changed after seeing the horrified looks on their faces and we ventured out to downtown La Marsa. La Marsa is actually a much bigger city than I'd thought. I had the impression that we lived on the main road, because it's always bustling with vendors and pedestrians and dozens of different buses. But now I see that it's just a side street. We walked past dozens of cafes, boutiques, through a mall, past an amusement park and thousands of resturants. We stopped and had the most delicious gelato of my life--nutella. Why can't we get this in the U.S.?! And made our way down to the Mediterranean. We sat on a ledge on the beach, eating pop corn and gazing at the stars. I taught my host sisters the "star light, star bright" song and we all made wishes. We also traded stories about watching the August meteor shower and I got to tell them all about my friends at home. The whole night seemed like one of those cliche stories about looking up at the same sky no matter where you go in the world. I think that would be my advice to anyone coming to Tunisia--make sure you look up!

Sunday was purely a boring homework day, so I won't get into that. Today was my first day back in class. Of course, I was super nervous about having missed three days of class (which is equivalent to missing 3 weeks), but I didn't feel behind at all. I think they had done a lot of reviewing of the alphabet, which wasn't hard for me to do on my own, so I didn't miss much new information. The day was the longest class day I've had so far--I got in at 8 in the morning and our last lecture ended at 8 in the evening. The lecture was on the politics of Tunisia, more specifically national security. The professor had a lot of provoking points to make dispelling the notion that Obama's speech in Cairo was revolutionary. He seemed to believe that the majority of the problems in the Middle East would be solved if the world just ignored the region for 5 to 10 years. An interesting point, totally impossible, but it did make me wonder.
And now some random photos I neglected to post earlier...


At the football game--aren't we a cute bunch!


A view down the street from my school. Just so you know, it's really hard to do Sidi Bou Said justice with a camera.



Some houses we passed on our way down to the beach after school the other day.

If you squint, you can see the Mediterranean in the background!

2 comments:

  1. Nutella Gelato, oh, my, god, sign me up. I had hazelnut gelato in Italy, but not the Nutella. Yumm 100 times over. I did have some nutella at Susans and we all know I had to slap my hand or I would have eaten the whole thing myself. I guess we truly are related!! Amy a.k.a. Aunt Mary Ann

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  2. It looks beautiful, Keren!!! I went outside yesterday evening and talked with Dad on the phone while I looked up at the Pittsburgh sky searching for a star that could pierce the lights from the city. I didn't go in until I found some -- a beautiful experience!!! I thought of you, of course. All my love -- Mom

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