Take-offs and Landings

It's about 4:30 in Tunis and I'm sitting in my hotel room enjoying a little down time after arriving in the city around 11. In just a few short hours though, I've had more new experiences than I can count. First--flying over the Mediterranean Sea is probably the most beautiful thing you can do. It is nothing but blue for miles. It also represents a very drastic change in scenary. We left Paris by flying over the colorful and green fields around the city (I also actually saw the Eifel Tower for the first time!) and, after 2 hours, we found ourselves in a totally different environment--everything looked so brown from the place. But it was also beautiful, just a different kind of beauty. When we landed everyone on the plane started clapping. I don't know if that was because we had a kind of shaky last few minutes or if it was all the Tunisians returning home or the other students on the program so excited to finally arrive in the place we've been looking forward to for so long.

We took a bus to the hotel which is on the main street of Tunisia and now have a few hours until the orientation officially begins. I walked down the main street with a few friends. We stopped at a cafe and had crepes, as well as our first impromptu Arabic lesson of the trip from the owner of the cafe. Everything I'd heard about the people of the country is true so far--everyone has been very welcoming, open and ready to teach us their culture and language. We then continued walking down the street until we reached the old city, Medina. It was marked by a beautiful gate (on the right). We wound our way through the very very thin alley ways, past venders selling all the Tunisian fashions and Western clothing. There were also mopeds!!

What I'm most surprised about by being here is how similar it feels to so many other places. We often forget how many similarties people share and arriving here in this country on this continent I've spent so much time studying and talking about in disconnected words is already teaching me a lot about needing to maintain that simply human perspective in my work and studies. Tunisia seems like a great place to learn this lesson--it is a country with its own culture that sits between and unites so many other cultures--European, Middle Eastern, African...