C'est gratuie pour les femmes!

I wasn't planning on writing a blog entry today, but then the most amazing thing happened--I went to a World Cup qualifying game! Talk about a dream come true!! It was Tunisia versus Mozambique and we kicked butt, beating Mozambique 2-0. The game was such an experience. We took the almost half hour taxi ride there for less than 6 dollars and had this hilarious taxi driver from Italy who thought honking was a sign of friendship and honked at everyone--fellow drivers, pedestrians, cops...Once we got there, the tickets were actually free for women, which I very much appreciated. I also think it says a lot about the cultural shift in Tunisia, a country that is considered to be one of the most inclusive and publically equal cultures in the Middle East.

About 10 of us went to the game, decked out in mini Tunisian banners tied around our foreheads and waving plastic flags some little kids had handed to us. It was a great time to learn about subtle cultural differences--like how Tunisians dance to their national anthem, while we Americans stand stiffly and how they drink tea at the games, not beer. Everyone sitting around us was also very welcoming. They continuously offered us food, explained the chants, and exchanged high fives when we scored. It was just really fun to watch my favorite sport in a huge stadium with tons of fans, but even more meaningful to share in all of the nationalism and unity that football creates.

This evening has been spent studying Arabic. We have a bunch of homework to complete before Monday's classes and we're, of course, starting with the alphabet. I'm actually learning to write!! It's fun and the whole language seems a little less intimidating now that I'm learning to distinguish the different letters in written Arabic, knowing where one starts and another begins and the different sounds they make. My handwriting is so little-kid big though, taking up a few lines to feel like I've drawn all the details of the letter. The same book with the exercises even has throat exercises we're suppose to do to allow our throat to produce all the glottal stops! It's strenuous and definitely takes some humility to sit for what feels like forever trying to make a sound that just never comes out right.

And tomorrow we move to Sidi Bou Said to live with host families. Today, we had a lecture about family life, expectations and responsibilities in Tunisia. Of course, you can only talk about generalizations in a lecture like that, but it's gotten me anxious about what to expect...

Beginnings

First of all, being in Tunisia has somehow turned all the settings on the internet into Arabic. Needless to say, it took me a very long time to figure out how to start a new post. But now that I'm here typing, I'm at a loss for where to start...a lot has happened in the past two days, both in the program and outside of it and all good.

Yesterday was our first real day of orientation. I don't know if I've explained this yet, but the 32 of us are all staying together at a hotel in downtown Tunis until Sunday. Here we're living two to a room and attending programs during the day and evenings and usually have freetime for lunch and at night. On Sunday, we'll all be moving to Sidi Bou Said, which is a really nice suburb, where we will live with host families for the next two months (that's something that was changed, fyi). So, yesterday we walked and walked and walked all over downtown Tunisia and the medina. In teh early morning, I went on a tour of the Medina with an FTLA (a former young Fulbright scholar that works with the program). She showed a small group of us all of the different traditional cultural things you can buy there and explined their significance. We learned about traditional weddings, symbols in Tunisia (like the khomsa-hand and ain-evil eye), etc. Then, in the afternoon, a larger group of us was given a tour of the city. We learned about the traditional guilds in the Medina, saw the two main mosques of the city (the central one is pictured two the left), learned about how Islam is/isn't practiced here and saw all sorts of former Italian and French villas, a lot of which are squatted now and completely in ruins. Actually, CEMAT, where we are having our orientation, is a former Italian villa.

Following that morning, we had a traditional lunch in the Medina for 1 dinar (less than a dollar!). Even though I got my sandwich without fish, it still tasted like fish. Everything here tastes like fish--its kind of a Mediterranean thing, I suppose. But I'm being more flexible about vegetarianism while I'm here so I don't mind at all. Later we had a briefing at the American Embassy just outside of the city. We met with Foreign Service Officers and talked about life in the foreign service, as well as security things we should know living here. Don't worry--everything's safe! We then went to SIT, where we'll be having our Arabic classes. During the year, the building is used for the popular study abroad program and this is the first summer this program has it, but the facilities seem great! Then, we walked down to the amabassador's house for a reception for 'people who encourage cross-cultural communication,' or something along those lines. It was us CLSers and other fulbright Americans and Tunisians, as well as the diplomats in the area. The amabassador's house was amazing--overing looking the sea. Apparently the president is jealous, because the ambassador to the U.S.'s house sits higher on the hill overlooking the sea than his, so the president had another home built on the other side of Sidi Bou Said to sit even higher. What a life! The picture on the right is me on the walk to the amabassor's house.

Today involved less walking. We were at CEMAT all day, studying Tunisian dialect. I didn't realize how drastic a difference exists between Modern Standard Arabic (what is taught in classes) and dialects of Arabic, but apparently speaking MSA is the equivalent of speaking Shakesperean English to an American today. But it's necessary to learn as a foundation for understanding different dialects and reading the literature of the Middle East, as all media is printed in MSA. So far it's been a lot of phrases to memorize, which is hard to do without knowing what all the words mean, but then little things will remind us of why we're learning them so intensively. Like this evening when I was in a cafe, a waiter walked by and said the very phrase (Saaha) that we had been studying a few minutes before and so we knew the correct response (A'eishen, hiya bis mella? (my transliteration is poor, btw)). We ended up having a really great conversation in 6 languages--Spanish, French, German, Arabic, English and Italian. This is why I love to travel!

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...

Up, up and away!

Hello everyone!

I'm trying something new--using technology on a regular basis! For those of you that know me well, you know that this is sort of a stretch of my abilities, but it feels like the right time to start committing my travels to memory. This blog is sort of an experiment, as I don't know how well I'll do with keeping up with it. I've never been an avid journaler, but I think that this is different enough that it might work. I'm also writing it from my laptop--yes, that's right--I finally broke down and invested in one!
I wanted to start this blog to chronicle my summer in Tunisia, fall in Senegal and Spring semester in the Netherlands. I'll be country-hopping for awhile and am really excited, because that's how I work best. In Tunisia, I'll be studying Arabic intensively for two months. I don't know all the details yet, but it sounds like we'll have 4-6 hours of class a day and 4 hours of homework a night. On top of that, we'll be attending lectures, cultural activities and going on weekend trips. Plus, we'll all be living with host families. I'm in Washington, D.C. right now and just finished my orientation for the Critical Language Scholarship. Everyone in the program (abouth 30 of us) has been amazing so far. We spent all day today at an orientation--talking about logistics of the program, attending a career panel (with someone from the State Dept., International Rescue Committee and the private sector) and hearing from past participants and Tunisian scholars. We've also had a lot of time to hang out and get to know the people we'll be spending the next 2 months with. I just got back from some sightseeing--I saw the Lincoln Memorial, White House and Capital Hill. On our way back, we coincidentally found the Dept of State, too! It's so fun to be in a place so much revolves around.
I leave the States tomorrow at 4 p.m. We'll be flying through Paris and arriving in Tunisia on Wed. I hope that everything is going wonderfully with you and I'd love to hear from you while I'm away! So keep reading and maybe we can live vicariously through one another's journies!

Love,

Keren