The second day, lunch craziness and the Center

January 15th, 2006

I woke up today around 9 AM, but not for the first time; I slept for a long time, but my sleep was interrupted by noise from outside and general time zone switching confusion (as in, I awoke at 3:30 in the morning – 9:30 AM US time - and looked at my watch; ‘3:30 in the afternoon!?’ I thought, baffled at how I had managed to sleep through my alarm clock, before I suddenly realized that it was dark outside, which meant that it was 3 AM, not PM). I had breakfast at the hotel, which featured a small assortment (maybe because I came late?) of coffee and hot chocolate, croissant-like rolls, pain au chocolat, weird (Tunisian, I’m guessing) cereal (which was basically small choppily-sliced flakes of chocolate), ham, cheese, and baguettes. I had a bit of cereal, some coffee (mixed with hot milk and a bit of chocolate mix), and a roll with cheese. I left the hotel around 10 and made my way to CEMAT with the help of a map, walking down the Blvd Habib Bourguiba to the Médina, where parking is extremely limited and the streets crowded. At CEMAT, which is in a beautiful old white building with a blue gate (such Mediterranean colors), I met Rijadh, the 20- or 30-something man who is the assistant director of the Center and who speaks wonderful English. He took me out to buy a cell phone, which necessitated returning to the hotel to get a copy of my passport. I purchased a SIM card for 5 TD (Tunisian dinar), which I thought was an amazing price, and a decent cell phone that allows you to listen to the radio for a decent price. Larry later told me that Riyadh is preparing his wedding for the beginning of August, and that he is in the middle of the stressful process of furnishing an apartment with the necessary goods (required before the wedding).

After purchasing the cell phone, I went to get lunch with Faizu, who is basically the guard/odd jobs man of CEMAT. We probably would have been better off speaking Arabic, because his French wasn’t very good; this led to me ordering a chicken plate when I wanted a salad plate and lots of confusion when he told me to take money out of my wallet before going to the register instead of at the register (basically, I think, so that I didn’t have my wallet open in a mass of people). So anyway, for lunch I had a chicken schwarma plate with lots of vegetables (which I couldn’t finish) and two large pieces of Tunisian bread (which I brought home with me for a snack later), along with some type of apple soda and some yogurt. I was so full that for dinner I just had a few dates and some small Tunisian pastries I picked up by my hotel.

For the rest of the day, I talked with Larry and a professor from Potsdam (whose name is Laura) about potentially housing/home stays; I’m going to go visit an apartment tomorrow, but I’d love to see about a home stay with or through a female professor in Tunis who studied at Stanford, so we’ll see. I read a bit (some article about how hormones don’t affect the brain and so males and females really shouldn’t behave so differently; yet, the article contended, by their very nature they do – they cited some example of two parents who wanted to raise their daughter ‘outside of gender obligations’, and so gave her toy trucks when she wanted something to play with – apparently they came into her room at night to find her tucking the trucks into bed and saying, “Shhh… they’re sleeping!”). CEMAT has wireless internet (which is amazing), so I read some articles on CNN and wrote some emails. Finally, when Larry came back to CEMAT around 4:30, he walked around with me a bit to show me the town and took me to the general store, where I bought some much-needed batteries for my camera and the aforementioned dates. Finally, I made my way back to the hotel and read, plus went to speak to one of the Potsdam professors I had seen today to ask about their trip to Carthage (a World Heritage site) and Sidi Bou Saïd, both a short train ride from here. I’m planning on going with them tomorrow, so I have to be up early, which means I’ll go to bed. Night.