Out & about in the neighborhood

Since I've been teaching English a bit lately, I've been walking to the houses of my students (some of whom are university professors :P ) and taking some photos of the area.

Some neighborhood houses:

I love this house's garden. I'll try to get a better photo next time, but you can see how much landscaping they do.

I love this one - see the tiling & the minute details that decorate the beige part of the house? And the style of the roof?

And here's an apartment building:

Plus, an ad for the local cell phone provider (you can see the pretty Arabic script) on the side of the bus stop on the main avenue of the neighborhood:

Plus, some innovative advertising for Activia!:

Here are some photos I took while walking back from the house of a little boy I tutor. His mother is a decorator and traveled around Tunisia salvaging tiles from old homes to put in hers. Her house is so beautiful - hopefully I'll get a picture of the actual interior of the house to show you. Here are 2 photos I took on my walk back.

Here's a picture of a hill next to a hospital in their neighborhood. You can see the ads on the sides of apartment buildings in the distance.

And a florist, on the big avenue in the neighborhood across the intersection, at dusk.

Larry's Going-Away Dinner

Last weekend we had a going away dinner for Larry at a restaurant on the top of the hill in Sidi Bou Saïd. Larry was the reason I first came to Tunisia, or at least part of it. He was the director of an American research center from 2006-2009 in downtown Tunis. I was his intern, which meant I worked in the library, fixed his computer (he was minorly computer literate, like many of us), and did some article translation. He was fantastic - the Tunisians loved him and the Americans benefited enormously from his suggestions, his personal contacts, and his knowledge of Tunisia.

Larry first came to Tunisia in the 1960s through the Peace Corps, and has been doing research here ever since. His dissertation, for a PhD in Anthropology at the University of California - Berkeley, won second place at the Annual Meeting of the Middle Eastern Studies Association, right after uber-famous & respected scholar Lila Abu-Lughod. Larry has spent the rest of his life doing interesting stuff - heading a center for Middle Eastern Studies, teaching on the Semester at Sea program (where he gave a cultural anthropology talk on eating - "if you think about it, it's really weird - we are creatures that put things in our mouth and smash them with our teach!" - that made South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu fall on the ground laughing), and being paid to take other cruises with his wife on which he gave talks on the parts of the Middle East or North Africa that they visited.

Here's some of the tasty food we ate:

Several different type of Tunisian salad:

And Jessica's amazing stuffed Calamari:

Then we also amused ourselves by stacking glasses, which the waiters participated in:

After dinner, we went (sans Larry), to Plaza, the only "bar" in Tunis - a real "bar" because you can just order alcohol there, since it is also a "hotel" (not sure how many people actually stay there). It's pretty funny, though, since it has indoor and outdoor seating decorated with strings of lights, pink flamingos, classical statues, etc.

We found a table in the midst of a very crowded patio:

And to keep warm, they have little pits of barely burning coal in between the tables:

Some Happiness Necessary

Makia's Luteeaa

Here are some of the pictures I have yet to publish. Just to get your appetites working.

Here are a few pictures from the wedding of my friend, who lives in the countryside outside of Kélibia, in the NE part of the Tunisia. She comes from a family of farmers, but studied English in college. She just got married to a Car Mechanic from her hometown, and her wedding was beautiful. Her Luteeaa - the woman's party the night before the wedding - was the most fun Luteeaa I have ever been to. They played Arabic music and British, French, and American music. They even played the Macarena. Everyone watched my friend Christen and me to see how we would dance. We still remembered how to do the macarena.

Makia, her mom on the right, and some of her aunts.

Makia on her throne, at her Luteeaa. lots of fun.

Internet & other such trivialities

You don't know what you've got until it's gone.

And the internet is gone, again. I am currently at the office of the language school I teach for occasionally, sitting in a side room with a big glass table, 2 windows, and shelves full of teaching materials (the shelves have white doors though, so the room seems quite in order).

Applying for college online is not as easy when the internet isn't working. Only one of my schools though is asking for the application before January - UVA. I'm almost finished with that online app.

Last night, our friend Jeber came over for Thai food, and again, it doesn't top Thai Namptip but it sure is tasty. The night before I had French class and then met Jessica at a café called "Le Montmatre" - a reference to the big hill in Paris's 18th arrondissement (neighborhood) where the Basilica of the Sacré Coeur (Sacred Heart) is found, and where lots of artists from Van Gogh to Monet to Salvador Dalí used to work. There is another church on the hill, called Saint Pierre de Montmartre, where the Jesuits were allegedly founded - responsible for my post-secondary education thus far!

In any case, this café is nice but expensive. I had a banana and date "cocktail," pretty much like a smoothie. Cocktails means juice cocktails almost everywhere, and only certain restaurants with licenses can sell alcohol (these restaurants are mostly concentrated downtown and in the Northern Suburbs, where lots of expats live).

Today, I'm having lunch at a Lebanese restaurant a short walk from our house with a friend who works for some version of International Planned Parenthood - in Tunis (she's worked all over Africa and Eastern Europe before this). Then I'm tutoring a bit. Tonight, Jess's friend - she has friends in the art world here since she is an artists and art historian! - is having an opening at her gallery downtown. We are both going to that, and then we are headed to another Fulbrighter's house for a potluck dinner. I will be doing work tomorrow and this weekend, though, no worries.

Waiting for the bus

I was in Ennasr today, a part of Tunis that is like, they say, L.A.

This is true in a sense - Ennasr is mostly a long, wide avenue lined with shops and cafés and restaurants (in fact, the delicious Thai restaurant we go to sometimes is there. Almost as good as Thai Namtip, though not quite!). Ennasr has a delicious bread shop (the best I've found so far in Tunis, with special thick breads, made with whole wheat, pretty much like gourmet breads you find elsewhere); several ice cream shops (including one owned by some Italians with probably the best gelato I've ever had); boutique-y store (pricey); specialty stores (pet accessories!); and restaurants from Crêperies to French food to Tunisian fast food to an imitation KFC-looking place ("Southern Fried Chicken" it's called - we haven't tried it but it's on our list, though definitely NOT real KFC - not that KFC is real :P - since no American chains exist in Tunisia).

What I find most puzzling about Ennasr is that they even have some restaurants that look like they belong in the touristy sections of less developed cities in the South of Tunisia.

There is one restaurant called "Tuareg" - which refers to the Berber (original inhabitants of North Africa) Nomadic (moving from one place to another, often here in a relatively set path & according to the seasons) Pastoralists (they raise animals, and so move in part to find good places for them to graze!). There are some such nomadic pastoralists in the South of Tunisia - I met one once while in Douz (South of Tunisia, the "gateway to the Sahara desert") with my mom & Penny. The man I met told me that he and his family stayed in a home near the site where we were and harvested dates for half of the year, while they traveled during the second half with their animals. The local school system was organized, he said, to accommodate this.

Tuaregs are mostly found today in West Africa & in North Africa in Algeria and Libya only. But Tuaregs have been super romanticized, especially by Orientalists (for an explanation of Orientalists - super interesting - see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism - especially the part about Edward Saïd!). So it's kind of funny that this restaurant exists in a part of Tunis pretty much populated by upwardly-mobile, often fashionable, and often young Tunisians. It is part evidence of the power of Orientalism in shaping the minds of the Orientalized (Joseph Massad's book "Desiring Arabs" is great for this), and it's evidence, as Susan Ossman writes in her book about beauty salons, "Three Faces of Beauty," that symbols that originally had other meanings (such as the harkous I got on my ankle - see below!) can change meaning when people appropriate them and use them in their own way, without knowledge necessarily of the original intent.

Anyway, so I should also mention that there is TONS of traffic in Ennasr. And so I wanted one hour for a bus to come - and it never came. I walked about 15 minutes up a hill and came to another bus stop, where I found, 15 minutes later, another bus which I then took downtown. Woo. It was quite an exhausting trip and I was quite late for my French class, but no matter. Sometimes I do indulge in taxis.

One last note before I go to bed: Today, I was filling out grad applications online. As I was going through editing one of the applications, I read the "religious affiliation" section on page 2. There was an apologetic box that offered to let applicants write in their own faith if they had not found theirs listed in the drop-down box above. In that space, I found written: "Laura Thompson." Thank God I found that. Apparently the application was automatically inserting my name into various blank boxes.

	:)

Halloween in Tunis

Hope everyone had a nice Halloween!

On Friday, Jessica and I had a small party with lots of candy (reese's cups, M&Ms, candy corn, snickers) that I had brought back from the US. The other Fulbrighters came over, as did some people that we did not know who are also studying Arabic in Tunis.

Here are some of the costumes:

Jessica (Austrian Alpine Maiden), Me (Eve), and Ruth (Furbie)

[We found all of these costumes in Tunis! I did sew the leaves on my "gown," which I think is actually pajamas. Jess and Ruth found their costumes in this side shop outside of a flea market in downtown Tunis.]

Since my costume is Eve, here are a few interesting facts about Eve. In the Judeo-Christian story, Eve is tempted by the serpent, eats of the fruit, and gives it to her husband. Eve thus bears the blame for their banishment from paradise, and popular culture has transformed this blame into nefarious ideas about women in various areas of life. Still some theologians have argued for Eve, saying that she first sinned due to deception, and that she then admitted her sin to God and repented. Adam did not, and so these theologians argue that his sin was more serious.

The Qur'an tells the same story of Adam & Eve, though with some important differences. Namely, Eve is *not* held responsible for the downfall of man; instead, both Adam & Eve are jointly held responsible. Also, the concept of "original sin" does not exist since God forgives Adam & Eve, repentant after they are banished.

A lot of people make a big deal about original sin - the notion that we are born sinful and need divine redemption - calling it backwards, stifling, dipping with guilt and self-disdain. All of this could very well be true; but as one of my very smart friends, Katie, a Catholic, says, Christianity in this sense recognizes how difficult our struggle between good and evil is, and how God offers us the redemption that we, struggling, cannot quite reach ourselves.

Here are Jess & Ruth & I with some other friends.

And a few others:

[In this picture, a panda, a "cougar," and a British guy who didn't have a costume :P]

******************

On Saturday, I taught a small group of women English. They are all very well traveled and well-educated, so they are quite interesting to teach. Our meetings are mostly just conversation-based, so we talk about a wide range of topics; this time, we talked about holidays! Surprisingly, many of them grew up celebrating Christmas, though they are Muslim (Jesus is a prophet, like Moses or Abraham, in Islam, but is not the Messiah). Quite a few of them have lovely memories of leaving their shoes out on Christmas Eve, to find them the next morning filled with chocolates. They have a great appreciation for many of our traditions, and we would probably have a great appreciation for theirs if we understood them better (I, for one, really enjoy the prayers, sometimes chants, held at the mosque during Ramadan, which you can hear over the loud speakers).

On Saturday night, Jess & I went with three other friends to the American Embassy, where the Marines were holding a Halloween party. The Marines (the soldiers who defend American Embassies worldwide) have happy hours every weekend and make a decent amount of money from this, which I think sponsors their yearly balls & some trips that they make from time to time. The party was fun, filled with Tunisians, though the music could have been better (too much 1980s French music when all we wanted to hear was "Twist & Shout" & Pokerface :P).

I dressed as a tiger/leopard (same costume for the last 5 years!), Jess as an Alpine Maiden, and Ruth as a stereotype of a Native American Indian.

Here are some pictures:

[Ruth, Melissa, & Audrey at the Marine's House]

[Probably my favorite picture of the evening. Jesus, an ESL teacher, was a figment of your imagination. Zac, a former Fulbrighter now working at a bank in Tunis, is a Mormon on mission.]

I had pretty great shoes, too:

Our Tunisian friend, Jeber, is actually a veterinarian. And there was no cat in his carrier, though he pretended like there was....

I still have some candy corn & a few reese's cups left, thank God, but if anyone wants to save any candy for me (Michael!!!!!!) I would happily accept it :P

Drawing Classes

I am currently taking drawing classes 2 days a week at the cultural center by my house. I was a total beginner when I started and still am pretty much. The classes are great though, and I'm learning some really interesting stuff about perspective. The professor draws on a sheet on the board and we copy onto our own papers; I really like this approach (probably since I'm a visual learner :P). The professor speaks mostly in Tunisian Arabic, with some French words and phrases thrown in, so it's also a language class for me :P.

All of my fellow students are women, most of them in their late 20s, 30s and 40s, including one of my friends, Jihen. She is much more talented than me, though.

Here are 2 examples of some perspective work we've done. The sketch of the medina is super typical in Tunisian art.

Cardea

Here is an adorable picture of Cardea (doesn't she look so much healthier than she did when she first arrived? - see earlier postings!):

Movie shoot

In the middle of last week (in the midst of preparing for my GREs!), I participated in a film shoot (see a picture of me on the incredible set above!). My friend Christen, a fellow Fulbrighter, had heard about a French film crew who were recruiting "European looking" people to play French extras in a film.

I didn't know anything about the film, and I was really pleasantly surprised to find out that the film is in fact the sequel to the 2006 French film "Indigènes" (which translates as "Natives"), which was quite popular and controversial in France. The film looks at Algerians (at the time colonized by the French) who fought on the side of the French in WWII and were decisive for a number of victories. These were men who had largely never seen France, though their education has taught them to think of France as the "motherland."

This was blatant colonial propaganda that touted France as the epitome of civilization, while France simultaneously instituted land policies that enormously favored white French citizens while impoverishing "Arab" Algerians. The film itself shows the racist treatment Algerian soldiers endured in the French army, even while they were fighting side by side with white European Frenchmen.

As regards the treatment of the Algerian (and other African soldiers), here is an excerpt from the Wiki article on the film:

"The discrimination by the French authorities against these soldiers continued as successive French governments froze the war pensions of these indigenous veterans when their countries became independent. It was only after the film's release that the government policy was changed to bring foreign combatant pensions into line with what French veterans are paid.^[3] The closing credits of the film state that, despite the ruling that war pensions should be paid in full, successive French administrations since 2002 have not paid anything to its former colonial soldiers."

So the film, in fact, helped to illuminate some serious and very recent injustices. So I was really proud to play a role in the sequel. And I think I will actually be in a scene!! (See photo below)

I also had a lot of fun taking pictures on the set with the other extras, many of whom were Tunisian (like the girl above!).

We also got our hair and makeup done:

Happy Birthday!!

My birthday started with church at the 10 AM French-language mass, where the priest is Palestinian and the church-goers largely from West Africa. The music is always really beautiful & the priest gives great sermons - sweeping philosophical ideas about the nature of Christianity, how it is different from other world religions, & why.

Then I taxied it back home, and went next store to the little hair dresser's right next to our house and had my hair cut. I felt like a little bit of a change, & they had suggested a new "look" (which included some type of bangs) they had in mind. I visit with the owner & her assistant & chat with them sometimes, and will probably interview some of her clients for my research, so for that reason I can't get my hair cut anywhere else! So I crossed my fingers and hoped that the "new look" they wanted to give me would be nice & not too crazily Farah Fawcett-ish (which looked nice when it was in style! - ex http://jeffpearlman.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/farrah_fawcett.jpg).

They also plucked my eyebrows & then took a dark eyebrow pencil to them. Here's the result:

I have to say they did a pretty nice job, though the eyebrow pencil was a bit dark for my taste.

Looking like a Tunisian movie star, Jessica & I both went to the big French-owned superstore Carrefour and got everything from cat litter to all of the necessary ingredients for dinner. Our menu was: chicken, corn bread, mashed potatoes, and baked macaroni and cheese. Jess made a delicious mac and cheese, while I made the corn bread and the mashed potatoes and we bough rotisserie chicken. Though the mashed potatoes were delicious, I had to be a bit spontaneous with the corn bread recipe as we had run out of eggs. I put in a banana instead, which should have tasted fine, except for the fact that I also substituted normal flour for self-rising. I'm thinking now that it probably would have been smart to add extra baking powder, because the corn bread indeed did not rise & instead was a pretty flat, gooey, banana-y biscuit.

Dinner was still delicious, & we had a handful of guests to share it with us.

One of the other Fulbrighters, Ruth, brought some Ratatouille (which, mom, she did confirm is more delicious if you roast the vegetables first!). We feasted and had lots of drinks (wine, bad Tunisian beer, strawberry juice, citronnade)

and for dessert we had baklawa (which is baklava -which is apparently a pastry spread in the Ottoman empire-pronounced Tunisian style) and homs, which is just smashed chick peas mixed with oil and sugar and is definitely my favorite Tunisian pastry (I'm already planning on bringing some home for Christmas, no worries). (And yes, those plates do say "Joyeux anniversaire," "Happy Birthday" in French - we found them at Carrefour).

I also got presents, though I was definitely not expecting them! Other than the wishes I got in my email and the presents before I left, here are some pictures of gifts I come in Tunis.

Larry, the former director of the research center in Tunis where I interned 2.5 years ago(!), gave me a plate he bought at a pottery fair in downtown Tunis.

I also got a decoration to add to my Halloween collection (it's nice to have a festive house!):

(You can also see my earrings in this pictures, which were a gift from my friend Melissa from Guinea).

Finally, Jaber, a veterinary student in Tunis (who spent his summer in the US), brought me some really nice flowers from his friend's shop.

And finally, Ruth, the Fulbrighter who brought ratatouille, is also an artist (and has a degree in art from the American University in Cairo, Egypt). Here is a picture of her with the cat:

and of the inside of her card for me!

Mongolian Concert

Tonight I went to a Mongolian concert in the northern suburbs, along the Mediterranean, at the beautiful Center of Arabic & Mediterranean Music, formerly the house of Baron d'Erlanger.

Baron d'Erlanger was a French painter & musicologist who specialized in Arabic music. He was instrumental in helping revive Tunisian ma'luf music & helped set up the 1932 Cairo Congress of Arab Music. Aside from helping foster and develop Arabic music, he also lived in a gorgeous palace in the town of Sidi Bou Saïd, outside of Tunis & named for a Sufi saint.

Mongolian music is famous for its overtone singing, also called throat singing. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtone_singing) One of my teachers at Georgetown taught my choral class how to do this - it involves opening your mouth and throat very widely and singing one note until the sound resembles a flute or some other type of woodwind instrument.

Here is an example:

Sorry for the camera work, by the way, I was trying not to obstruct my neighbors' view. :)

And here is a beautiful one:

Nobel Peace Price 2009: in Norwegian, "Nobels fredspris"

I just heard on AlJazeera English & the BBC that Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Wow! I feel really proud. And he gets to go to Oslo. I love Oslo. Here's a picture of the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo (with my friend Katie in the foreground)t:

And a picture of a poster about civilians killed in Gaza over Christmas time 2008 and New Year's 2009:

And just because it is such a beautiful country, a few more pictures of Norway:

OSLO:

A troll in a mall in downtown Oslo (the Norwegians have great troll lore, and looking at the countryside, you can see why in Bergen pictures!):

And the amazing Vigeland Sculpture Park in Oslo, constructed in 1920s/1930s:

And finally a Viking Museum in Oslo, actually really cool (I was so inspired I bought a book "Queen Emma & the Vikings" by Harriet O'Brien, one of the most well-written books I have ever read):

Some pictures on a train from Oslo to Bergen, on the West Coast:

And a few from Bergen, Norway: