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:

Sickness

So finally, after almost 1 & a half weeks of on and off illness, I am finally feeling much much better, thanks in part to Cipro!

I first starting having all the signs of an intestinal bug when I was in Kélibia the weekend of Sept 26th-27th. That was pretty bad, especially since I had to take an almost 2 hour public taxi back to Tunis and then another cab back to my house, but I survived.

And then, I got better.

Jess, my roommate, came back to Tunis the following Wed (Sept 30), and our friend Zach went with me to the airport (in his friend's truck!) to pick her up. I was so happy to have her back! Even though Cardea (Adonia Thiyya) does provide some needed company, Jessica is much better. She took us out to a really delicious pizzeria in Ennasr to celebrate, and we had 2 really tasty salads and a huge thick crust vegetarian pizza.

Then, the next night I woke up with a fever, Zach was so sick he couldn't make it into work, and we were all afraid to leave the house, for obvious reasons. I had to go down to see a doctor about the harkous allergic reaction [see previous post], and the dermatologist was a really sweet woman who gave me cortisone cream. I told her ab the infection and she sent me down the hall to, guess who?, her brother, a general practitioner. He determined that I definitely had some type of bacteria messing with my GI system and gave me some antibiotic my mom had never heard of - Norvix.

And, to make a long story short and relieve some of your suspense - the antibiotic didn't work! At all! I was still feeling terrible on Monday, which was the day after I finished the 3 day dosage.

So, as any student of medicine educated in science 101 classes, wikipedia, webMD and yahoo answers, I decided that I must have had a virus and just had to wait it out. Thank God Jessica convinced me to take the Cipro yesterday.

Meanwhile, I was taking Benadryl to help me sleep, since I was having trouble falling asleep, and due to the bacteria and/or benadryl, I had a terrible side effect: pretty intense restlessness!

This meant that while I was dead tired, I couldn't stop moving. At once point I was jumping up and down trying to get this "energy" out of me, despite the fact that all I wanted to do was sleep for 2 days. It was a terrible feeling. So, go easy on the benadryl.

Now that I'm feeling better, I'm getting stuff done: bought my ticket to come home, gave the cat a bath, did laundry. And now I'm going to try to go for a walk, pick up a check, and study for the GREs - which are rapidly approaching!!

I did lost practically an entire week of research, so I have lots of catching up to do. And it starts right now.