TUNISIA!!!!

Bonjour et أهلاً!!

I am in Tunis, Tunisia as I write this with a month-long study abroad program for Arabic. So far... I've been here for four days and in the words of a great friend of mine... The experience so far has been... NUMBAA OOONNNEE!!!! haha... I've been meaning to write one of these for each of the days we've been here, but unfortunately, due to my never leaving for a trip without forgetting SOMETHING.... I forgot to bring my card reader for my camera's SD chip/card/memory device thingy. Oooooohhh miter saw... as my cousins and I say. Anyways, it took me two days to figure out how to get them from my camera to my computer, and it involves my plugging my card into a friend's computer, and then my putting them on a jumpdrive, and then from there on here... *Sigh* it isn't the fastest way, but until I find a card reader... It'll do. :D And then the day before yesterday I was without internet for a long enough time period to write something here, and finally, yesterday, I was lazy / having too much fun outside... Sorry y'all... :D

Anyways, here I am, and I'm making a promise, I will have a blog entry at LEAST 4 times a week starting next week. The reason I say 4 days? The next 2-3 weekends will be spent somewhere without internet (to the best of my knowledge, who knows, there may be internet....) ie. away from my host family and in the northern and southern parts of Tunisia. So we'll and it gives me a miss on a weekday, because things can get pretty hectic here. Anyways... Y'all ain't here to hear me rambling on about this stuff.. You want to see / hear about Tunisia... Well, okay then... Sit back and enjoy, get comfortable because this one covers 5 days....

Day 0: The trip to Paris

I'm finishing my packing back in Houston. The entire time I'm packing I'm getting pre-trip-itus, or the "I really don't want to be going on this trip when I can be staying here enjoying lounging around doing nothing" that comes before every adventure I take. Why you ask?? I have no idea... Especially since I've been complaining to my friends around the world that I've been wanting an adventure... Well, luckily for me, I get to Hobby Airport, see some of the Corps people going on the ROTC trip to Egypt and Morocco, and the pre-trip-itus melts away. Good deal! So after chilling waiting for our flight for about an hour or so, we board Air France flight 693 to ma favori ville... Paris, France!!!

Oh Air France.... Je t'aime!!

I had an aisle seat, and thank heavens I did, because I have forgotten how cramped those AF (Air France from now on) seats can be back in coach. But hey, no biggie. My wealth of traveling experience reminded me that you can put all of your bags overhead (yeah, I had two, one big and another small... But regardless, I was THAT guy who takes up about half of an overhead bin... I know, forgive me... :D ) which then allows me to stretch my legs out under the seat in front of me... It worked for the most part, but I still walked off that plane cramped... Ugh... BUT!! I managed to watch Avatar which up to this point, I thought it was kinda sad people were depressed "their worlds" weren't as cool. Well, I won't say I'm unhappy with how my life is going right now, but boy, that movie WAS something else!! Very good!! But I hope they don't try to make a sequel off of it. The ending provided you a perfect opening to imagine what happened to Jake and all of the rest of the "Na'vi" as they are called... I enjoyed it greatly!!! After that, I was brought back to good ol' Earth by the movie Invictus. I also thought it was an amazing movie, and I found myself wondering what this world would be like if all of our leaders were like President Mandela... What an exceptional character he is. Throughout the movie there were clips of rugby, and that made it that much better.... Not to mention it made me wish I could play rugby again... Dawggone Corps of Cadets... It just keeps me too busy. Well, after that I feel asleep for the last four hours of my flight... Day 0 ends here.

Day 1: Paris and beyond.

I'm not gonna lie y'all, I really wish I had more to say about the beautiful city of Paris, but unfortunately I don't... I feel like there is something in my heart that calls me to return and explore Paris a little more on my own.... I have no idea what or why, but I think it has to do with relearning / re-enjoying speaking it in Haiti. I WANT to go back for a few days...... Maybe during that crazy world-spanning trip I plan to do sometime after college with the "A-team" of friends I've made during all of my travels... We'll see... But anyways, back to the trip. I wake up and there are only a few minutes before we land in Paris. I struggle to wake myself up and step off the plane into what is one of my favorite airports (largely due to the sheer amount of time I've spent in it), Charles de Gaulle Aéroport. Much MUCH to my disappointment, instead of being greeted by the huge terminals with all the cool restaurants and shops, the flight to Tunisia was in what I remember to be the "F" terminal... It was tiny with very little variety of restaurants and shops, etc. and I didn't get a good chance to practice any of my French... MAJOR bummer. But I catch up with Travis and Brett, two guys who flew over from Houston to Paris on the same flight, and I chill with them for about half an hour before their flight left for Tunis. I was on the next flight, and just sat around reading a book until I got to board. AF flight 2584 takes off from Paris, and I'm dead asleep. Unfortunately for me, I found a kiosk in the airport that allows you to change your seat. So immediately I try my hardest to get an exit row, and miss my guess by one row... So I'm stuck with a similar situation as the one mentioned earlier with the flight over but no biggie, I sleep through the entire flight and wake-up just before landing. I have arrived in Tunisia and c'est super chouette!!! I get off the flight, get my bags, get some of the money I have changed. Around $60 worth, and the funny thing is that after four days of being here (buying everything I need / lunch x 4), I haven't used more than 35 dinars. (1.48 dinars to a dollar... Do the math... It's insanely cheap here!!) Anyways... Before I jump all over the place chronologically, I meet up with Brett and Travis after passing immigration. We chill around for a bit waiting for Luis, one of the guys on our trip who supposedly was on my flight... Minutes pass, he doesn't show. Our guide shows up, he's still not past immigration. The next flight of European tourists arrives, no Luis. So Travis and I go looking for him around the airport and finally, I use French to convince one of the immigration guards to let me go BACK inside to look for him... Now I'm really excited... My first French speaking experience and I do something anyone in a Western European airport should NEVER be able to do... Anyways I beeline straight for the lost baggage counter and BAM! there he is... So we leave Luis to wait for the next flight (which DID have his bag on it...) and the three of us take off for our hotel. Now, my family and I have been to Tunisia before, but it was a very very long time ago, and I'm much older now. So I'm excited about being here. Not to mention that instead of being here for tourism purposes (unlike what my immigration paper said, as there was no place to put "Student" on it), I was here to help learn a new language... Arabic. On the way to the hotel I made a pact with myself. I was only allowed to speak French in emergencies, when talking to cute French ladies, and when I simply just didn't know how to say something in Arabic. So far, it's been going pretty good... I've been using probably a little too much French, but my Arabic has been improving noticeably since I'm forced to use it more!! Nothing special happens during the drive over, both Brett and Travis fall asleep and I successfully I.D. a singer on the radio as Cheb Mami, much to our guide's amazement. My initial assessment of Tunisia was that it was very modernized in comparison to many of the "Arab" / "Middle Eastern" countries I have been to the past couple of years. It was a lot alike Egypt (Cairo at least) where there are police almost every 300 or so meters, but unlike in Egypt where instead of police it was troops lining the roads every so often, I felt like these guys were doing the typical police job, much alike that back in the States, and before I knew it, I didn't even notice them here. Other than that, the only other two things I noticed on the way to the Phebus Hotel was that the American Embassy was HUGE (Oorah!) and that traffic conforms to the EXACT same norms here as they do in Doha, especially so in certain places... Traffic lights are a suggestion, stop signs slow drivers down... barely, and that driving usually involves very close calls VERY frequently. So we arrive at the four star hotel Phebus...

Our humble abode for the first night....

Now, there isn't much to this hotel. There is a pretty nice pool and access to the beach, but forgot to mention earlier that it had rained, and pretty hard, earlier and therefore both were not really all that attractive at the time... not to mention it was getting late and was actually pretty chilly. So Travis, Brett and I made our way downstairs where we had our first experience with Tunisian food. For me it wasn't the best experience, but the reason behind that is completely my fault. Ladies and gentlemen, I like to think I'm the ultimate world traveler after doing so for the vast majority of my life, but unfortunately, I'm very VERY scared to try out new foods. This unfortunately, is because of my allergy to tree nuts... otherwise I could go absolutely crazy and try everything... But as it stood, I ate bread, and something that was almost a curry in it's consistency and taste with a bunch of rice. Nevertheless, it didn't fill me up all that much, and I was yearning for breakfast the next morning. Afterwards, we said howdy to a few fellow study abroad-ers who were just arriving from the airport and took the elevator back up to our room where we just chilled until we fell asleep.

To be continued...

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