Well ladies and gents... It has happened finally... Life here in Tunisia has slowed down a bit. Those of y'all on facebook have noticed I'm not posting 40+ pictures each day of the week anymore right?? Haha!! Well, turns out we've actually managed to explore the vast majority of Sidi Bousaid. (The only place I "haven't" been is the very top of the mountain, and I'll make sure that changes this next week.)
Monday morning was really neat. We had a professional calligraphist come in and teach us how to make "pens" قلم out of bamboo reeds. The process supposedly (from cutting the bamboo to using the pen) about four to five months. Pretty crazy stuff!! And he showed us how the different styles are drawn. It's so neat! There are something around five or six different styles, each used from different time periods or for different writing situations. It was a real blast simply writing Arabic with a bamboo reed pen too!! It's fun!!! Anyways, later that day we decided to check out Carrefour, France's version of Walmart. It was nice and all, but it lacked that certain je ne sais pas.... What was it... Oh yeah!! The 'Murican awesomeness! Jokes aside it wasn't too bad... They did make me "bag" my own groceries though... Those sunvaguns...
Carrefour!!!! J'aime beaucoup!!!
What gall!!!
After we returned to the school, I decided it would be good to start running again!! The beautiful thing (amongst many other great things) about Sidi Bousaid is that it provides some pretty awesome places to run. One of these blogs, I'll start a "vlog" of my run, five minutes at a time... It'll be good!! But yeah, it stinks running up 200-something steps and down the Sidi Bousaid hill...
On Tuesday we had professor Redissi come and talk to us about the Arab world and the different mindsets the Arab leadership have had in the past and now. There were a lot of good points made... If I have to write a major thesis paper for political science... I think my future topic will come from our discussions in that lecture. During our lunch break we headed down to Sidi Bousaid's beach to chill out for a little while... I didn't have my swimming shorts so I just stood in the water... Next time I'll bring 'em though! But the beach here is ridiculously nice!! Another reason to become ambassador here in Tunisia, his house is on top of a hill / cliff that is right along the beach / sea and looks out over it... Bam... It's so beautiful here!!
Tuesday was beautiful!!
Beaches here are.... AMAZING!!
My little buddy next to the pizza place I got lunch at...
Wednesday was special though. School went along no big deal, but then Brett approached everybody with the offer to play soccer with his host brother... Before I go further, a little bit of background. The previous night, I stumbled across K'naan's "Wavin' Flag" music video with Nancy Ajram. It's the Middle Eastern version of the semi-official World Cup theme song and I will not lie to y'all... (I was lucky enough to find the video seeing as youtube is blocked here... *sigh*) I was completely hooked! (http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTczMTc2Mjg0.html , it's a Chinese site... But that's all I could get... haha!!) It shows fans from the various Middle Eastern countries getting excited about what I suppose is probably their respective teams scoring... I got so excited for the World Cup. I cannot wait to watch a few games overseas in a country that loves it so much. Inshallah... a few of us will head out to a bar and watch a game or too with the locals... I'll just make sure to avoid the US - Algeria game as that's the team the majority of Tunisians are supporting... haha!! While I may label myself an "international citizen", I still root for my United States of America!! Go Red, White, and Blue!! B.T.H.O. the rest of the world!! Anyways, back to the present, Brett proposed going to play... BAM! I snapped up the chance right away, and after class was done, we all headed our various ways to get ready and met back at "La Marsa" soccer stadium to play. With the World Cup anthem playing in the back of my head, the entire time we ran around playing the sport that will bring the world together in a few days...
The best part of the experience is that these 15 or so year olds were absolutely schooling us most of the time in one on one situations. Brett's host brother for example would probably be lucky to weigh that much more over a hundred pounds... but all I have on this kid was just that... My weight. His finesse with the soccer ball made any of my attempts to steal the ball from him come up empty. But it was so much fun nevertheless!! After about one and a half to two hours straight of playing, we decided to call it quits with the promise that something like this would happen again... VERY soon!
Thursday was a day where not very much happened as well... The only interesting visit was by a drum expert who taught (or in some cases TRIED to teach us... haha!!!) how to play the Arabic drums. It was neat and totally reminded me a lot of Nasrallah trying to teach me before I graduated from high school.... haha!! It was a ton of fun!! Other than that, I just went home and studied for the Arabic test we had the next day and fell asleep while reading... Not a whole lot of interesting eh??
An example of the excitement on Thursday.. Oh my mischevious classmates...
Friday was a bit more interesting. We agreed early on in the day that we would be going out to play soccer after the exam. We took our exam, and stuck around a little longer to hear our plan for the weekend excursion before taking off for some more futbol!!! Same deal, we split up and met back that La Marsa stadium. We got there and got an hour or so of four v four done before tragedy struck! A man approached us and told us the fields were off-limits. As it stands right now, we're still working on finding an alternative... Standby for details!
I got to pose with the Tunisian soccer championship trophy...
Take note of the envy on the guy's face to the right of me... Yeaaahhh boii!!!
I returned back to the school to chill and cool down before doing the downhill / uphill backpack run. there had been a lot of talk all week long about a new group coming in and I finally got to meet a few of 'em. They seemed pretty cool!! Supposedly we'll be seeing a lot of them coming up... They're with the State Department Critical Language program. Anyways, I'm looking forward to this excursion!! It should be a lot of fun!! I'll probably be posting this Monday / Tuesday night, but I'll write this anyways... Y'all have a good weekend!!
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