Night in Tunisia

sun and the streets

Well, we are rapidly coming up to the two month mark in Tunisia, and time as always to take stock of what's going on.

We are in Tunisia. We actually made it out of our comfortable Canada. We speak one of the major languages here, but the primary language, an Arabic dialect particular to Tunisia and its history of takeovers and cultural blending, is totally foreign. We are taking lessons to remedy that situation, however.

We have a house that is ever so slowly turning into a home. We are getting furniture made to fit it, we have art slowly creeping onto the walls and we are settling in. We like it. It's not perfect - it's small, it's hard to get around from Nasr, the house is a little cruddy, but it'll do. We are making it better and better as we live in it and build it up to something more.

We have jobs, both of us do, which is good because Tiara's job isn't the most lucrative. It IS in her field of passionate interest, however, and that for the first time. For myself, the job is introducing me to quite the sphere of tunisians. Most of the class takers are of the upper crust, which means that they're educated and interested in the world abroad as well as at home. I've met journalists, politicos, judges, students, accountants, business types... the whole gamut. And I've had more than a few interesting invitations - for after the course has been taught. Canadian ethics even approve.

We've bumped over the hump. It was kind of like today as I was walking home from the gym, collected some music "enregistrements" from the big store, and was heading down to grab our daily bread. It was raining huge tropical drops, the wind was significant if not howling. I went in for bread to the boulangerie. As I emerged, so did the sun. The temperature climbed with every passing moment, from a cool 10 or 12 degrees to the mid-teens, the clouds dropped away to reveal an incredibly blue sky. We're home. Maybe not forever, but for a little while at least.

posted by Loren @ 9:54 a.m.