Night in Tunisia

The woman who stole Loren's infamous information

Actually, Tiara didn't steal those photos of my lovely shower curtain and sumptuous breakfast... water. In fact, I sent those, from her computer. It assumed that I was her, even though I had told it otherwise... *sigh*

In other news, work is beginning for me in honest 'round here. Also, the concrete table tops look as though they are not going to happen... which leaves me to try and figure out what exactly I'm going to do with the loads of tiles. Thoughts? Send them my way post-haste!

Further news, we're not yet fully financially sustainable, but we're looking into buying a car on credit. The numbers may yet work in our favour. Would you believe we're paying around 200 Dinars a month on transportation - to say nothing of the opportunity cost involved in the time in transit and waiting for cabs. Plus, it would make zipping around the country over the summer - seeing the Jazz Festival, collecting art supplies, going to the beach - oh so much easier. And repairs here are relatively cheap. Labour costs next to nothing. Thoughts, oh so many thoughts!

And as an addendum to that last little note, financial stability should come soon enough. Every extra class that I take on gives me a little more pocket change - and more than half of what Tiara makes in any given month. Yay! Now I just need the classes.

But before I bore you with the banalities of it all, let's throw in a dash of what we did today. Over lunch hour and a half (it's expected that you need all that time to chew and digest... I'm not really sure what. A cow, perhaps? An hour and a half is a looonng time for lunch. Tiara's thrilled because it means that she gets the priveledge of coming home after six at night), Tiara and I set out into Ettadhamen and just strolled. Seems that strolling is not the kind of thing that people do here in Tunisia, but we don't mind bucking the norm. We wandered around pushed-up concrete, washed out curbs, in the streets, around double-parked beaters of cars (on the highway) in and around a traffic circle of insanity (fully loaded with police whistles trying to organize the chaos), and down the highway for a ways. We passed a glass cutter, two butchers' shops (replete with sheep skins bleeding dry and hanging headside down from the awnings), a few little eateries, a concrete mould pouring place, about six fruit stands, a gravure de disk shop (they burn cd's - this place was music), a school supplies place and a door-maker's paddock... there was more, but I can't quite place it all.

We bought some fabulous oranges - douce (sweet with no sour tang) and Thompson (nice balance of sweet and sour), some beautiful dates and wandered back to the courtyard of Tiara's work. There we sat with our Coca and Boga Light, basked in the sun that was quickly shifting to clouds, and chatted over a cup of "green tea"- the sweetened without kick-ass bitter aftertaste tea.

A good time was had by all. Further comments, as always, will be forthcoming...

posted by Loren @ 3:18 p.m.