Tunisian Routine

Week 4. The honeymoon is over. Sort of.

Time evaporates here. Even more so now that I've started teaching. In fact I'd be hard pressed to tell you what I've done since my last email. I've met a lot of people at Andreas' (Austrian roomate's) cafe (I have probably spent about half of my life in Tunis in this cafe. I love it. And the coffee seems to be getting cheaper and cheaper...). I've gotten lost in the Medina. I've spent days looking for a cheap CD player. I've learned a handful of Arabic words. I've been to the beach. I've observed a lot of classes. I've eaten so much couscous I feel like it should be bubbling out of my pores.

Last Friday I started teaching English, so I've had to cut back to only a few hours a day at the cafe. Fortunately I like my students, because otherwise I'm afraid would resent them terribly for putting an end to my decadent month-long extended vacation (mid May to mid June). Of course before I started work I heard all kinds of horror stories about students biting each other and throwing things, rich and obnoxious parents going postal, etc. etc., and I was visualizing a return to my life in Corsica. But so far my classes have been dreamy. The 13-17 year olds laugh at my bad jokes, and the 11-13 year olds are soft and cherubic. How much can they change in the course of a 3 week class? Ask me in 3 weeks.

I haven't quite figured out my routine here, but for the moment it goes something like this:

The sound of Andreas' alarm clock wakes me around 5:30. I have no idea how Ryan sleeps through it. It's piercing and fills the whole apartment. Andreas snoozes until...11 or so. Then (every morning) I wonder if it would really be too scandalous to go to the store and buy bread in my pyjamas. Every morning I convince myself to get dressed first, which includes ironing before breakfast, which I think should be illegal. We live on a hill overlooking the city, so on the way back from the store there is a view of Tunis wrapped in its sunrise-pink blanket of pollution, and I think to myself, 'how lovely. I think it was a good idea to move here,' or else, 'Whose life is this?' Then I go home, eat, finish planning my lessons and mosey over to the highway to hail a cab. Hailing a cab on a highway is hilarious. Also the fact that there are always people playing Frogger with their lives to cross the highway. I am surprised that there are not guts splattered over half the road and most of the cars. And then the Yellow Bus goes by, so packed with people that they are hanging on to the doorframe with one hand and the rest of them is dangling out over the highway. I seem much more concerned about this than anyone else. They will make it into town Insh'Allah. If Allah wills it.

Then I go to work, I teach for 5 hours, and am done by 1:30. Then I go into town and do errands. (Most of the time I don't actually do this, but I always mean to. Usually, the gravitational pull of the cafe is too strong for me. So I go there and 'Lesson Plan'. I plan my next mint tea, or smoothie, or I plan what music they will play next.) Then I go home for dinner, wondering why nothing on my list is done and saying 'roadwa insh'Allah'. Which is Arabic for mañana, mañana. After dinner it's time to go back to the cafe, or walk around downtown, and then suddenly it's midnight and time to catch a cab home.

This routine is of course punctuated by fun events. For example, one day last week one of the 4 dozen mangy cats in the neighborhood jumped in one of our windows and peed in my bed. Another time Ryan and I went to a gallery run by a retired military attache whose forehead occasionally furrowed into a perfect heart shape. He's looking forward to showing Ryan's work, which Ryan thinks is funny considering he's never seen it. Being from New York carries a ridiculous amount of weight here.

And now, I think it's high time to go back to the cafe.

Bislemeh, baby.