Bienvenue à Tunis!

My flights both left on time and arrived early. This has been my smoothest international travel venture ever. The flight from Rome to Tunis was unbelievably short. It probably lasted less than an hour in all. As we swooped down over Tunisia I saw beaches covered with sand, mountains, and small towns. The Mediterranean sparkled all around. According to the Tunisian people it is now too cold to go to the beaches. I disagree. It's at least 85° out today, I consider that beach weather and I'm dying to take advantage of them. I was met at the airport by Karim and Laura, the couple from OSU that leads my program. The first thing I remarked was the rather reckless driving style of the Tunisians. Lanes and stop lights are really optional and pedestrians don't seem to have the right of way. I've also never seen more gutsy pedestrians than in this city... they freely walk into oncoming traffic and wait between lanes for an open spot to run through, then look angrily at the cars as if infuriated that they think they have the right to drive in the streets. Yesterday was fairly calm, I spent a majority of the day sleeping in the hotel. At 7:30 I met Laura and Karim for dinner at a restaurant. During the day the restaurants were boarded shut, chairs and tables piled up. People crowded the streets and shopping malls. Karim explained that during Ramadan people have nothing to do so they wander the city and shop to take their minds off their hunger. As we left the hotel for dinner the streets were completely deserted, not a car in sight. Everyone was responding to the call to prayer before digging into their meals. My meal was excellent and cheap. I started with a soup course, then a course of briq, which is a variety of egg roll, then sea food spaghetti followed by a dessert of fruit. After this we went out for tea and baklava. My tea was very sweet and minty with a layer of pine nuts floating on the top.

I'm the first student here, two more will be arriving at 3:30 today and then one more in the middle of the night, the rest come between now and Sunday. On Sunday I'll be moved from my hotel to a host family. Classes start Monday. This morning I walked to Laura and Karim's offices and met with Jihene, a 20 something Tunisian girl who works for Karim's borother but helps with the OSU program doing errands and tutoring and such in the fall. I spoke to her for about a half an hour in French to start getting myself in the habit of using it again and then took off with her to attempt to unblock my old French cell phone. Now I'm in CEMAT (Center for Magreb Studies in Tunis), OSU has a deal with them that allows us to take advantage of their internet and small library. I'll spend the next few days lying low, attempting to adjust to the sleep schedule and eating schedule while getting to know my fellow students.

Every thing is completely different here, I have many more observations to that I can't wait to share.