Moving In

I'm currently sitting on the couch in the living room of my new host mother, using her next door neighbor's wifi. I'm seriously happy that I'm online again.

Last night I was told that I'd be moving in with a married couple with no children. The father is a jeweler and the wife is a pastry chef. Then, this morning I was told that the pastry chef had too many orders and was completely overwhelmed. She could no longer take me on in addition to her work. So, here I am, staying with two other girls in my program at the home of a widow with four married sons (none of which live at home). Her neighbor is a Chemistry professor at a university in Bizerte and somehow got in touch with my program, telling them that her neighbor had a nearly empty apartment and needed a few girls to mother. I'll only be here a few weeks until a new host family can be set up. Apparently there were a few families willing to take people on after Ramadan. Souad is very sweet and eager. She has set about the business of spoiling us rotten. Also, much to our astonishment, she brought us drinks and snacks this afternoon. Souad explained to me that she doesn't follow Ramadan because she takes medication. In that case, my roommates and won't be following it anymore either.

The main issue with my current situation is language. My two roommates are both taking Arabic. They've only taken it for a year, so they can't understand it or communicate well with it yet. Honestly, I can communicate more easily than anyone in the program. Not everyone speaks French, but most do or at least understand it and I haven't found it difficult to be understood. Actually, on the train ride back from a day at La Marsa (spent floating happily in the Meditteranean) a group of boys thought I was French because of my accent when I spoke to them. Our host mother understands French but speaks it worse than I do. This makes for an interesting situation. She speaks to me in French and I translate it for the other girls. She tries to speak to them in Arabic and teach them some words, but they can't really understand her. Me being here is making it harder for them to find ways to communicate with her.