long time no blogging

my apologies. i've been terribly busy enjoying myself.

I am back in Palermo now, from where I will be catching a flight to London tomorrow evening, and from London to Toronto to Seattle on Tuesday.

The past 2 weeks in Tunisia have gone by incredibly quickly, and I'm not sure where to begin.

We spent some time in a city near Tunis called Sidi Bou Said, which has a gorgeous beach and is one of the most expensive places to live in the world, which is not surprising because the entire city is picturesque in its white wash with blue doors and accents. All the pictures you see of blue doors in Tunisia come from Sidi Bou Said. I had an awesome sand fight here a few weeks ago with Mike and Alex, the climax being getting an eyeful of sand from Michael, which required I remove my contact into a makeshift case of purfied Marwa water sealed with gaff tape, and then going to play soccer with most of the class and a handful of Tunisian men in my glasses, with sand crusting out of my tearducts.

On our last day in Tunis, Monsieur Moneer threw a bit of a party for us during which the Cacis celebrated a wedding anniversary and I attempted to thwart any unwanted male attention by replacing sexy dancing with a distant cousin of swing.

Next we went to Douz, where we stayed in a 3 star hotel that had multiple pools and Tristan began his filming of creepy yet beautiful footage.

We spent the next night in the Sahara, which I cannot even begin to describe adequately. We weren't very far from town, we could still see their lights at night, but the dunes stretch for miles in all directions and I definitely rolled down some steep sand dunes, and was still removing sand from my hair until a few days ago. We were in the desert for less than 24 hours, so I tried my damndest to stay awake the whole time and was largely successful. There were shooting stars, a sheet lightning storm, and the most perfect crescent moon.

Matthew also captured a scarab which had wandered unknowningly into our camp grounds. He named it Cous Cous. He wanted to taxidermy it, but it escaped off our tour bus several days later. I was pinned as the responsible for wanting to start the Cous Cous Action Rescue Team (CART), but as fate would have it, the little guy was able to rescue himself just fine.

After the Sahara, which we exited via camel (I don't care if they are worth $10,000 each, I don't want one, or three for that matter!) which was interesting, but painful, since Matthew's camel was retarded and kept running into mine and crushing my legs....

We spent three days too many in Djerba, where we became privy to the dark underbelly of tourism, as Noel referred to it, with a pirate cruise to a small island that reeked of Eurotrash and humiliation on both sides of the tourist coin. We also went to a Mexican themed bar and club, La Bamba, where several of us tore up the dance floor.

Next was Kairouan, where we stayed in a hotel with an unfinished third floor and creepy rooms, where Alli, Amber, and I shared a room, and our water stopped working for several hours, only to start again in time for us to return to a flooded room thanks to our bidet.

And then it was Bizerte, another creepy resort-hotel whose heyday was probably at least 10 years ago. They literally had guard dogs, starving ferocious old dogs tied to posts along the outside of the hotel compound, and a dangreous pool area with open sewers and an underground maintenance room which scared the shit out of me.

And then back to Tunis for three days. I observed the first three days of Ramadan, which was great until I decided to have a sip of water and Allah decided to smite me by taking my voice.

Last night 10 of us rode the ferry back from Tunis to Palermo. I stayed up most of the night watching the stars and the sunrise. This morning, due to a stupid customs process, it took us 2 hours to get off the boat from the time of landing.

Alexis, Anna, Toby and I are sharing a room in an old bed and breakfast in Palermo, which has frescos on the ceiling and is gorgeous. I never thought I would be so happy to be in this godforsaken city, but it has cooled down considerably, the piss stench has settled, and no one is trying to buy me.

Phew.

BURN OUT!

I am so exhausted!

Thursday was Matt's birthday, so we headed to a bar, but the guy we'd met in the Medina saw us in the city and tagged along, and it made me uncomfortable, so I had my mint tea and left early. I guess some people went back to the bar lasr night and he joined them again and got super creepy, talking about how he had shared his secrets with Cale and that we all need to go to his house next week. I have already RSVPed: NO F/ING WAY.

We went to Carthage for the museum on Friday (it cost 7 dinars, and in my opinion that was 7 dinars too expensive) and then to Sidi Bou Said. It was entirely a group day, which sort of sucked. When everyone got coffee, Toby and I opted to stay by ourselves and talk rather than get lost in the crowd. But the taxi ride home was a blast. The driver tried to explain a popular Arabic song to Matt in French: I love my mother/the earth is my mother/ I open my eyes for to see her/ donate your eyes to my mother. Then he got started on Michael Jackson and we busted out a little ABC and Jackson 5 for him.

Yesterday we had to get up at six to do a group excursion to Dougga to see the Punis and Roman ruins. Everyone was exhausted and I spent the entire bus ride sleeping, and the excursion parts sleep walking. It was interesting seeing how people live, but yesterday I couldn't have cared less. While most people capped the evening off with a creepy bar experience, I opted to stay back and smoke chicha, aka hookah, which still ended up being a bigger affair than I had hoped. Mike and I ducled out and observed some possibly repressed homosexuality in the alley between a hosteler and one of the guys who works here, and Mike was treated to a massage. After several minutes, I was outnumbered as a female five to one and decided it was time to get my white/blonde self inside.

Today, Angie, Anna, Amber, Ayda and I (wow, that is sooooo many A names; I hadn't realized who my compay was) went to find a hamam (Turkish bath) and spent the morning being scrubbed to the point of injury and having difficulty understanding whether we were breaking social taboos by being there 50 years too young, or if we were being given the American price instead of the real one.

After that, Angie, Anna, Jared, Mike, Ayda and I explored the Medina and had some tea for a few hours. The Medina was super quiet, which was such a relief.

The class is getting a tour of the city from the proprietor of the hostel. I am going to hang back and cook dinner with Eric and Mike, and hopefully learn some secrets of Tunisian cooking.