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.