Day 5, January 8

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Today we had classes for the first time. Half of us are taking Upper Intermediate Arabic, and half are taking Art History. All of us take Contemporary North Africa, which mostly consists of the trips, reading, and the experience in general. I'm taking the Arabic course. I hope I am not too far behind the students from Delaware, they finished a chapter ahead of my class last semester. After classes, I had luch at a fantastic Lebanese restaurant, Cafe Fayrouz, with Samia and Asja. I'm getting to know them very well. I probably hang out with them more than anyone else on the trip. After lunch, we visited the US embassy. There were two other American groups there, but they were only in Tunisia for a few days. The presentations by the embassy officers were alright, but I was not really expecting to hear candid comments anyway. It seemed like a PR conference. With the host family in the evening we watched TV. It helped my Arabic to watch English language shows with Arabic subtitles, we picked up a few words. We are also learning Tunisian dialect. They mostly get Arabic channels but Dubai and Lebanon have a few channels that show American tv shows and movies. Because they know our language and listen to our music, watch our shows, pay attention to our politics, etc, they know so much more about us than we do about them.

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