Apartment Update

Hello all!

Finally, here are some pictures of the apartment. I got tired of waiting for everything to be changed...

I’m still having to badger my landlord daily about various problems in the apartment, but my washer was finally fixed on yesterday, so it’s slowly paying off. I got a phone line in last week and will hopefully have internet sometime this week, and be back on skype! With the constant work on my apartment I haven’t been able to get away too much, but I managed to get out and have lunch downtown with a friend on Tuesday. It was nice to get out of La Marsa and walk around the gardens that are in the middle of Tunis. I have also started taking daily walks on the beach and around La Marsa, while it is still cool enough to make it possible! It's slowly getting hotter here, but it's surprisingly cooler than DC. I guess the beach breeze helps a lot.

On Friday night I went to a play (Pirates of Penzance) at the American School. A friend of mine was the assistant director, after hearing all her stories, I wanted to see how the play turned out. 

It was fun to see what they managed to pull together with very limited resources and it was interesting to see the school. When you enter, you walk by the lot where the 

administrative

 building was burned down in September. Other than that, there are no signs of the September attack and it looks about the same as any other school. It's large (though 

admittedly my judgement on school size is skewed...) and has students from K-12. After being surrounded by French and Arabic almost exclusively, it was a little disconcerting to hear so much English!

Yesterday, I helped judge a debate 

tournament

 at AMIDEAST. I am getting to know a lot of the teachers there and they needed help. AMIDEAST Tunis and AMIDEAST Sousse each had 3 teams debating (in English) the pros and cons of mandated quotas for women and racial and religious minorities in universities. It was 

surprisingly

 fun and after the rounds were done, the judges had our own discussion about the issue over coffee and sandwiches. After being an honorary member of the W&M debate team, it was nice to actually see a debate tournament first hand.

I am now in full cleaning mode, preparing for Amara's arrival on Tuesday! I'm hoping the new mattresses come in by then...

It's a gorgeous day here, so I'm off to the beach. A very happy Mother's Day to Mom (Amara will return with a present whether you want it or not) and congrats to the W&M class of 2013, who should be graduating right about now.

Miss you all!

Ariel

Below are some pictures from the first two weeks in my apartment:

My building door is on the right, next to the column

First walk on the beach

Beach!