Telling Time in Tunis and Holiday Celebrations
The title was not meant to be alliterative, but that's how it worked out.
I have gotten back into my tutoring over the past few weeks and have run into some interesting challenges. I knew that the dialect here was very different and after trying to pick it up by osmosis, that only drove home the differences. The tutoring helps me understand why I had so much trouble picking up the Arabic here: Almost none of the basic words I use (taken from Jordanian, Lebanese, and Modern Standard Arabic) are used here... This is a good and bad thing. The good part is that conjugation is much easier and there are a lot less tenses. MSA is grammar heavy and it's exciting to have less grammar to worry about. On the flip side, almost every common word is slightly (or drastically) different than I learned. Tunisian has a lot of influence from French, Italian, Spanish and Berber. The weirdest part of Tunisian that I have learned so far is telling time.
First, time is told in five minute increments. So the only options are 5 (درج) after, 10 after, etc... not exactly precise. The way to say five twenty is the five and four - meaning 5 o'clock and four 5 minute intervals...
The most baffling part is how they approach the 24 hours in a day. 4 - 11 am and pm are normal and not difficult. 12 am and 12 pm are "midday" and "midnight". And then it gets crazy. 1 pm is "one hour past ..." (the 12 being implied), with 2 and 3 pm following the same pattern. 1 am is "one hour past the middle of the night," and so one with 2 and 3 am. When I asked my tutor why, he said that he thought whoever came up with the system probably just got lazy, but for some reason decided to keep the very complicated way of saying time for 6 hours out of the day.
Now I understand when people talk about time though! I may stick to telling time in French though.
Other news from Tunis is the "resolution" of the political crisis. At least another step has been completed. After long and drawn out discussions, the Tunisian political parties have reached an agreement on the new interim prime minister.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-25385984
The man they names is relatively unknown and was the Minister of Industry. He will pick his cabinet this week and we'll see how it goes from there.
Yesterday (December 17) was also the 3rd anniversary of the self immolation in Sidi Bouzid. The news predicted a lot of various scenarios for yesterday, but there were just a few small protests in the South and in Tunis and a few gatherings to mark the day.
Other than that, things in Tunis have been quiet. Things at work will pick up significantly after the holidays. I am headed for DC on Friday morning and will be in the US until the 2nd. I'm going to NYC for New Years, and might make it to DC. I'm really looking forward to it, but it seems so far away at this point! I did start the packing process and in the process found a nice colony of mold in my side board. I will tackle that tonight, so I don't come back to an apartment covered in mold. I also need to take care of the spiders, which have now taken over most corners in my apartment. I don't mind a few spiders, but ratio of corners with spiders to spider-free corners has become unacceptable.
I've lost my little camera, so I don't have a lot of pictures from these past few weeks, but the I have the two below:
Cookie Making Party
This was the result of a massive cookie making party on Sunday. It was a lot of fun and all the cookies were amazing. I had a very Christmas-y weekend, between a caroling party and cookie making party. We caroled with a number of singers, so I got my holiday music fix. The party then evolved into Tunisians and Americans/Brits exchanging songs. We definitely lost:)
Flamingos around Tunis
This was a very exciting moment for me, though Samia, who was driving, laughed at me. We were driving past a lake near my house and there were flamingos just standing there! I naturally freaked out and made Samia stop so I could take a picture. I couldn't believe they live so near my house. Now I'll have to go back with my nice camera and look super touristy.
I am looking forward to going home. I will be on a plane in less than 2 days, but it feels like 2 weeks at this point. I am looking forward to true cold weather and tackling the Sydney Opera House as our next Gingerbread challenge. And of course hugging the puppies...
Happy Holidays!