Winter in Tunisia
Winter has come to Tunisia. And by that, I mean it's in the 50s and I barely need a jacket. But I did finally have to turn on my heat, which I figured out how to turn on through an amusing series of failures. Normally I would have waited a little longer to turn on the heat, but my laundry refuses to dry in the cold and I have no more socks.
The past few weeks have been incredibly busy. I had Thanksgiving with Ally and Justin, who managed to find most ingredients for a Thanksgiving dinner! We had a turkey, which was fascinating to the Tunisians and Italians who joined our group. Apparently the only thing that people know about thanksgiving is that there is a turkey involved…
The following Monday I began my Arabic tutoring. I'm just focusing on Tunisian so I can get around, but my goal is to get back into Modern Standard at some point. I also need to work on my French, but I only want to focus on one language at a time:) I will have more to report on the work front after this week. It looks like we may have a new director, so things should begin to move forward.
I've been more homesick these past few weeks between missing Thanksgiving and the Deeds situation. I went to college with Gus Deeds and the circumstances surrounding his death came as a shock. But my friends here have been very supportive and we've kept busy. This weekend especially was packed. I did some shopping in the souq on Saturday, then helped a friend move.
After that we had mulled wine (delicious, but wassail is still better…) made by a British friend. Today I went to an eco farm outside of Tunis that makes its own olive oil. We helped pick the olives and crush them with stones, a technique that has been in use for thousands of years. It was amazing to see the process and the olive oil this farm makes is delicious. They provided us with a "traditional" farm breakfast: fresh baked bread, olive oil with figs and honey in it and fresh cheese and lunch: meshouia, pureed carrots, salad, rice with veggies and lemonade. My Lebanese and Italian ancestors would be proud.
We knocked them down into a net below the tree and gathered them into baskets. The one rule that we had to follow was to not step on the olives, which was hard when they are everywhere! I was also continually pulling olives and leaves out of my hair and cloths because I was on the ground and there were people above me in the tree.
The olives were then crushed on the stones by the volunteers. I helped for a while, then removed all the crushed olives into the large pot that they used to crush the olives more.
Esther and I post-olive crushing
Amine (the farm owner) crushing the olives.
I now know the best olive oil to get in Tunisia! I'm looking forward to coming home for the holidays, but we've been making Tunis as festive as possible. We are going to have a Christmas carol party next weekend and then the weekend after that, most of my friends are heading out of town for the holidays.
