I am now at the Language Village in Nabeul where i am living with close to 30 other American, Scottish, and English students as well as around 250 Tunisian students from all around Tunisia. For the most part, we are here to help these students practice their English. (Most of them are in their second year of University, have been studying English for years, and know French, Italian, and possibly German already.... we are a little behind.) We are also here to learn about Tunisian culture as well as show the Tunisians our own cultures. Many of them have never seen or talked to anyone outside their home-town. Today I introduced the all-important game of Frisbee! (no not Frisbee-golf, or ultimate Frisbee, just plain chillin-in-the-yard-Frisbee) I will have more pictures later, but for now here are a few.

Did i mention there are cats everywhere? Even on guys shirts!?

My first program is now over!! I am done studying Modern Standard Arabic and on to leaning Tunisian Arabic as well as working for the Tunisian Ministry of Education as a "Language Fellow" at the English-only Language Village in Nabeul. The Following pictures are of my trip around Tunisia in between these two programs.





















The pictures are in no particular order, but as you can see we visited many different places including the Sahara where i got to dress up and go by camel for a while...I was such a typical tourist... I also decided to take some liberty to show my Texan roots with the Tunisian hat and Islamic scarf... can you guess what picture I am talking about? As you may have noticed we also visited a mosque and synagogue, these were actually the most important mosque in all of Africa as well as a very important synagogue that houses a stone from the original Jewish temple!! 3 more weeks!!

ohh. and look at this...

It has been three weeks now and the end of my first session is now closer than the beginning. None the less, we have much more class to take and Arabic to learn. However, we are so fortunate as to be able to take a break from class a couple times a week to site-see and relax. Here are a few pictures of some local beaches we found in the area.
We also took a day trip to explore other parts of the northern coastline of Tunisia.


We also were able to stop and explore a roman castle that had been kept up and maintained by other powers throughout history. It is now maintained for history and has some pretty mean looking cannons. Sorry for some reason i forgot to actually photograph the entire castle...
And just a little side-note.. Tunisia has MANY stray cats... it is very sad but they tend to survive out on their own (unlike a small white puppy that i love to spoil) Even if you do not really like cats some of these little guys are hard not to.... they tend to come out whenever we have food...
That is about it for now. I am missing home so much, but i am also having a lot of fun here and hopefully learning a little bit too. Next weekend we will be taking a four day trip into the SOUTH of Tunisia which is drastically different it geography - phyiscally, and culturally. So more pictures will be coming!

More pictures! The last couple of days we were able to visit the site of some Roman ruins in Druga, and Roman mosaics in a museum. Not a lot to talk about, the pictures speak for themselves. Enjoy!

The camera looking thing is actually a bow type weapon that owned in Roman times. And I did not know the Romans were Baylor fans... weird...

I am now writing from my new room in my host-family's home. I will be living here for the next 4 weeks! This past weekend they took me to their beach house for the weekend. It was very relaxing, and i ate enough food to go without any for a week, but instead i just ate some more soo...
I am studying really hard (pretty much 24/7) and hope to really learn the Arabic language. However it is a little hard because as it turns out most people here in Tunisia either speak a very different Tunisian dialect or French!

These pictures are from my school here in Tunis, and the other 3 are the beach house and surrounding area (including power generating windmills!! They are EVERYWHERE!!)

I do not think i will have a new post everyday, however for now thats the trend... To keep it simple, today after finishing class we took a walking tour of the "Old City" filled with markets, tourists, and Mosques.

First Days

Im here now in Tunis, and getting settled. I have had so much fun already and will soon post many more pictures! These up so far are a US memorial, the ruins in Carthage and some pretty sea side area of Tunis.