Even if you refuse to admit it, I bet you've read parts of one of those little platitude books sitting in a friend's bathroom. You know the books I mean, those with all the aphorisms extolling the wisdom of children and celebrating childlike wonder. While I hesitate to make the comparison to soup-for-soul literature (and I hope you aren't reading this in the bathroom), I must admit that living abroad on a whim and attempting to function in a language that I ever so slightly speak, has led me to compare myself with the 1983 mini-me for a multitude of reasons. Let me enumerate.
1. Making new friends makes me feel special. I have three new friends who are actually Tunisian (girls at that!). It is very nice to have people who appear to like me, and want to buy me coffee all the time and summarily ignore my offers to reciprocate. Never before whilst traveling or studying abroad have I made friends so quickly. I feel that this is a great accomplishment (the friends, not the getting-them to buy me coffee part -that's a forgone conclusion here). But I am perhaps overestimating my attractiveness as a friend, I think my new-found friendship may have more to do with the fact that people from Arab cultures are far warmer than Western media would have us think.
2. I am amazed and very pleased with myself for accomplishing small things. I bought a cell phone on my very first day in Tunis. I was gleeful as I walked out of the Tunisiana store, after a successful Franco-Arab interaction with the shop keeper. I took one look at the instructions in Arabic, laughed and turned it over to read the instructions in French. Okay, so it did take me awhile to figure out how to send texts, and fine, even longer to realize that you can't get voice mail. It appears that you need to ask for it specially and pay extra. Nevertheless, once I mastered the complicated settings of my Nokia, that I can only imagine is the first version they ever designed, I now can call and text the aforementioned friends. Thus making it easier to have friends since we can make plans for them to buy me coffee.
3. Police officers are your friends. I haven't exactly espoused this opinion for awhile, but here I can't help but like them! I love their outfits, dark blue with neat white writing, love that I can read them (Shurta), and love that there are tons of female police officers and that they tend to have great hair! Tough and stylish women, fabulous! I have asked many a police officer for directions and they have always smiled (in a nice and not leering way!), helped, and been nice about my formal Arabic and bad attempts at colloquial. When I see officers, I feel safe. And it doesn't hurt that they never heckle, try to make me pay a lot for something, or call me madame. How funny would it be if I made a I-heart-Tunis-police-department tee-shirt. Funnier still if I did it in Arabic and then get stopped in the airport.
4. I am scared of my teachers and I really want them to like me. I feel like I literally shiver when am admonished (i.e. corrected) by my professors. When they praise me, or even appear to approve, I am easily elated. So simple, so obvious, so true: we all just want to know that we are doing well. That what we are improving, growing, and worthy of a few compliments. And we want the compliments to come from a reliable source. I don't believe what anyone says to me in the souks. My teachers, I believe. And I want them to approve.
5. At no point in time do I feel that I am adequately communicating my feelings, desires, needs. This is monumentally frustrating. While trying to have meaningful conversations,I imagine myself floating above, watching and rolling my eyes as I awkwardly struggle to address the most benign of topics. I feel like a baby crying because I'm just thirsty, and no one will pass me the water that is two inches away but I can't reach it 'cause I am a baby. I'm on one side of the wall and I can't figure out how to get to the other side. Waah.
6. When what comes easily to adults (i.e. buying phones, talking about the weather, not getting lost) is challenging for me, as a five-year-old. These simple challenges can put one on a constant emotional roller coaster of fear, self doubt (I am in the wrong class? can I do this?) and regret (should I have gone to another country? one with a more useful colloquial? Shit, I should have listened to those nice boys who told me not to walk down this street!). Then you swing to the other end, in only moments, and find everything charming and lovely (the bougainvillea is so fragrant, the minarets so elegant, mmm this coffee is delish). So like a kid, I'm easily pleased, happy to have a bed, food and a few people to chat with, but also am quick to frustration and irrational moodiness. Luckily if I am being crabby, few will understand and therefore will not be affected.
7. Emotional roller coaster notwithstanding, everything is fascinating. The colors of the buildings as the sun sets, the crazy looking trees on Avenue Bourguiba that look like Maurice Sendak invented them, the sound of the call to prayer starting at slightly off times, so that it's as if a bunch of imams decided to perform it in rounds a la kindergarten music class. Even the toilets are interesting. Generally, there is no toilet paper in bathrooms. Many people buy little tissues packets and keep them in their pockets for hygienic bathroom purposes. But if you so chose, you can forgo the paper and use the little hose next to the toilet to wash off with nice, chilly water. It's, er, quite refreshing. I am imagining that it might be more fun when it's hot out. Now, I realize that this statement, about how cool it is not to have toilet paper, makes me sound like Alec Baldwin's character when he made a guest appearance on Friends as Phoebe's boyfriend. Remember, he was like, "oh the traffic jam looks like a million little fireflies," or some such thing. Well, no, I'm not that irritatingly positive. For example I am failing to find the beauty and depth of human experience in the general lack of hot water at my temporary home of the youth hostel. Also, I dislike and will continue to dislike being called madame. So, I am not so annoyingly pleased and bright-eyed with everything. Just most things. Like the toilets.
8. There have to be 8 things, cause that is my favorite number. So the eighth thing is: I imagined that I could do something else. Whatever the hell "else" is. I thought recently that I wasn't done exploring. So I'm here and it is certainly something else. My friend Betsy gave me this awesome card when I began my wandering. It read "Leap and the net will appear," a proverb from some great people. I jumped, and the net just showed up.
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