a week of celebrations

This week has been a little hectic seeing as it was our first week of classes. Also, my host family's daughter (who lives a couple blocks away and is also hosting a student) gave birth to a little baby girl on wednesday! i got to go to the hospital to see her on wednesday night. since then my host mom and sister have been over at their house a lot, just helping out.

On tuesday, one of the students in my group, Bradley, celebrated his 21st birthday, and our families decided to throw him a surprise birthday party. my family and i made the cake which was chocolate with whipped cream, hazelnuts, and strawberry jam. it was literally the most fun and energetic birthday party i've ever been to. they played a lot of american hip hop music and even brad's host grandmother got up to dance with him. everyone just cheered and clapped the entire time and it was great to see how quickly everyone had bonded with their families.

On thursday we had our first oriental dance class which was really fun. it took a while to be able to not laugh at myself in the mirror, but after i got over that i really enjoyed it. our teacher is hilarious and flamboyant, and i don't think i've ever seen a man shake his hips as well as he can. the dance is basically exactly what you would think of when hearing oriental dance; there's a lot of hip shaking and arm twirling involved. at the end of the semester we will be performing a routine for all of our families

Yesterday, we had to find our way to Tunis for a lecture at CEMAT, the center for maghreb and arabic studies. i went with my friends dana and sam, and we got to tunis just fine, but then took about 30 minutes to find the place. after the lecture we had the rest of the afternoon off and were free to explore the city. the boys who are taking percussion classes had to buy darbouka drums in the medina, and the girls had to buy jingling scarves for our dance classes. the medina is so fascinating and overwhelming. it's comprised of a maze of winding stone streets filled with little touristy shops selling hookas, bags, ceramics, etc. then after a certain point you reach the part of the medina where tunisians actually shop, which features a lot of clothing and household item stores. we ate a tiny hole in the wall restaurant where i ate a chawerma sandwich. it was delicious. after that we went back to sidi bou said and hung out at our favourite cafe and sheesha place.