I went and saw a French witch this week

Okay, she isn't really a witch. She's this oldish lady who owns a store where she sells minerals and jewelry made of minerals and stones. I went to see her because a bunch of people I know have gone to see her recently. My host father Philippe started the trend when he went to see her for his knee pain. She gave him a couple small stones that he put in his knee brace, and surprisingly his pain subsided a little bit. Then the father of my host mother went and got some stones or something. Since then, my host mother has gone for her and Marine, and she's been accompanied by two friends who have gotten stuff for their families. Now there's one woman with less shoulder pain and a kid with less acne, among other things.

So anyways her store opens at 9 o'clock. I got there at about 8:55 and I was already the 5th person there, which doesn't sound like that much but can be a ton, as she spends a decent amount of time with everyone. Eventually she took my hand, did some weird stuff with her hand in the air over mine and decided what she wanted to give me. I started to say "I decided to come see you because...." and she finished my sentence with "you have back pain," which was pretty awesome. I don't know what kind of crazy magnetic field I give off, but I though it was kind of cool that she could tell me what my problem is. After talking with her for a while about a couple other people I got things for and about my guardian angel Yaheilah (I think), I left with a small ring of stones that matched my character, and a little pebble to fight my back pain. I haven't sensed a huge difference yet, but I guess I need to put the pebble on my back more. We'll see. I'll let you know if I experience a miracle.

Speaking of miracles, I have to mention something that doesn't happen very often in the south of France. It's been raining for a WEEK. I'm wondering what's up, as I don't live in Seattle, nor London! It was nice today and might be nice tomorrow morning, but other than that it's rained every day for a week. Everyone in the Nîmes was getting depressed, so thankfully it was pretty today. And while I'm in my second to last week of school here and I couldn't care less, I've been ripping my too-long hair out, dying to go out on a bike ride. Hopefully I'll be able to tomorrow morning. Good night.

Carnaval

Well this Tuesday we finally celebrated Carnaval at my high school, about three months after the real date. Carnaval is really linked to the christian religion and is celebrated around Easter and Mardi Gras. I'm not that sure on the real meaning of any of it, but now it's just an excuse to dress up. It was scheduled at my school over a month ago, but it got postponed because of teaches planning to demonstrate by dressing up and staging a mock olympic-torch struggle, which would really be to defend their cause against the loss of 9,000-10,000 teaching jobs across France next year.

Anyways, I didn't have class until 2 o'clock. There were a couple bands that weren't that great, but it was still nice to sit around in the sunshine and hang out. Plus there was a fashion show for anybody who wanted to show off their costume. Me and seven other guys in my class dressed up as knights of the round table, with swords, shields, and t-shirts with red crosses painted or drawn on. We had some fun blocking flights of stairs telling people they couldn't pass and that they had to go around. The best costumes of the day were:

• A friend Hugo (yes, a guy) who dressed up at Snow white with his seven dwarves
• The French version of the Village People
• A guy who put gloves on his feet, a shirt with a hanging head on his legs, pants on his torso, and shoes on his hands. He was "walking on his hands" the whole day, which was pretty funny to see. REALLY creative! I have to remember this one for Halloween or a dress-up party sometime. The only problem is finding a pair of pants that's thin enough so you can breathe, see, and talk to people during the day.

I also saw a few surprises as well. For one thing the presence of toy weapons in school was new for me. In my high school we definitely wouldn't be able to bring toy hand guns or sawed-off shotguns, in addition to the wooden swords. There was at least one Scarface... The second surprise was guys drinking been in the cafeteria with lunch. It was really for their costumes they said, but nobody really seemed to mind. The last surprise was a little less fun - shaving cream in my face as I was leaving my last class of the day. I had watched out all day as people were getting shaving-creamed or floured, but a guy in my class finally got me! Oh well, it wasn't as bad as when that happened as I was sleeping at cross country camp the summer before my junior year...

Les Crocs de Nîmes

By "crocs," i'm not talking about the rubber shoes that were le mode in the U.S. before I left. I actually went to see the Nîmes Crocodiles soccer team play on Friday night. The air was intense; if Nîmes won against St. La Val they would move up from Ligue Nationale, France's third division of scocer, to Ligue 2, obviously the second. The game was sold out, with 18,000 Nîmes supporters screaming the following chants:

• "Qui ne saute pas n'est pas nîmois! Hé!" - If you don't jump you're not from Nîmes! Hey!
• "Paris - Paris - On arrive!" - Paris, Paris, we're coming! This one I need to explain. Paris won last night to finish 17th out of 20 in Ligue 1. If they had lost they would have dropped down into Ligue 2, which means they would be probably the only soccer team in a European capital city to be in the second division, and would play Nîmes.
• "On est en Ligue 2! On est en Ligue 2! On est, on est, on est en Ligue 2!" - We're in Ligue 2! This cheer only happened at the end.

St. La Val was a team that passed well and had better control of the ball, but Nîmes had a stronger defense and dominated the possession. St. La Val scored first on a rebound off the goalie, and then Nîmes scored twice before halftime - one on a free kick and another on a long pass that beat the defense. The third goal from Nîmes, which was similar to the second, followed halftime and put Nîmes securely into Ligue 2. Anyways, the ambiance was fun, and I finally got to a soccer game in France.

In other news, it's finally nicer weather here after raining nearly all week and Saturday. I got out for a ride this afternoon and barely saw any cars for a decent amount of time, which was awesome. I hope everyone's good, and I'll be sure to blog a few more times before I get home in a month!

Direct from the bullfighting capital of France....

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mesdames et Messieurs, I am writing to today like normal from the Nîmes region, the bullfighting capital of France. Nîmes hosts two ferias every year - one in September and the more popular, everyone-gets-drunk one during the Pentecost weekend, seven weeks after Easter. The feria began Wednesday evening and ends tonight, or rather at four o'clock this morning. I went Friday night and last night, so I will tell you all about my experiences.

Friday I went with my host sister Marine, three of her friends, and my friend Benjamin. We got there around seven o'clock and walked around checking out the sights before sitting down in a bodèga for dinner. The bodègas are little restaurants run by people supporting a charity or regular restaurants that need to defend themselves from five days of absolutely no business. Typically they all have:

• paellas - a huge plate of yummy yellow rice, chicken, shrimp, mussels, calamares, and some vegetables which is cooked in enormous pans,
  
• gardiane - a beef stew cooked with black olive and served with either white or local Camarguaise rice (you'll learn more about this if you keep reading),
• steak de toro - simply a steak of bull meat, served with fries.

I ordered a steak de toro, which wasn't that awesome, but I got to finish one of the girls' plates of paella, which was excellent. We all split a pitcher of sangria, and then hustled over to the Avenue Jean Jaurés to check out the brívado, a style of running of the bulls that I saw the first night I arrived in France. However, this isn't the run-as-fast-as-you-can-so-you-don't-get-gorged-in-the-butt-Spanish-running-of-the-bulls. The brívado is when some Camarguais cowboys riding on horses block the bull behind them and a bunch of young guys chase it, trying to hold onto it's tail, shoulders, and horns, respectively, to slow it down to a standstill. After watching that, we walked around again and then headed to a dancing-oriented bodèga for younger people, where we saw a ton of people from our lycée. At midnight we headed out of there to get picked up my my host mother before it got too crazy.

Sunday night I took the opportunity to go to a real bullfight with the Granier (you don't add an "s" on the end in French for a family name), a family of friends. Sorry PETA members... If I lived here all the time I don't think I would go see a corrida every year, but it was something that I had to see once. I saw three matadors - El Fundi (awesomest name ever, although I have no idea what it means), Juan José Padilla, and Rafaelillo each fight and kill three bulls. I'm not going to recount the whole process of a bullfight, as I don't want to ruin it if you go see one. But I will clear up a few falsehoods about a bullfight. First of all, it's not just one matador who fights a bull. At the beginning there are at least 6. The matador whose name you hear participates throughout the whole process and is the one who kills the taureau. Also, the capes the matadors use are not always red; they are big and pink at the beginning and red just for the final two stages. Finally, some may argue that a bullfight is a cruel waste of an animal. However, the bull, which is of a special breed raised specifically for corridas, is at least given a fighting chance before being made into gardiane.

Afterwards I had some more paella and sangria and walked around. That's all I've really got on the feria. It's a good experience but one also has to be careful about the dangers that exist, most of them after midnight in the busy streets full of drunk, aggressive people. Still, see it in your lifetime if you can. Chao

Exploring the cuisine

Here goes for my fifth and hopefully final blog on Tunisia. Not that I don't love writing or talking about my trip, but I'm not sure how long it will be interesting. I saved the best for last - the fact that you can't go to another country without exploring the cuisine. You definitely have to follow this rule when in Tunisia, where there is plenty of delicious (sometimes overwhelmingly spicy) food.

Of course the best way to eat in a country is to eat in a private home - which I didn't do. I would have loved to, but instead I ate in the hotel buffet-style restaurant most of the time. It wasn't fabulous, but still not bad for food that was cooked to serve 400 people. The chorba - a thick mixture of rice, green bell peppers, red chili peppers, other small vegetables, and of course lamb meat - and couscous with veggies and merguez sausage were my favorite of everything there. The other highlight of the Tunisian food was the harissa, a sauce of chili peppers. Now I love spicy food and all, but the harissa becomes the limit for me. If you eat it with rice it's excellent, but if you eat it straight with a spoon as one of the animaters did the last evening, it makes you stick your head in the pool and eat lots of bread. The other highlight of the Tunisian food was the dates. I didn't eat any apples or strawberries when I was there because I had to take advantage of the amazing, fresh dates.

The final topic has to be beverages, of course. Although Tunisia is a Muslim country, they still make some decent wine and beer. I drank a few Celtia blond beers, which was pretty good, when I went out to the dicotheques. But the best beverage by far that you can find in Tunisia is the mint tea. Hot and very sweet, it's what Tunisians traditionally drink with their meals or any other time of day for that matter.

That's all I really got. I think that's it on Tunisia, but you can always ask me more if you have questions. Later

Souks and medinas

Or at least what I picked up during my week in Tunisia. I managed to get out of my hotel a few times, as I mentioned before, so I was able to see and learn a few things. I'll start off with my market experiences. Depending on where you go in Tunisia, the markets can be very agreeable or very stressful. For example, the medina (old city that is now converted into a 7/7 market) in Hammamet has a very aggressive feeling because all the merchants bug you to buy their stuff. The medina in Sidi Bou Said, as I said before, is more relaxed because there's less hustling going on. The best experience I had in a medina was when we went to Tunis. There's a square of cafés next to the Tunisian version of the Arc de Triomphe, at the end of the Avenue Habib Bourguiba. You can then either enter on the left alleyway (the side for Tunisians) or the right alleyway (the side for tourists) to the medina. Of course I entered by the left side to see the real market instead of all the touristy crap. Philippe and I separated with the women after a few minutes and went to check out the medina. (There's another thing I've learned: going shopping with French women is just like going shopping with American women - I don't want to do it. Am I abusing the use of parentheses now?)

The medina in Tunis is cool for a few reasons. It's historical for one thing. Although I don't know any of the dates to stick in some more interesting facts, the buildings are definitely old and the road has a stone drainage system that shows it's ancient. The medina, which is owned by the government, is completely covered, which I saw better when a guy took me and Philippe up onto this awesome tiled roof of a building where rugs are made and sold. Of course that was a nice thing he was doing for us before trying to sell us rugs, and I wish I could have returned the kindness by buying one of their beautiful rugs, but unfortunately I don't exactly have enough space in my suitcases. The other highlight of the medina in Tunis is coming across the amazing-smelling Arab date-filled-cookie makers. Amazing, and stupid of me not to buy some on the spot.

My final market experience was in Nabeul, the town bordering Hammamet, Friday morning. There is a weekly souk (more traditional market) in Nabeul, where goods such as spices, vegetables, and pottery used to be brought by camel. Now of course it's more touristy but you can still find some cool stuff. Notice my Arab shirt in the pictures on Flickr, which I will sport for people when I'm cooking couscous back in Maryland. I said the goods used to be brought in by camel because of a couple reasons:

1. Times have changed. Even if everyone dreams of going to North Africa and riding around on a camel, I never saw an actual Tunisia doing that. There are things called cars and scooters now, which go a lot faster than camels and don't spit. The only people who really ride around on camels are the berbere people in the desert.
2. Camels are also a health risk. Having camels shitting next to all the vegetables and meat and such that you might want to buy just isn't that lovely, so if there are camels they're kept outside the market.

There are also some pretty hilarious things that you see/hear at the market. For example: "Normally this costs 35 Dinars for the Germans, but since you're French I'll give it to you for 25 Dinars." At which point you offer 5 Dinars and work your way up to 10 if you think it's worth it. To finish up on my market-talk, I'll offer a hint if any reading every visits the region: don't buy spices at the market. Instead buy them in a grocery store, where they'll be much fresher and possibly cheaper as well. Get some Ras el-Hanout (couscous spices) and some saffron.

Well now it's getting late for me and I need to hit the hay. It might still be early for a Friday night, but tomorrow isn't going to feel like a real Saturday for me, as I have a BAC Blanc test in the morning: four hours of writing. YAY! I guess you can call that payback for an incredibly easy week of 10 hours of class with one day of strikes and one holiday. Oh well, **it happens... I'm writing more than I thought I would for every blog, so I've still got at least one more Tunisia-topic blog coming. Keep reading! Goodnight.

Local trips in Tunisia

Alright, well "maybe later this afternoon" turned into two days later, but at least I'm getting around to posting. I've still got plenty of stuff about my week in Tunisia to write about, so here goes...

On Thusday of my week in Tunisia (got there on Sunday the 20th of April, so that makes Thursday the 24th), Philippe, Laurence, myself, and Laurence's new friend - who was also on vacation at our hotel and drove me crazy - went to check out the sights at Tunis. Normally, if you pay to go with the group of people from the hotel in a bus and all that it costs you around 40 Euros per person. We payed 100 Dinars for four people, which included the private taxi with a friendly guide for the whole day. The Dinar/Euro exchange rate is 1.8/1 at the moment. So it was nice to be able to spend some cheaper currency, even if the Dollar/Euro exchange rate of 1.6/1 isn't a whole ton lower at the moment. So anyways we left at 9 in the morning and first went to Carthage, the ancient Roman/Carthaginian ruins and later sites of early French colonialism, as shown with the statues of King Louis, who also led crusades from Aigues Mortes, a ramparted town half an hour from me.




Carthage was kind of interesting to see, although similar to most of the Roman ruins closer to where I live. You get spoiled by seeing the Pont du Gard and the Maison Carrée and all that stuff that a bunch of old stones can only be looked at for so long, unfortunately. However, what Carthage did have that my normal surroundings doesn't is... mosaics! Tons of them, some of them still in amazingly beautiful form. Plus some other glass and clay pottery and what not that was pretty cool to see. Thinking about some guy two thousand years ago turning a pottery wheel and making something that's still in relatively good shape is amazing, especially with how easily cheap bowls or mugs that we buy these days can break. So Carthage was kind of cool but at noon we were hungry, and headed to a restaurant in Sidi Bou Said - the new town which is mixed in with the ruins at Carthage - for lunch. Which we payed entirely too much for. Lunch was more than our whole day with the taxi, and it definitely wasn't worth it. I've had better lamb kebab in Columbia, and better couscous in France. At least the view was pretty sweet; the nice section of Sidi consists of all white-plaster houses with blue grills and terraces. Very pretty, natural Mediterranean colors (even if it's the only real "Mediterranean" place I've been).

After lunch in Sidi we checked out the medina, which was a lot less aggressive than the medina in Hammamet. I'll talk more about that later, when I post about my market experiences. After that we headed to Tunis, which is right next to it. I should mention that Sidi is the location of the president's palace and where he receives any foreign diplomats that come to visit. Tunisia is a special type of democracy, which became independent somewhere around 1957 with it's first president of Habib Bourguiba, who was the president for 30 or more years. Now the president is Ben Ali, and you see his photo often if you walk around the towns of Tunisia. The Champs d'Elysée of Tunisia is L'Avenue Habib Bourguiba, which we hung out on that afternoon. We saw the medina in Tunis, then Philippe and I drank mint tea in a café while waiting for the women, of course... 6 o'clock and back to Hammamet for dinner and all that good stuff.

That's what I got tonight. I hope I still have somewhat of a reading audience. Tomorrow night I will try to make my final post on Tunisia, so I hope everyone "tunes in" at some point. À la prochaine...