Jamie Fehr

I try to never start writing, feeling guilty about not have written something for a while, but now after having been nearly a month in North Africa surely there must be something to report? People have been asking. Yet the truth is that I don’t have that much exciting news. I have stayed between the same city and sister city since I got here nearly a month ago (tomorrow will be one month precisely).

But to be perfectly honest I do have a few mundane details I can share.

1. I have started class, but the classmate shuffle doesn’t seem to end. I really think that next week I am going to pony up the cash necessary for private lessons because other people just seem to drag me down.
2. I am living in a huge house with pretty much just me and a barely literate North African man, who also just happens to be in town because his daughter is in the hospital. The conversation we share is far from deep.
3. I have ventured out into the city on photographic excursions, of which, the above photo is a result.

My biggest frustration with my new surroundings have very little to do with a language barrier. The fact is that I utilize the cheap public transit to get around but there is no such thing as a bus route map! So two weekends ago I just got on a couple of buses to see where they went and it’s been confirmed to me by several people that that is the only way to know where a certain bus number will go. But that’s not all, just because a bus followed a certain route to get somewhere doesn’t mean that it will follow even remotely the same route back. For example I can take the number 8 bus downtown but I need to take the number 2 bus back. Oh, and just because the bus is labelled with the number you want doesn’t mean it’s the right bus, some buses go on entirely different sub-routes. Getting around has really been a challenge and for a lot of it I have depended on my own two feet.

In conclusion, getting around is difficult, language learning is happening (I can even utter a few error-free sentences), and I do have a bit of schedule/routine in my new place. It is hard to motivate myself to integrate myself into the local society considering I will only be here a brief stint but the effort I have made has been totally worth it. And the new Wordpress 2.5, which is the system that powers this site, is totally awesome.