First day of class!

Today went by pretty quickly. There are a CRAZY number of American students at the school during the summer. I heard that there will be about 100. The first session started today, the second starts in 3 weeks. Some people are only staying 3 weeks, but more will be here for 6. It seems like not many are sticking around for as long as I am. I don't think it's going to be a place that I will hang out, though, because today at 6 when I was done with class it was tough to even walk around outside, with few to no places to sit. I don't mind, my main goal isn't to meet other Americans anyway.

I have two class sessions per day, like I said before I think. There are 2 different instructors, which is kind of nice because they have different styles. Today it didn't feel much like they were on the same page with what we should do, but it worked out anyway. Hopefully it will be a bit smoother in the future, though. The first one told us what to expect and all that, and the second one pretended not to speak any English as the start of class. There was one girl who kept translating everything he said at the beginning. I think that she was trying to show that she understood, but I mostly found it annoying. (And if she ever sees this, sorry, it's true!) Luckily the girl next to her leaned over and whispered that she thought he was going for immersion, so the translator stopped.

Like I kind of expected at first, I have a definite advantage over the others from learning to read the alphabet in Tunisia and the studying I've done since then. Things like vowel and consonant length distinctions don't surprise or bother me. For example, there could be a word ba and baa that have the exact same vowel sound except that the second one is longer. Same goes for a word like hamock or hammock. Actually, the words for pigeon and bathroom are distinguished (phonetically) by just a double consonant in the middle.

I'm typing this from the roof of my host family's place and will post it tomorrow. I did my homework here and really like being able to come up here. It's quieter, there's a nice breeze, and of course a gorgeous view. I finally paid attention to the sun, too and realized that the windows of my room face NE, as does the view from the roof. My host mom is really upset right now because there is a sort of bed & breakfast next door that has decided to build a patio on their roof. Nice for guests - awful for her and her privacy. Normally, she walks around in the house however she wants and won't feel able to do that with peeping tourists 10-20 feet away. The new patio is higher up, too, so the 3-4 foot wall on the roof won't help. What makes it worse is that the whole medina is a UNESCO world heritage site. In theory, you can't make changes to the outside - it's all protected. In practice, if you pay off the right person you definitely can. And if you are a small hotel/B&B, you probably have that money.