However, I landed in New York on Friday afternoon to hear from my worried mother that Tunisia was in the midst of a revolution. The government had just collapsed, the president had fled the country and the airport was closed.
I’m going to be cheesy here and say that the world has gotten smaller. For the past three days, I’ve been glued to my computer trying to piece together the current situations of my friends, looking up news articles, and trying to decipher the darija/frarabic on people’s facebook walls to see what everyone is saying about it. Soumaya and her family are safe, by the way, and according to her, it’s not as crazy as the news sources would have you believe. She thought it was rather funny that I had read that gas stations were running out of gas, and told me that, except for some rural exceptions, gas stations were fine, public transportation is working as normal, and she’s going back to work after two days off. It’s so shocking to me because I was just there and it seemed so calm. And now I’m so far away and trying to get my information from Hollywood news sources and facebook walls.
Look! That's the Ministry of the Interior. I was just there!
Home is less shocking and more home-y than I expected. The two feet of snow on the ground took me aback a bit, but it’s nice to be back. Both in general and in reference to Tunisia’s revolution, I’ve been surprised to realize how much I learned in those five months. Obviously everything is fairly general, but when people here ask me about what’s going on, I actually find that I can explain a little of what’s going on, what has lead up to it, and what people are saying about it.
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