What do you Do?

I realized I've spent a lot of my blog talking about the extra things in my experience here, and not a heck of a lot about my actual job. I think the best way is just to give a basic overview of Amideast and a snapshot of a "day in the life."

First off, I work with Amideast Tunisia. Amideast is a large NGO with its headquarters in Washington, DC. The tagline for Amideast is "Bridging Cultures, Building Understanding," which Amideast does through a variety of ways. First off, Amideast is big in educational services and testing. If you want to take the TOEFL, TOEIC, or even exams such as the GRE, you can come to Amideast. In addition, we offer prep services for testing and a large English Language program divided into young and adult learners - with special courses for Business English. We also administer numerous exchange programs, such as the Yes Program, the Learn and Serve Program, and even Fulbright Scholarships. We work closely with the American Embassy on many of these programs and are responsible for all of the logistics and the vast majority of the preparation for the participants. These participants range from high school students to Masters and PhD candidates.

We also engage in special projects and sponsorships. Here in Tunis, we have the Access microscholarship program. The State Department pays for 100 kids to take English classes at Amideast. In addition, we also throw events, such as the BBQ at the Embassy, or the upcoming Kantara and Ozomatli concerts (Ozomatli will perform for the Access students at Amideast on Monday the 23rd in a special concert at Amideast).

Amideast also functions as an American cultural exchange center. We have an American Corner with a library of English-language books and internet access. In addition, we run weekly free English conversations with Amideast teachers. For example, this Friday, I led a 2.5 hour discussion on Israel/Palestine.

On an average day, I get up at 6:45. I rub the sleep out of my eyes, take a quick shower, eat some cereal (I splurge on the good European stuff because the local stuff is all sugar), and take the tram or a taxi with Jeremy to Amideast. We get there about 7:45, and I do final prep for my 8:00 am English class. It's a public class of sixteen students, and they're a great group of kids. We just finished watching Little Miss Sunshine, which they loved. After that, I have a fifteen-minute break and then my Access program class, which is the same level in theory, but actually a bit lower (to put it in perspective, I assign my public class BBC Articles, and my Access kids are watching Independence Day - albeit in English with English subtitles). I go until 12:45, and then take a break and grab lunch. There's fast food sandwich places around (a basic sandwich + fries for under $2), or a few sit-down basic restaurants with pasta, sandwiches, and some grilled meat.

After the morning classes, I work on the internship component. On Friday, I led the American Corner English conversation on Israel/Palestine, and then went off to La Goulette with Kristian for some downtime. Then, we went on the RTCI Radio (State Radio) Friday English program to promote the Monday Kantara concert and Amideast's sponsorship of it with the Country Director, Lee Jennings. I had prepared several quiz questions that Kristian and I read over the air as part of a free ticket giveaway. Let me just say that yes, Tunisians do know who Elvis and Run DMC were.

After, Lee took us out for dinner with two of our Tunisian friends, Anis and Riadh, to the restaurant on the top floor of Hotel La Jetee in La Goulette. It's a Jewish restaurant, so we had some kosher French wine (the only way to get non-Tunisian wine here), and ate some Tunisian Jewish specialties. I had a stew with navy beans, spinach, and beef, while Kristian was far more adventurous. He ended up eating a sliced-up cow's undercarriage in a stew - which he found out about after several bites.