David's Diary: Sunday, February 16, 2003

On My Way to London

While I have been a photographer for more than twenty years, I have never been a professional one. For the past ten month's I have been working on changing that. While we traveled last summer I shot a lot of photographs on slide film. Since we have arrived in Monastir, I have been spending all of my non-teaching weeks cataloguing the thousand photographs that I took and selecting the best ones for my portfolio. I have also been writing, faxing, and emailing various organizations in London, including picture libraries and book and magazine publishers. I am going to spend a week in London seeing if there is a market for my photographs.

Last night I was up in our apartment. Our friends Bobbie and Brandy have been staying there. While I am away Bobbie will be leaving Monastir to return to Canada. I go up to spend some time with her as she plays a game of crib with Allen. Brandy has been really good about playing with all of the children during her two weeks here and we'll all miss her.

Tunis International Airport

This morning I was off early to head to Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. While there is an international airport in Monastir, flights from Monastir to London cost three times what a flight from Tunis costs. I take a Louage, a kind of shared taxi/bus to the Louage station in Tunis. From there I take a taxi to the airport.

My Flight to London

This is the first airplane ride I've taken since we left Canada on June 29, 2001. In twenty years this is the longest that I've ever gone without flying somewhere. The thrill of traveling to new adventures is still there and I'm excited to be taking an airplane to London.

There are a couple of surprises at the airport. Despite careful packing, my Swiss Army knife ended up in my take-on luggage. I'm finally starting to experience first-hand the after effects of September 11, 2001. I know enough French to make it clear that I will be returning in a week, so my knife is labelled and I'm told to apply at customs when I return next Sunday to get it back. I'm also asked if I have any Dinars, the Tunisian currency. The Dinar is a controlled currency -- it is illegal to take any out of the country. I happen to have a hundred dinars in my pocket and I'm not allowed to leave until I exit the customs area, find a bank exchange, and convert my dinars into UK pounds. But with these minor annoyances out of the way I make my way to the departure gate and eagerly wait to board my flight to London.