Back in the City of Lights

So Hai! I'm back.

Tunisia? Wonderful. Our biggest decision every day was: should we eat now or have a drink first?

But please don't ask me anything about Djerba. I have no idea. Hell, it took me a couple of days to realise that Djerba is an island. We pretty much did what I thought we would do.

Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Can you blame us?



We are turrible turrible people.

That being said, I feel rested and tranquil. And as I battled my way into the office this morning, nothing could kill my post-holiday buzz.

Now you may be wondering about whether or not I remained my usual pasty white self.

The answer to this question is best illustrated by the reactions of my colleagues this morning, which was: "Bathe much?" and "Jeez girl! JELUS!"

However one much suffer for "beauty" and wow. Did I suffer.

What happened was this. The first day in Djerba was sort of weird. It was a bit foggy and there was this icey wind blasting in off the Mediterranean. On stepping off that plane at 3 am last Thursday and finally getting to sleep around 5 am, I was letting myself in for some fun times when I woke up a couple of hours later.

Namely that I was starting my vacation like this:



And that, barely before lunch that same Thursday, what with the hazy sky and the wind, I would have set in motion the catastrophe that would become this by nightfall:



With skin throbbing and everything.

Awesome. What was truly awesome was how people would stare at me. You know. Like I wasn't uncomfortable enough already what with all my stupidity and beating myself up and the fact that my sunburn lines didn't match my bathing suit by a mile and a half.

Because that's important.

Mr C kept calling me "The Lighthouse" and kept insisting that I wasn't allowed to complain since I've had my skin for a very long time and that I should know better.

Dude is right, which is why I'm not that crazy about the sun: Because I gotta keep hiding from it. And even when I'm not an idiot and remember to wear 50+ sunscreen, it looks like I'm getting a sunburn because I get itchy heat rashes when the sun is, you know, relentless.

Swweeeetttttttttt!

So. I was made fun of quite a bit by Tunisians, who are, IMHO, easily the nicest people on earth. They are also shameless flirts. One particularly cunning elderly waiter really charmed me when he started rubbing ice into my neck and asked if I had children. He expressed surprise when I told him that I had "only" two. Is that all!? You're young! You need more. He told me he had eight himself.

No kidding. He sort of struck me as a randy fellow.

Then there were shopkeepers who tried to convince Mr C and I to buy stuff. The thing that I remember the most was how they tried to convince us that vermeil, a mix of gold and silver, existed. I was all WTF? I don't think anybody would be stupid enough to alloy gold with silver. One shopkeeper insisted and I said, DUDE, I DON'T THINK SO! Save that talk for someone who didn't study Jewellery in school and thinks she knows better.

[Apparently vermeil is an English word too, which means silver gilded with gold. I don't remember that word ever being used in class. Must have been one of those days where I didn't showed up late for class... Ahem.]

By day 4 (or 5) of my sunburn and sitting in the shade with a sweater on (it was freaking cold in the shade BTW) I woke up with little to no pain, but I sure as hell felt like the skin on my arms was part of a suit of clothes that were too small for me because I couldn't bend them right. They felt like limp linked sausages on either side of my body.

Also? I had belated heat rashes on my legs and behind my ears.

Most peculiar.

The only trip we took outside of the complex was the day that it rained just before dawn. We spent the morning wandering down the beach and stumbled onto an abandoned Club Med. Which was the epitomy of cool. I was so annoyed that I had forgotten my camera at the hotel.

How often do you see a Club Med with new tennis courts and a pool full of sand?

Phooey.

And now, I'm home and into the molting part of the whole sunburn experience. Where my shoulders fascinate my fingers as they sneak under my shirt to rip off just a tiny, feathery piece of old skin. Where my arms are a patchwork of white-ish-ness, rosey raw and ancient brown.

Now would not be a good time to commit a murder. Everywhere I walk, I'm leaving a magic trail of forensic evidence. I looked at myself this morning and saw myself covered in delicate wisps of moth wings and I realised that my floor would be littered with their delicate dead bodies when I disrobed this evening.

Nice imagery, but I sure as hell better be smarter when we go to Cuba in July.

Damn.

In a sad way, I was happy to get back to Paris so that I could get back to a climate where my skin could recuperate in peace and where I wouldn't feel obliged to force myself to enjoy sunshine which was making me a bit jumpy as it felt so wrong and so dangerous for my body post-sunburn.

A shame, but there you go.

And while the trip to Djerba was predominated by my asinine sunshine glitch, it will probably go down as the holiday where I felt that Mr C and I were most able to reconnect.

And what's a little flakey skin when there's that?

Yup. When you think about it, it's really too bad that touching me was out of question for most of the trip.

Suddenly I'm wondering if I didn't premeditate the whole thing.

I mean... I feel so rested!