I posted pictures! Lots of pictures! Some are the graf art in Hamra which is where I live. Some under the title "Corniche" are of the walkway by the sea where I go running. It is always full of families with kids riding bikes and roller blading. There are vendors selling corn and coffee and argeli (hookah). You can see that on warm days people go swimming. Of course, only men go swimming as it would cause a huge scene if a woman was seen in a bathing suit. However, the men can go swimming in their underwear whenever they want. I have seen women go swimming wearing their entire covering including the long black garment to the floor and their veil. The range of people here is so vast though. There are women who are covered in black from head to toe with only little slits for their eyes and then there are also the Muslim women who wear leggings, short skirts, tall boots and designer sunglasses, and to top it all off they wear a veil on their head. Then there are also the Muslim women who don't wear any outward sign of their religion. It is a constant struggle for me and for the entire population of Lebanon, to try and take each person as an individual and not project all of our previous experiences and ideas on people before we get to know each other as human beings and not just the labels because there are SO many labels. Anyways, NEW TOPIC. The other pictures are of caving with the Extreme Club which was AMAZING and planting trees in Anjar with the Environmental Club. A couple pictures of the Christmas chapel. You can see the room where I sing every week with the band and the people I work with who are so great. The snowy pictures are of the mountains where I went skiing/ snowmobiling with a friend from AUB over the break I had last week. It is really amazing that in Lebanon I can go up to the mountains and ski and then come back down to Beirut and run at the beach in shorts on the same day! There are also pictures of Magdouche, which is my friend's village in the South where I went for New Year's Eve. The pictures of the sunset and the moon are NOT photoshopped. Lebanon really is this beautiful. From the pictures you can probably see why I don't want to come back to the U.S. Just kidding mom:) SO I had a great break for a week between semesters and now I am back to school starting a new semester which is shaping up to be even better than last semester! AND my grandparents are coming home this Saturday! Lebanon makes me so happy.

New Pictures!

Hi! I finally added a few new pictures. These are from my trip to Akkar where we renovated the school. You can see the before and after pictures. The school looked very different when we finished. This past week I had finals. I have one more tomorrow (Monday) and then I will have a week and a half of vacation. I think I have done well on my finals so far. The schooling here is very test-heavy...no papers which is unfortunate for me but I am getting used to it. Last night I went to a concert in Bourg Hamoud. Of course, it was in Armenian and I didn't understand anything but musically, the band was really good and the lead singer had an amazing voice. My friends translated the basic ideas for me:) It is getting very cold here and I am starting to freeze because I didn't really bring winter clothes...including a warm jacket or boots. I think I may have to spend some of my vacation shopping. Everyday I get home and put on three sweaters and curl into my bed:)

Hello everybody! I know everybody wants me to upload pictures but, unfortunately, the internet in my building is so bad that it takes about 20 minutes to upload one picture and that causes me excruciating pain so today I will just write. The last time I wrote was right after Christmas. For New Years Eve I went to my friend's village in the South of Lebanon and we just spent the night watching tv and eating with his family. I spent the rest of my break trying to be outside as much as possible as the weather was like summer and reading and writing. Some Armenians, including my roommate, celebrate Christmas on January 6 so I went to church with her in Bourg Hamoud (the major Armenian neighborhood in Beirut). In Bourg Hamoud there are dvd stores where I can buy any dvd for 75 cents! I already bought Avatar and Amelia. See Avatar in the movie theater but DO NOT spend money to see Amelia. I was anxious to get back to school and see everybody. Last Friday I went caving with my Extreme Team. Caving was AMAZING! I had to wriggle on my belly through these tiny tunnels. There were bats flying around everywhere but I wasn't scared! When we came to a room we sat silently and could hear the water dropping from the celing. Then there was this little tiny room that we had to get to alone cause only two people could fit inside. In the room if you knocked on the rocks you could hear different pitches and it was really beautiful. The next day I went to plant trees at a school in Anjar, an Armenian village in the mountains. We planted 55 trees in honor of Haigazian (my university's) 55th anniversary and then went out and ate A LOT of food. I saw Avatar in 3D and loved it. You should all go see it in the theater. This is my last week of the semester. The next week will be final exams. I just registered for next semester. My courses are Human Rights, Comparative Politics, Politics of Lebanon, Christian-Muslim Dialogue and International Law. It looks a little overwhelming but it will be interesting. Also, one of my friends is teaching me Armenian. I have a lesson once a week and it is really fun. Also, starting next semester, another one of my friends is going to start giving me Arabic lessons every week because I feel that I need to be more deliberate about learning the language. I am not satisfied with the amount of Arabic I have learned so far so I want to work harder on it for the remainder of my time here. Also, some very exciting news for me is that my grandparents who have been visiting my relatives in Atlanta since the summer are finally coming home to Lebanon! I am really excited to have my family here. I will feel much more at home with them. Other than that, I am just enjoying life and all the new things that I learn about myself and about the world with each new day. I'm really happy here but I sure do miss my little brother:)

Merry Christmas!

I have finally finished with all the tests and papers I had due before vacation. It has been VERY busy but SO fun! I think that my tests and papers went well. I have a couple projects to do over the break but I will not worry about those till next week:) I posted pictures below of the bike ride I did with my Extremers Club from Tyre(in the South) to Hamra(Beirut). After the break we are going caving! For Christmas, I baked LOTS of cookies to bring to a Christmas party I had with some friends. It was really nice and I still had some left over to give to others at my dorm. On Christmas Eve I went to my aunt's house. We had a nice dinner and visited. After everyone went to bed I watched "Love Actually" and then went to sleep:) On Christmas day I walked around the neighborhood and saw the Christmas decorations then I visited some family who I have been meaning to see for a while and it was very nice. I had to go back to my dorm in Hamra on Christmas night because I had another project. On the morning of Dec. 26th I had to be at Haigazian at 5am. A group of Hagaizian students went to Akkar, a neighborhood in the North near the Syrian border, to renovate a school that is in need of help. We renovated an entire building...the entire inside and outside. We cleaned, scraped and painted and the final product was worth all the hard work. We were totally exhausted by the end. I will post pictures when I get them in a couple weeks of the before and after. I came back after a couple days and my vacation finally started. Yesterday, I went shopping...bought a shirt and two books...then went to the premiere of a documentary called "Gaza Hospital" at AUB. Today, I went running/walking/gazing at the sea and the cloudy sky opened up beautifully for me for a couple hours. I plan to spend my break exploring Lebanon...especially the areas close to where I live...and take pictures so you can all see this neighborhood that I live in. It is an exciting place to be! I promise I will also spend this break writing about some topics that have been on mind and posting pictures on this blog.

New Pictures and Updates!

I have been very busy these last couple of weeks with midterm exams and different activities. I posted some pictures of the spiritual life retreat with my club from Haigazian. We went up to the mountains to an area called Dour el Chour which you can see is really beautiful. That was two weeks ago. This past Friday I had an actvity with my extreme club. We took a bus to Sur (Tyre) and then rode our bikes back to Hamra. We rode from 11:30pm until 6:30am along the rodes and highways of Beirut along the sea. The moon was big and bright and reflecting off the sea. It sounds romantic but it was really cold and there are no streetlights so we couldn't see the road and thus, couldn't see the potholes. Let's just say there were a few unfortunate accidents but no one was badly hurt. I have been running regularly since I got here so physically the bike ride wasn't very hard on my muscles but my butt is still recovering. I will post some pictures of this trip when I get them from my friend. After riding all night I arrived back home at 6:40am, changed my clothes and then ran back to school for another trip that I was taking with a different group to the North of Lebanon at 7:30am. Oh, to be young and adventurous! We went to see some different monasteries and villages in the North and had lunch and went for a ride in a paddleboat which wasn't really fun after biking for 8 hours. This was also a really beautiful trip. My favorite site was the Kadisha valley which is in most of the pictures below with all the pretty colors in the valleys and mountains. It was the first time I have really seen fall colors since I've been here. Also, Kadish is a Syriac word meaning "holy" and I was really excited because that is the language of my mom's church so I knew the word from the church music I grew up listening to and of course I burst into song.

Lately, I have noticed that I am so relaxed here and I'm almost always in a really good mood. I'm taking five classes, have a student job and am a member of three clubs at Haigazian, but somehow I never feel stressed out and I have been thinking about why. I think people are more relaxed here. People will go out at the last minute rather than having to schedule something. People aren't so rigid about time and addicted to their schedules. Life seems to have a more natural and comfortable flow here which I think has made me a more healthy person. In the U.S., I always felt like I had to be penciled into peoples' lives. Another big difference here, which is something my mom has always talked about, is that in the U.S. you always have to be invited to someone's house. Here, people just drop by and everyone is happy to have you and welcomes you and genuinely wants you stay. When I first arrived here, there were a lot of little things that I thought were rude, but now I realize that most of the things make life simpler and easier because people don't hide what they are thinking/feeling the way that Americans do. In the U.S., you never know if somebody is genuine or if they are just being polite. You never know if someone wants you to stay or if they are just saying that because socially it is what is expected. People don't wear as many masks here. It is also strange that in the U.S., everyone is SO scared of everything. Of everything from processed foods to driving without a seatbelt to terrorism. Here, in a country whose history is ravaged by civil war, occupation, invasion, a presently unstable government and tense relations between religious and political factions, everyone goes about their everyday life without a worry. There is a different mentalityhere because people have not been conditioned to fear, fear, fear and it really shows in everyday life. Compared to here, the U.S. population is so secure yet we have been taught to fear so that we will consume becuse capitalism and the U.S. government can't function unless we are scared.

My Birthday(See pictures below!)

I turned 21 on November 1! Some of the people who I live with came to my room at midnight with a cake and balloons and surprised me. I spent the day with my aunt Amal and my cousins Samar and Semer. It was great to see Samar because she is doing her medical residency in the U.S. and she was just here for a week. At night, I ate my 3rd cake from Mary Mikhael, the president of the school where I have my dorm room. Then I went and rented movies with my friend. The next day(not my birthday) I was surprised with yet another cake(my fourth) from my Grandma and Grandpa in the U.S. Everybody was very happy to have the cake at lunch. Unfortunately, I did not go out and get drunk on my 21st birthday, as is customary in the good old U.S.A. because my birthday happened to fall on a Sunday and most of my friends had big tests on Monday morning. But don't worry, I will make up for it on Friday night...just kidding, mom.