Daily Life

There are big metal boxes on each rooftop to store the water for the week. On Saturday everyone scrambles to do laundry and take baths while the water is running to refill the tanks; on Sunday we start to conserve again. This morning I was dismayed at the lack of hot water in the shower; turns out I'm supposed to switch on the water heater for 40 minutes before expecting anything, then turn it off so the motor doesn't burn out. The switches are by the front door (!?). Also interesting about the front door is the fact that you have to lock it from the inside with the key just like you unlock it from the outside.

There is no land line operating in the apartment, so I bought a used cell phone today for only 21 dollars. (Yay!) This was after a trip to the bank to exchange money. The taxi driver and I had a typical conversation:

Me: Medina Riyadiah, please.
Driver: Where in Medina Riyadiah?
Me: The bank.
Driver: Which bank do you want to go to?
Me: I don't know. Is there more than one?
Driver: There are five. Which one do you want? Bank A, Bank B?
Me: I don't know. Which one is best?
Driver: Which bank do you want?
Me: It doesn't matter.
Driver: Well, I don't know which bank you want.
Me: I don't know.
Driver: Here we are at the Arab Bank.
Me: What about that other bank?
Driver: We passed that one already.
Me: Ok, this one is fine.....

This was after taking someone's advice to go to Medina Riyadiah and ask for "the bank".

Interaction in the bank:

Me: I'd like to change some money.
Teller: Tlwkejrlekjalkj?
Me: (blank look)
Teller: (smile)

Unfortunately I still can't understand colloquial too well. Hoping to rectify that...

We have a nice balcony from which I can overlook the city- a perfect place to sit and meditate. Of course the pall of smog is quite visible as well. There seem to be no end of noxious smells to partake of. Naturally I have to put on a veil to sit outside, since others can see me from balconies and rooftops.

It's possible to get much more help here than in the U.S. E.g., the bagger at Haboob's grocery will go out to the street carrying your bag and flag down a taxi for you. (Ah, luxury!) There's also a person in the apartment building who takes out the trash (which you leave outside your door) and will even go shopping for you! I'm definitely planning to call on him, especially when I need more bottled water. The way to get hold of him is to pick up the phone and press a certain button. My roomies were cracking up earlier today because they were laboriously explaining to him in Arabic that we need two fans. He must have lost patience, and ended with English: "I come right up." Time to don the veil again.

This neighborhood is called Hayy (or Khay?) al-Kharabsheh, or since there are two Kharabshehs, alternately called by taxi drivers "Kharabsheh al-Ajaanib", the foreigners' Kharabsheh, because so many foreigners have come here to study, and apparently have been coming and going for the last ten years.

Yesterday evening I met the brother of a friend, and the wife of his other brother, and we went with their daughters to the Maronite church on the outskirts of Amman. There were sheep and a donkey pastured next to it. I was able to understand most of the homily, and follow along fairly well in the missal. How nice to get to church, the first time since the fighting started.

For more info on Amman, this article is nice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amman

Photo Journey

Here are a few pictures from the exodus.

NBC News interviews a fellow student in the lounge of New Women's Dorm.














Port of Beirut from on board ship














1000 people on a ship made for 25


View from classroom window at Qasid Institute in Amman

The first two days in Amman

I am feeling at home here so far- the program directors have been so helpful and spent an entire day orienting us. Yesterday I took a grueling placement test which pushed me from fine into total fatigue, and then was oriented for two hours while I tried not to fall off my chair.

Although the Qasid program is not religious per se, they do have Quranic classes of various types, and their emphasis is on classical Arabic. They use Al-Kitab (the book I used in the U.S. and at AUB) as a supplement, and focus more on grammar, which I would actually like. In addition to the core program, I can opt to take additional classes like colloquial and newspaper reading. I should be starting classes tomorrow, after an oral interview.

Yesterday night I moved into an apartment with three other women from the program. Women at Qasid are required to wear hijab (veil) while at the school and in the neighborhood, for various reasons which include the fact that the school is tangentially connected with a well-known Sufi sheikh whose disciples are very conservative, and the neighborhood is also conservative. Out of respect for the neighbors they ask us to wear hijab in the area. This doesn't bother me much, but I didn't really come prepared. I went shopping this morning at the flea market and picked up a few clothes; I'll probably get an abaya or jilbab (long coat-like things) to make things easier.

Tonight my roomies and I went downstairs to eat with some other women, who had prepared a feast including hamburgers, french fries and brownies. It was all delicious, and we had a great time. Then some of us went to a café in the Sweifieh area, which is kind of like an outdoor mall, because they close the street off to cars when it is busy. I tried smoking arguileh/narguileh/hookah for the first time. It was alright, but I probably won't try it again.

The experience on Cyprus was so strange- first I spent hours and hours waiting in lines for a travel agent, to buy the ticket, etc. Then I finally got to a hotel and was able to let some of the experience hit me. The whole time since the bombing started was so difficult, and the evacuation was traumatic. The woman who ran the hotel on Cyprus was so caring and helpful, but I tried to act as normal as possible to avoid breaking down completely. Of course I had to let it out some. But I have been able to talk about Beirut here without much problem. I think it was also the lack of sleep. We didn't get much sleep on the boat, which we were on overnight. The strange part was hearing Greek spoken and using a different currency, and especially being in a vacation spot and not being there for fun but to recover from something and leave as soon as possible.

There are three guys here at Qasid who were in the program at AUB, but I haven't seen much of them since yesterday. It looks like I'll be the only "girl" from the program. But so far I am getting along so well with the other women here that I'm not worried about it.

Here it is back to the city noises and firecrackers, which were extinguished in Beirut for the last week. The firecrackers and different building noises are too much like bombs and anti-aircraft guns, and I do not like them at all. They definitely give me some anxiety. But hopefully in a little while I'll get used to it.

Will post some pictures soon...

Safe in Jordan!

Hi all,

Here I am in Amman, poised to begin another program (half-way through). More later, as lunch is calling.

Much love to all, and thanks for your concern and prayers!

Evacuation

Apparently we are to be evacuated any time now, which is good to know, but they thought it would be today, and now I'm hearing it might be tomorrow morning. We can only take bags we can carry, so I'm leaving my suitcases behind for some kind of retrieval later, I hope. Not sure what I'll wear when I get home! I have the jeans and T-shirt I'm wearing, and another T-shirt, underwear, one pair of socks and a set of pajamas. I guess I'll have to buy a small carry-on at the first good opportunity after arriving in Cyprus (if they have any left) and a few things. I'll also need to call my travel agency and find out what I can do about my ticket, etc. etc.

We've been asked not to leave the dorms, and we have been rearranging our luggage and giving away food. I got in touch with Fr. Ziad and Fr. Antonio, who have been very helpful, to say farewell; I really was looking forward to seeing them. Fr. Antonio's aunt offered to let me stay with her in Antelias, north of the city, and I almost went today. The reason I didn't was for fear of not being able to get back in time for an evacuation effort; it's a good thing I stayed here.

The amount of sorrow I feel at leaving under these circumstances is not small; so many things I wanted to do and people I wanted to see. Of course the Arabic program has been cancelled. It's funny to think about what a disaster this trip has been; but I refuse to limit it to that, since I know God can bring good out of anything. Exactly what that will be remains to be seen.

To Stay or to Go?

The campus is mostly empty, since a large number of Lebanese students have left to go home. Those of us remaining are trying to decide what to do- risk a trip by road to Syria (not for me) or wait for the State Department to make plans. They may arrange for us to go to Cyprus in the next few days. I would prefer to finish the program and stay in Lebanon, but the program may be cancelled.

The most frustrating thing is not having seen my friends here, and not being able to travel around.

The wireless network in the dorms is currently down, and I am running into obstacles buying a new phone card. I don't think I'll be able to update the blog very regularly...

We are very safe here on campus, but we can hear the bombs dropping and the anti-aircraft or anti-ship (?) artillery in other areas of the city.

Update: the CAMES study program made plans for us to go to Amman, Jordan through Syria tomorrow morning. However, they cancelled them later on in the day. Going to Amman would have been better than Cyprus for me, since my ticket back to Detroit is through there. Again, the future is mysterious. Very sad that I will not be able to finish the program.

With almost everyone gone from campus, the cats and the flies are running amok...

Surprise!

Little did you know you would have your own personal correspondent from a violent region... well, we have not heard anything here except fireworks. I guess the huge explosions yesterday night were in celebration of the capture of the Israeli soldiers. They were loud enough that I would have thought they were bombs! On TV we saw pictures of jubilant Hezbollah supporters with platters of sweets in the middle of the Beirut streets, handing them out to those in traffic. I have to say this attitude is ridiculous. Why people would rejoice over beginning unnecessary hostilities is beyond me. This is the result of pride gone wrong.

I'm very happy that we took our little trip to Baalbeck before these events, because the town was bombed today. I still hope that things may calm down soon. Classes won't be cancelled- apparently they're never cancelled here no matter what happens. Just as well, since we have nothing else to do! The positive outcome is that we can now see news in Arabic instead of tasteless American shows.

I've been sick the past two days with an intestinal thing. I got some really delicious cherries and sterilized them with tablets you can get at the pharmacy. No problem so far with other fruits or even salads. I had to call the same pharmacy yesterday evening to have some medicine delivered. Nice to get medical advice over the phone, with free delivery 24 hrs. a day! I'm tempted to eat the rest of the cherries, but one day in bed is enough- I can't afford to miss classes again. The funny thing is people seem to think I should go to the emergency room- hardly necessary for "routine" food-borne illness.

Baalbeck & Anjar

Just wanted to reassure you that I am actually here, I didn't decide to go to China instead, and it's not a stranger posting on my blog...

Baalbeck is in the Bekaa Valley, between the two mountain ranges (Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon), and is a Shiite area with a lot of support for Hezbollah. I managed to resist buying a Hezbollah T-shirt or flag, but some of the guys bought shirts and said they planned to wear them to parties back home.

They say Baalbeck was huge during the Roman occupation because of the temple complex to Jupiter, or Baal (I hope I'm getting that right), but now it is just a small tourist town. I think the ruins themselves might be bigger than the town! Admittedly I've never been to a ruined Roman temple before, but I can't imagine anything much bigger. They said these are the largest and best preserved ruins in the world, at least of a Roman temple. I was expecting to walk around and look at some isolated arches, but you climb up some steps and you are in the old temple, and you don't get out of it again for about an hour. I was greedily snapping pictures of the different carvings. They were still working on it for about 300 years, and never finished, so the style kind of evolved.


Here's a shot of some Latin graffiti!

After that we went to Anjar, where there's a ruined shopping mall. It's been somewhat reconstructed. Not nearly as amazing as Baalbeck, but still neat! They had a working drainage system, a palace, and a mosque with a covered cistern next to it (no longer covered).

Then, oh then, we went to Al-Shams restaurant in Zahle, which is the capital of the region. We were there a long time, while the waiters, with no unnecessary ceremony, loaded the table with mezze (appetizers) and plates heaped with kebabs and fruit. Yikes! They had great taste in music, too. (Here you see Farha smoking arguileh while eating. Next to her is my teacher Rima, in the headscarf.) Finally we trundled ourselves back out to the bus and returned to Hamra.

Downtown Beirut

We visited downtown Beirut on Friday, where a lot of heavy fighting happened. The restoration is not complete yet. This is what I expected the city to look like, with huge marble facades and striking places of worship. The churches and mosques are either stunningly beautiful or palpably aged, or both. I love my zoom!!! I also love being able to take as many shots as I need to with my digital camera.


We also saw Martyrs' Square/Freedom Square, and the memorial for Rafik Hariri. The actual coffins are in the memorial, above ground. The saddest part was the coffins of the six bodyguards who were killed along with him. The name of each was posted along with the name of his mother.

There are Phoenician and Roman ruins (baths and a law school) in a few places downtown, and we looked at them, too.

We stopped inside St. George's Orthodox Cathedral, where restorations of the wall paintings are still going on. I'm going to go back later to take pictures, because I wasn't sure how to turn my flash off.

The overall impression downtown is one of emptiness, because the streets are not alive like they are in Hamra- no coffee shops or pharmacies or grocers or feeling of daily life. It's almost like a set- the place where people will go shopping, or will go to work, once it's all put together again. Not that none of the shops or offices are open; but they are mostly glistening, new and slightly sterile, at least to the tourist's eye. Someone tells me people go downtown at night, not during the day. It has been hot and humid every day, and standing in the sun was not a good idea. The buildings seemed to reflect a lot of heat.

Comings and goings

Today I found out that there's a taxi hang-out near my gate. This means I don't have to walk (climb) all the way across campus to the main gate to get somewhere. But all the drivers get annoyed when they find out I want to go back to the other side of campus instead of the main gate, especially since I didn't know how to tell one of them where it was. Now I've got the golden words. ;-)

Feeling a little sad today because I found out that my grandfather passed away yesterday. He got sick just before I left. I really wanted to be there, but I guess this is just the way it was meant to be.

Yesterday evening I went to a small electronics shop to get a plug converter so I could charge my computer. The proprietor was so helpful, and even let me talk the price down from hardly anything. However I had to repeat the journey because I forgot I needed a converter with flat on both sides. We chatted for a while, and he told me he lives on the mountain, and drives into Beirut every day because he can't stand the heat and the noise. He gave me a plum and a peach from his garden, and also some cardboard boxes to prop up all the different plugs. Yes, I got some funny looks on the way back. He told me I wouldn't because people are always carrying boxes around to pack up and move!

More later...