Beirut Report I

Anyway, all has gone well so far. I had a good flight, spent a few hours going around London, and made it into Beirut on schedule. I quickly got in contact with 3rd-cousins, and spent the second night up in the mountains. The Skaf clan is large and active, and I was welcomed with open arms. They have nice houses, servants, and SUV's.

The young people include Gaby, his sisters Genie & Lama, their cousin Bashar, and their circle of friends. I stayed at the home of Hind Skaf, middle-aged and unmarried, who lives with her mother and downstairs from her brother and his young family.

Relationally, the Skafs are descended from Sofia Skaf, nee Kfouri, whose father Ayoub took the rest of his family to America during the First World War. Ayoub had a son named Yousef, or Joseph, who had three sons: Kenneth, Ralph, and Ferris. Ralph is my grandfather.

At A.U.B. I've made a few early acquantances: my roommate Eyad Zahri, a Syrian-American arrived from Damascus yesterday. I flew in on the same plane as David E, one of the teachers. He's a Canadian, and a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard. He'll be teaching High Beginners' Arabic, and I found out from him that they're planning to copy a Middlebury College regimen that has been effective their: forced immersion. At Middlebury, students of any of their 8 languages sign a pledge to speak just their own language, and are held to that pledge by policing professors. So, with the exception of writing home, I'd be on an Arabic-only programme, which I would definitely like, as hard as it may be.

Originally written Sunday, June 30.