Beirut Report V

I'm done with the first week of class here, but it feels like a month! We don't have much homework (I wish we had a bit more), but 4 hours of class and the sudden start of everything was quite a brain shock.

I'm enjoying myself, but I'm also a little homesick. I miss my family and friends, and I miss Boston a lot. I don't know why; usually this doesn't happen when I go overseas, and certainly not right at the beginning! I guess maybe it means I've really become at home in Boston, or something like that. Hopefully I'll get better and not worse as the weeks go by.

It's been an awesome weekend: after a relaxing Friday afternoon and evening, I went with about 10 others from the Arabic program to the AUB graduation party. There were some 2,500 people, and it was at a beautiful beach resort in Sidon. I didn't drink much - just 2 and a half drinks, but it was enough to make me feel it just a bit. Definitely not a pleasant feeling. There was an open bar, and all-you-can-eat Lebanese food, which was fantastic. Then I danced for an hour or so, relaxed near the beach, and headed home.

We got home at 6:00am and had to get up by 9 to go on a trip with our group! The trip was great, too -- an old palace, Lebanese "mezza" lunch, and we got to personally meet Walid Jumblatt, the head of the Lebanese Druze community, which was a great honor. His house and its grounds were exactly what I would build were I a millionaire - winding paths between cool stone buildings, live streams plunging down waterfalls crisscrossing the property, a very three-dimensional plan, ivy everywhere, a library, even rare antelope in a large yard!

In a little while I'm going out to eat in Beirut with my 3rd cousins, and I'm tired already! Yikes...

P.S. Since I know at least three of you are in utter desperation to know who I danced with, for about half an hour it was opposite Laura, a 29-year-old who just quit her job as the producer of CNN Asia's nightly news. No, it wasn't romantic, and unlike American places I've been to, this Lebanese dance floor was not lewd or crude. And, believe it or not, everyone was smiling and laughing, and having a good time. While drunk kids the world over get on my nerves, at least the Lebanese are happy when they drink!