So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye

ونحن نعدو كالخيول الوحسية على صفحات التاريخ

And we gallop like wild horses into the pages of history.

-Muhammad al-Maghut

A fitting ending to this blog.  I'm no longer in a country that speaks Arabic, English, and French, and it seems the time has arrived to find a new home for my occasional bursts of writing.  If you care to follow, I'm (ever so occasionally) over here.

How to lose all credibility with a single word

In the process of gathering the necessary information on a master's thesis (finishing up the first chapter of my thesis and citing a few last sources for my bibliography), I come across this dedication:

"To my wife [name redacted], thank you for constantly motivating and inspiring me with your awesomeness"

Umm...

Professor Strikes Again

"Well, falling off a cliff and falling in love are kind of similar"

-Arabic professor, explaining how the structure of a sentence could be misconstrued but wouldn't be that far off.

Quote of the Day

"Professors make mistakes.  So do prophets"

-My arabic professor, trying to put his errors into perspective.

Denial

Is a state of existence sometimes.  Right now, I don't have a paper and problem set due Thursday.  No, I definitely do not.  And I'm not a college student far away from Oklahoma.

Which is why I'm reading a blog about a woman in Oklahoma who lives on a working cattle ranch and takes the most beautiful pictures of her basset hound.  This picture highlighting their awkward proportions has convinced me I am meant to have one of these animals:

Also, note that doleful expression.  I think I'm in love.

The blog in question is a great read that I discovered after a trip to a ranch earlier this year that almost convinced me to move out into the middle of nowhere and commune with horses, cattle, and cowboys for the rest of my life.

Also, her basset hound does this:

My dog will never ever ever be that calm around another animal.  Cheers to basset hounds.  One of you will be mine someday.

Quote of the Day

"We are like octopus"

-My arabic teacher, arms outstretched like tentacles, trying to explain all of the directions that our class will be heading in this semester.

The View from My (Car) Window

A beautiful car ride.  Except for the fact that I was so car sick my brain and stomach's dialogue went something like this:

stomach: "I can't hold on anymore.  Stuff's comin' up!"

brain: "no! wait! there's other people in this car"

stomach: "it doesn't matter"

brain: "yes. yes, it does. throwing up on other people rarely makes friends"

stomach: "Fine. I will hold onto my contents for another five minutes, and then we will have this conversation again"

This lasted for an hour.

Why Google?

Why are you so smart??

I'm just taking a break and checking email, not trying to get majorly nostalgic and too distracted to think at all.  Now my mind is in a million different places.  Instead of the usual couple thousand.  Hence, I'm blogging.

Khellas!  This thesis proposal won't write itself.

The View from My Window

Into the courtyard in my dorm.  It looks nice, but let me tell you, sound carries and echoes a lot here, when two roommates across the way start screaming at each other (no idea why, but it lasted a LONG time), I get to hear the whole thing.

And no, there isn't normally a rug on the lawn, but another room in the courtyard's toilet overflowed and flooded their room and they're drying it out until it doesn't smell like 'an old sock'.

Nothing like the vagaries of dorm life to ruin a nice picture.  Ok, fine, maybe not-so-nice picture.  But it's still been ruined.

I've Clearly Suffered a Head Injury

Talking about what I ate this summer (or didn't, as was the case for a while there), I struggled (and ultimately failed) to come up with the name for my favorite sandwich in Lebanon.

For the record its schwarma. Schwarma. Schwarma.  Schwarma.

A moment of reflection

I don't remember exactly what I was doing in the summer of 2006 besides working for this lovely gentleman, but I do remember telling myself that I wanted to go to the World Cup in 2010.  I had it all planned out, I'd study abroad at the University of Cape Town and then stay for the summer to watch some football.

Flash forward to a summer 2010, and while I did not stay in the US of A, I was nowhere near South Africa, and couldn't have been happier.  (Well, I could have been, but I'm pretty good with where I was).  The driving force of my summer was studying a language, but I got to do so many other things while I was in Lebanon and met so so many amazing people.

The older I get, the more inspiration I find in the people around me.  Some of the people I met (especially the girls) were such dynamic, interesting people who are going after what they want in life.  I hope I can be as brave as them, especially over the next few years.  I do not want to blink and find myself unhappy in the near future because I didn't have the guts to take the chances I should have.  That's probably my biggest fear in life right now.

So that's the theme of my life for a while now.  No regrets.  After all it is far easier to do something and apologize afterward than ask for permission beforehand.

We'll see how this goes.  I don't know how much of my life I will be writing about here, but we'll see.  I've enjoyed writing a lot this summer, but at the very best will be posting much less frequently in the coming months.

Salaam [peace in Arabic] out for now my friends.

Republic of My Sexist Heart

First heard this song on a boat up in Tripoli.  I liked it a lot, the melody was catchy and it had a lot of energy.  Come to find out (after translating it in class) that it's about how women should not want to do anything more than 'be the president of their man's heart'.  There's been a big to-do in Lebanon about it, but despite that I heard it EVERYWHERE while I was there.

The music video makes it a little better, because it's a man talking about his daughter, but I still don't like the message.

But I might have it on my iPod.

Defining mundane

If you've been reading the blog all summer, you might remember this entry.  Take a close look at the fourth and fifth steps and you'll know exactly what I'm doing this afternoon.  Told you my life was exciting.

My Comedy Hour

Just had my biannual appointment with my dentist, which I have to say is something I actually look forward to.  Allow me to explain why...

My dental hygienist should be a stand up comedian.  She is a forty-something mom who works part time at my dental practice, but I swear to you I spend most of my 45 minutes in the dentist's chair trying not to laugh too loud.  She doesn't talk about anything remarkable, but everything from her son's Korean lessons to her children's inexplicable adoration of the movie Julie & Julia makes me crack up.  Which is not something you usually find yourself doing in the dentists chair.

I would go to the dentist every week if I had the time.  No joke.  (Well, actually, they're a lot of them to be found there).

A Visual Metaphor for Lebanon

 

There are two types of cars here: expensive, new, and foreign and very old.  There really doesn't seem to be a middle in Lebanon, but the two live and drive side by side.  Some like to say it's charming...I guess time will tell.

Second place is the first loser which makes third place...

[This is dated, but I found it in my drafts and thought it was worth sharing]

No, it's obviously an important match and should be a good one.  Before the final happens I wanted to share the place where I watched the Netherlands game a few days ago, the Duke of Wellington at the Mayflower Hotel, with a group of rabid Dutch fans.  It was perfect.

As if the name doesn't give it away, the Duke of Wellington is an aspiring English pub decorated with some folksy touches.  It was decked out (not by the management, just well prepared fans) for the game:

A close up on my favorite decoration:

Another student in my program is from the Netherlands, and I'll probably be rooting for them purely because of him, my teams (USA and Ghana) left too long ago.

Home

I'm here.  It's nice.  I'll be back in California in four days.

If my tone didn't make it obvious, I'm a little bittersweet about my goodbye to Lebanon.  I feel like my time at home is an awkward limbo between my summer and my school year.  I'm happy to be here, and obviously I love seeing my parents and friends but for now I am spending as much time as I can with a certain somebody and looking forward to feeling more normal once I'm back in California.

I've got a few more posts coming up that I've found among my drafts, but that will about wrap up this blog.  Forever.  The end of an era approaches...

Remnants

Still finding evidence of my hospital stay on my skin.  What is it with medical tape adhesive that just won't be scrubbed off?

A Step in the Right Direction

One of many that needs to be taken, but bravo to the Lebanese parliament for this recent and much needed reform.

A Trip Downtown

My friend E and I (new E to the blog! E's a big letter in my life here apparently) walked downtown a few days ago and I thought I'd pass along a few of the sites that I don't think I've mentioned  before.  The Place de l'etoile, better known to me as Beirut's clock tower, has corporate sponsorship (click to enlarge if you can't see the Rolex logo):

Downtown Beirut is absolutely stunning, and I kind of wish I'd spent more time there.  Except than I remember why I haven't, the place is crawling with tourists and a place to walk around and shop, not chill.  A better view of the area around the clock tower, apparently called Nejmeh Square.  The Lebanese Parliamentary building abuts the square, and it's a great area to walk around in (no cars).

The reason E and I walked downtown was to visit the Virgin Megastore, which I didn't take any pictures of.  Perhaps I should have? A plaque in the store's elevator:

Honestly, it looked like the rest of the buildings in the downtown area to me (not that they're not beautiful).  If you're thinking, f*&@ you Anna, I have no idea what that means, too bad.

Alright, I've had pity on you. I went back through my old pictures and found some of the store in a shot when I was trying to get the soccer ball patterned dome of the building behind it. 

 

That's all for now, I need to go to sleep.

Coming up: a follow up with my surgeon, AUB museum, and possibly a rock concert.  I will blog about only two of those.   Guess which one will be omitted? (this blogger acknowledges the existence of a phenomenon known as tmi)