taking advantage of my time while I have it and avoiding making my personal budget

Yesterday a few of us rode bikes down the ever-crowded corniche. Let me paint a picture for you. After I learn to ignore the trash on the sidewalk, everything is beautiful. On my left is the Med, it is nearing evening so the sky is warm, the water is blue and it is cool. In the distance we can see the mountains with the villages that glitter at night, and past that we can see the Lebanon Mountains.
In the evening, we have discovered, people will walk or park at the corniche, pull out their argile and have a long sit-n-smoke, watching people and the sea. So we see people smoking argile, we see veiled woman, unveiled woman, we see runners, we see families, we see Europeans and everything in between. To the right we see buildings, many of them new, modern residencies that will cost an ungodly amount to live in.

You might not be surprised by what’s coming, but I can say authentically that I was surprised. So we’re riding our bikes down the corniche and I pass by a dad who is helping his (maybe 3 year old) boy pee at a tree on the sidewalk. I’m talking about a nice little palm tree in a little box on the sidewalk. I had to do a double take, that little dude with his pants pulled down, his dad helping him every all the time… . Meg and I had a time with that.

Yesterday I went to an Italian restaurant with some of my friends on Hamra street in, guess where… Hamra! I think you all will appreciate their eclectic mix of music. It was the third song I really noticed. You would NEVER guess: it was the Carpenters. Who would have known that in Lebanon they played a Carpenter’s song in a restaurant?! I should sit longer next time and see what kind of rotation this place has.

what I would like to scream

If God is, then how can we conceive him? If God is, then how do we fit him into our lives? If God is, then how can we even pretend to know what he requires of us? How can we conjure our own god if God is? Do you think he likes that we try to make-up our own ideas and beliefs of him? Do you think he wants us to give him attributes that sound good at the time? Do we take comfort in our human ideas of God? Should we take comfort in our human ideas of God? If God is, then wouldn’t he show us his essence?

the Med, Blue Mosque, Rats and MORE

After a long walk with my roommates on the corniche (sidewalk along the Med) we climbed the hill to our apartment and waited for Meg to take out the keys to unlock the gate. Fortunately, we were able to witness two suave Lebanese men on one moped, but not just any moped, a pink and silver glittery one. Needless to say we laughed for a while and considered that pink might not necessarily be a “girly” color here… only for a half a second. The trendy men of Lebanon where pink button-ups, although probably most of them don’t drive pink glittery mopeds. Hmmmm… .

When I arrived in Beirut and began to unload my suitcases, I realized I had left two very valuable things: 1.The match to my other shoe, and 2.The air pump to inflate my pilates ball. The only thing I could think to do was to go to a gym, and so I gave my pilates ball to my friend Ash who would take it to her gym. She told me that she sees so many crazy things in this city that make her laugh and she was glad that this time, when she walked down the street with my inflated pilates ball, she could be the one whom others are laughing at.

Tonight I was 10 feet away from the Med. I’ll just say, there is every American restaurant known to man in Beirut, and tonight, my friends and I decided that we had to have Pizza Hut (you’ll have to excuse me for this, I promise I have been eating and experiencing lots of Lebanese food already). The restaurant, incidentally, is right next to the corniche. We were feeling very full after dinner and decided it would be best to walk home, so we made our way down the crowded corniche . Today is a holiday, celebrating the end of Ramadan and people were everywhere, sitting, smoking argile, eating lots of food, eating more food and strolling about. The one thing that was a little unnerving was fireworks on the sidewalk. If I only would have known they were coming, the sound of the explosion wouldn’t frighten me so much. It doesn’t help that random people crack jokes to us about bombs. I’m not kidding, it has happened to us 4 times already. Anyway, to get to my point, I was so close to the Med. The third time I stopped to look over the railing at the beautiful, trashy and polluted sea, I saw not one, but two, then three fat rats scurrying in and around the rocks on the shore. About 15 feet further out, there were three people fishing.

One more thing and I’ll go to bed. Yesterday after I went to church, Meg, Ash and I took a walk downtown to explore. We had eaten at this great Lebanese restaurant and then visited Hariri’s tomb, right next to the big, blue mosque. Hariri’s tomb I will get to later. The mosque we were surprised to find so conservative. Have I mentioned that among Muslims in Lebanon, just over 50% is Shiite? This is interesting, because most of the Muslims in the world are Sunni. Sorry, I’ll get to that later too. When we went to the door, the man said we could enter only if we wore these oversized, black, shiny, heavy, button –down robes with shoulder pads and a matching black head-covering. Incidentally, the robes are just waiting at the mosque for people like us, but I respect that, I think. I can’t deny that the mosque is beautiful and unique. It must have cost…a lot.

In the center is a chandelier that we estimated is a story and a half tall, it is HUGE. I have great, unabashed issues with the utter elaboration of some of the mosques I have seen (I could also talk about the churches). I stood in the center, sweating from my layers of cloths, trying to keep the head –covering from falling off of my head, looked up and marveled, conflicted over two opposing forces: the breath-taking beauty of the mosque, and my fervent conviction that I am a temple of Christ and He dwells in me. I know that God does not want our pretty man-made buildings, He wants our lives, our devotion and what in humans is eternal, our souls.

our fruit man, our apartment, and the identity crisis

Will get back to identity crisis, I just have to share with you about our fruit man. Our fruit man is very generous, so generous it makes me wonder. Today I went to this fruit stand for the third time because I really needed to know if he would be consistently generous, and HE WAS! (We go to him because my friend says he’s the only one who doesn’t try to rip her off). I can get a bag with a medium –sized tomato, a nectarine, a few bananas, an avocado and an apple for only 3000LL, 2 US dollars.

We know that it is Ramadan (actually, tomorrow is the last day so you won’t get this before then) and there is a spirit of generosity among Muslims here, but we’re sure we aren’t getting the deals because of the holiday. On to Ramadan: I have only gotten to experience almost two weeks of the month long Muslim fast, which is nice for me because all of the restaurants are empty during the day. Even though I haven’t experienced Ramadan in any other country, I know that in Beirut it is… not as big, partly because of the Christian population. However, it is interesting to see the city with decorations and advertisements in support of the holiday. I say holiday, but Ramadan is not really a holiday. It is an Islamic religious ritual that in Beirut, is holiday-like because of the décor around the city. In fact, I’ve heard they use the same street lights during Ramadan as they do at Christmas [hahaha].

So, I’ve established that Beirut is “westernized” and that it is undergoing an identity crisis. This crisis is for a number of reasons including the civil war. Many Lebanese left during their civil war, therefore left their apartments and homes. Some of these are completely abandoned, so we see abandoned buildings (still owned by the people who left the country) and buildings that have started being constructed but have never been finished. Some of the Lebanese who have left came back to their home country after years of learning a new life in another country. So we have great numbers of people who have… changed.

Another thing, the power goes out (I’m writing this because at 11pm, it just happened), aside from the 3pm every day power-out, randomly at other times. This happens to the whole city. Most buildings have generators (my apartment does, praise the Lord!) but some do not, and the power will be out for up to 3 hours. There are theories as to why this happens. One of them being … I’ll tell you later.

One thing I absolutely must write about before I go to sleep, my apartment. My friends who will be taking language classes with me are my roommates. Our apt has 6 bedrooms and a living room in the center. Our rooms are huge with equally huge windows. I look out my bedroom window and to the left and past the city I see mountains. The mountains glitter with lights from other towns. To my right I see more of the city, where I will be living for 10 months. My roommate’s rooms connect with a balcony overlooking the city and the Mediterranean. I go in there a lot because the light in their rooms is heavenly at every part of the day. If you know me, you know I have recently come to greatly appreciate light. I am instinctively intrigued by the connection of light and emotion. We can blame it on Anne Willingham or Kim Nofsinger. All of this to say, I know what I’m talking about when I say the light is heavenly. I am drawn to those rooms during sunset. I haven’t even mentioned we have roof access, just a few steps away to one of the sweetest views of the city. If you don’t know, Beirut is on a peninsula, so from the roof we see the (dirty, polluted) Mediterranean on 2 ½ sides, also, of course, the city buildings.

I would like to end with, I am especially blessed. My friend who studied here last semester lived in a nightmare apartment (with roaches, holes in the wall, no space, no generator…), and many of the apartments around here are nightmare apartments. We are the envy among our friends for this blessing. I’m just pointing out, we got in the right place at the right time, and bang, it happened. Thanks be to Jesus.

Good Night

first impressions

It’s 12 at night after a long day, I’m tired but my nails are wet so I’ll type while they dry.

Oh yes, on our way to Beirut we had a 12 hours layover in Frankfurt. I’m not really excited about writing about it at the moment. We were so tired but managed to see a couple of churches (dating to the late 1200s), a museum with a very intriguing mural (Procession of the People’s Representatives to the Paulskirche by Johannes Grutzke, 1991), and a really touristy area called Rodenburg. My favorite place was the train station, will have photos later. We passed by the opera house on the way back to the train and since we hadn’t slept in over 2 days we found a grassy spot in the shade and crashed for two hours, haha.

Our flight to Beirut was so empty we had rows to ourselves, weird huh? I guess no one wants to come here, who knows why …. As soon as we exited to plane we felt the moist, humid air inside the airport. I knew Lebanon would be a special, unique kind of place when I saw in the airport an advertisement for a wedding dress, the model sexy, blonde-headed and the wedding dress exposing her midsection. It was the most seductive wedding dress I’ve ever seen!

I remember thinking the first day thinking that Beirut, or Lebanon is so liberal, which is completely against my expectations (the ones I tried so hard not to have). After a week of being here, I’m used to seeing sexy advertisements which are comparable to ones I saw in Germany on the way here. On this subject, it seems that this country is its own kind. My friend and roommate (who has been here since last January) told me she truly thinks the country is having, or has had an identity crisis.

introduction

Marhaba from Beirut! I hope this blog will be sufficient for keeping everyone in the know. I wanted to include something other than my newsletter and realized there were so many people who wanted updates, so I’m blogging. I thought I’d never see the day, but the day is here, I must embrace something new. I have to preface all of this with, I never thought a diary online was all that attractive, everything in me wanted to run away from it. But knowing my personal rants and crazy adventures are for my family and friends, I write with love. So I guess it’s more of a letter.
This is a personal blog about my life in Beirut and what my Lord Jesus is teaching me. I’m excited to share with you all!

Oh yes, and responses are more than welcome, please respond to all of my rants. As you know, I miss you all and want to hear from you!