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| Not a bad life |
Well, Laine and I totally failed to keep up the blog while in Turkey, and now she's back home in Seattle and getting ready to make her big move back to the East Coast. But, we had a great week in Beirut before she left, due in no small part to Josh and Zeina, our unofficial tour guides while we were here.
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| Best tour guides ever |
They not only took us out to a bunch of amazing lunches, walked us around the city on numerous occasions and broke down a lot of the incredibly complex historical and political challenges the country continues to face, but they ALSO got us into the groove of hanging out in cafes, smoking hookah (called nargile here) and playing backgammon for hours.
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| Hanging out on the Corniche |
We had a great week exploring the city, checking out the American University of Beirut campus (totally gorgeous) and even took an overnight trip up to the mountains, which I'll post about later. I also managed to start my Arabic language program and learn most of the 28 letter alphabet (though some of the "H" sounds continue to mystify me).
I'll write more later about my living situation (which is by turns awesome and totally frustrating, like many things in this city), our trip to see the cedars, and what the heck we've been up to over the past few weeks. Stay tuned!
We ended up staying in a guesthouse overlooking a small mountain village tucked among the hills. We enjoyed an awesome breakfast, with homemade yogurt, olives, preserves and fresh vegetables from the owner's garden. We also got to try his Arak, the traditional liquor. Pretty good, despite trying it at 10am... 
