Day 4

I woke up this morning and the water wasnt working. I figured I'd come halfway through the afternoon to try my luck. It worked! But the electricity didn't. I guess beggers can't be choosers. So either I stand in a bathtub with the lights on and not shower, or take a shower with the lights off. I decided to give showering in the darkness a try. Now this isn't just the "it's kinda dark in here" kinda thing. It's PITCH BLACK. Like enough to make a blind person feel at home. The bullet proof door lets absolutely no light in, and neither do the solid wood doors from the rooms. And just incase any light does somehow get through, the bathroom door will take care of it.

Picture of my Bathroom (I really did actually take this picture)

Classes started at 8am today, so my friends got up early and left around 7:30. They got to the front door and tried to leave but it was locked. From the outside. There were no other exits for the building that they could find so they had to sit there for 10 minutes until someone came. Talk about a fire hazard.

Yesterday we took a placement test to see what sections we would get placed in for the Arabic classes. For those of you that don't know, there is the Arabic that is spoken, and the Arabic that is written, and they're different. In conversation, people use Lebanese dialect, which is more slang, and when writing, they use standard. The only arabic I know is what I hear spoken around me, so I wrote all my answers the way I speak it. I guess it's kiiind of like if a ghetto black man wrote his essays the same way he spoke.

Kind of random, but I love this clip from the movie Airplane, and I guess it kind of has to do with what I'm talking about.

Walking in Beirut isn't like any other city I've been to. There aren't cross walks, which I guess makes sense since there aren't traffic lights or stop signs either. At least none that people pay any attention to. To cross the street, you simply walk across. Looking both ways is optional. People won't slow down to let you cross unless you just get in their way and their only other option is hitting you. It was scary at first, but I guess since I have Lebanese blood in me, I quickly got used to it. The Americans/Europeans here havn't figured this out yet, and stand at streets forever, wondering why no one will let them cross.

I went to my cousin's house tonight. It was a little over an hour bus ride and cost $66. Wait, sorry, that would be in the United States. It cost $0.66. No joke! Anyway, my cousin's neighbor's cat here recently had kittens! I'll end this post with some pictures that will make your heart melt. Or maybe make you sneeze if you're allergic.

Day 3

Time: 9:00PM

Do you know how long it took me to start this post? Google found the need to put every one of its sites in Arabic. I'm not that good yet.

I woke up this morning and got in the shower. HOT WATER! woohoo! well... kind of. Everything was going great, until the water just completely cut out. I still had soap all over my body, and wasn't really sure what to do, so I just stood there for about 5 minutes waiting until I realized that it's probably not going to come back on, so I just wiped the soap off with my towel and went to class.

We took a placement test today in class. The entire test was in Arabic, so it was hard enough as it was. To make it harder, they had questions like "Underline the Pronouns, Circle the Adverbs, Put a Box Around the Adjectives." Um, seriously? I can't even do that in English, let alone Arabic. It was a good opportunity for me to practice drawing my circles and squares though.

For those of you that wanted to Skype with me while I'm here... sucks for you. They banned Skype in Lebanon. It's a lot cheaper than the phones here, so the phone company got upset that no one was using them anymore so the government made Skype illegal. It probably won't be enforced though, since the government doesn't seem to really care about anything here.

Today I went to some ice cream shop and got NUTELLA ICE CREAM. For those of you who haven't had Nutella, you have to pick some up next time you're at the grocery store, it's amazing.

Here are some more pictures from my trip. The full album is on Facebook.

Remember the crazy cat lady? I saw her jingle her keys to make all the cats come to eat, so I tried it when I saw a cat in the bushes, and like 10 cats came over to me and sat on me. Kinda cool. And kinda gay.

This weird tree at AUB... do the branches grow up from the ground? Or down from the tree? I can't figure it out. They're like roots/branches connected.

People fishing... They have poles that are 15-20 feet long, but they don't reel.

Day 2

Time: 12:08am (technically day 3)

I woke up this morning at dawn to the sound of a really loud bird. And it wasnt a rooster as you might think at first. No, the neighbors actually have a more expensive natural alarm clock.

That's right. A peacock. Talk about annoying. This is what woke me up, and then the other neighbor's rooster decided to join in the screaming, and I was stuck away listening to two birds arguing over which one had the louder scream for about 3 hours. Oh, and they also had an Albino rabbit... this little 8 year old came out and picked it up by the ears out of the box to show us. Anyway, today was pretty uneventful. I spent most of the day at church, and then came to campus to sign up. The drive was just as awful as usual. Here's a video so you guys kind of know what I'm talking about.

Here are a few views from the drive:

Anyway, on campus I noticed a lot of cats. And anytime there's a lot of cats, the laws of the universe state that there must be a crazy cat lady to take care of them. and indeed there was.

she even knew all 30-some cats by name.

I then got to my dorm. Which wasnt even really a dorm. I guess I should have known better than to expect soemthing similar to the U.S., but I figured Lebanese AMERICAN University would be pretty close. I was wrong. My "dorm" is not on campus, but a 10 minute walk somewhere into the middle of the city. The doors are made out of solid metal and bullet proof. Again, hot water is a maybe. Electricity seems good so far, but the "highspeed" internet we were promised isn't currently working, and I doubt it will be even highspeed. By the looks of things around here, "highspeed" probably means a faster dial-up. The students here are really cool though. There are about 150 of us, mostly from the U.S. and Europe. I've met like 4 people from texas already and we all hung out tonight. I have no food or toilet paper or anything in my "dorm" so I'll probably go out tomorrow to buy stuff. However, Ive been warned that the locals take advantage of Americans and raise the prices for us, so we'll see how this turns out. I'll have to bring a cousin with me I guess. Classes start at 8:30 tomorrow morning though, so I'm off to bed. Hopefully I can sleep through all the honking cars below. Right now one car is honking a tune for some reason, and a bunch of other cars are imitating it. It's actually REALLY annoying considering it's almost 1:00am.

Views from my "dorm":

Day 1

Not even sure where to begin...

I guess first of all, I LOVE IT here. Seriously. To you people who haven't traveled to a country like this, I'll try to explain it. Electricity cuts out a couple times a day. Hot water is limited. Internet access is limited. Laws are merely guidelines and don't really need to be followed to the book. There are absolutely no traffic laws and stop lights might as well be Christmas decorations or something. Airport security is a joke, because people walked through the metal detectors with purses and bags, and even though the red lights would flash, the security guard was too busy hitting on the girl who was supposed to be watching the x-ray machine.

Ya, doesn't sound very appealing, but the food and scenery and culture definitely make it 100% worth it. Breakfast may have been one of the best meals I've ever eaten. I should have taken a picture, but was too busy inhaling everything around me. Next time I go I'll take a picture. The scenery is amazing. Mountains everywhere, and the roads are all constantly winding up and down the mountain sides. It's a bit hard to enjoy it though, because roads are usually as wide as 1 lane in the U.S. and people don't follow any rules.

I'm exhausted from the Jetlag, so I'll have to update more tomorrow. I tried to add some pictures, but after waiting 20 minutes for 1 picture to upload, it says 5% complete. You guys aren't that important. Pictures coming tomorrow night when I move in to LAU.

Day 0

Time: 6:02am (Germany Time)

Currently on the airplane on the way to Germany. Everyone is asleep, and I'm up watching movies. I never realized how much they edit these movies until now. I watched Up in the Air, and saw George Clooney meet this lady at some bar. The next scene he was kissing her goodbye and they were having some random conversation that made absolutely no sense since they obviously cut out like 10 minutes of the movie. Not to mention the fact that I heard there was a part-nude scene that I never ended up seeing. Dissapointed, I decided to watch "Edge of Darkness" with Mel Gibson. I thought it might be a nice change, but was horribly wrong. It was like it was a requirement that to be in the movie you have to mumble, because I couldnt understand a single word anyone said. I had the volume turned up all the way and a pillow wrapped around my head and it didnt even help. On top of that, the editing of cuss words was extremely obvious. You can tell when they edit something out because the sound quality completely changes for about 3 seconds, and a different voice appears. A voice with a foreign accent attempting to sound like Mel Gibson. I wish I could take a sound clip because you guys wouldnt even believe it. I guess I'll try my luck with these foreign movies they have...

Time: 5:35pm (Cyprus Time)

Why Cyprus you ask? Because Germany sucks. Our first flight was 1 hour late so we were running from terminal to terminal in the airport trying to find another flight, and finally got one to Cyprus and then Beirut. I have to say, though, that Cyprus Airways are probably the best airline I've flown with. I'm currently sitting next to this guy who doesn't know English. I'm not quite sure where he's from, so I'm going to assume he's Russian because of how much he's drank so far. FREE ALCOHOL! Can you believe that? It's like a 5 hour flight, we're halfway through, and they've already came by for drinks 3 times and even served us a dinner. An amazing dinner at that. All American Airlines are so stingy. I can't even imagine what Israeli Airlines would be like.