Roman Tyre/Lebanese Suur

I headed down south today and visited Tyre (Suur).  I knew that the city is on the UNESCO World Heritage list, but I didn’t really know what for.  As I walked around the city today, I quickly found out that the city is loaded with some incredible Roman ruins.  They are  scattered around the city, [...]

My new sticker album (Part II)

I splurged for another box of stickers the other day.  As I sat in my depressing hostel room watching the news, I gradually worked my way through the box.  I started filling up pages in my album, but I still had no Hassan Nasrallah.  I was beginning to think that there are no Nasrallah stickers.  [...]

A Day in Tripoli

Sorry for the lack of recent updates.  I’ve been busy with schoolwork, so I haven’t done anything exciting in the last week or so.  I have been spending most of my time in the cafes of Beirut working on my Arabic and typing up notes for my classes.
Today I went to Tripoli.  The bus stopped [...]

My new sticker album

I think it was the third or fourth day of my Arabic class when Maha brought in a copy of the latest trend in Lebanon: a sticker album for Lebanon’s political parties and past politicians. She showed it to the class, and I was instantly impressed.

A few days later there was a post on [...]

South Beirut

On Thursday afternoon, I had the opportunity to go to Dahiya, the Shia suburbs in south Beirut with some of the people from SINARC.  We went to visit Hezbollah’s memorial to last summer’s war with Israel.  Before reaching the memorial, we saw some of the sites that had been bombed by Israel.  After having spent [...]

On a Mission in East Beirut

About a week after I arrived in Beirut, I read about a new boutique in East Beirut on the Time Middle East blog.  As soon as I finished the article, I wanted to go find the shop.  Even though I didn’t expect to buy anything, the place sounded like somewhere I had to check out.  [...]

Looking at the South of Lebanon

My summer Arabic program had Timur Goksel speak to us today about the south of Lebanon.  Goksel had been affiliated with UNIFIL since 1979 until just a few years ago.  He is now on the faculty at AUB.  His talk mostly described his experiences in the south of Lebanon over the last twenty plus years, [...]

Weekend in Syria

I went to Syria this past weekend.  It was a quick trip, but I had a great time.  It was also nice to visit some of the places I saw in 2003, but never really expected to visit again.We drove to Damascus on Friday evening.  We had a couple hour delay at the border as [...]

Museums and Monks

Yesterday was another day trip.  We started off with a new typically Lebanese breakfast called Knafi.  While the bread and cheese were delicious, the sticky super sweet syrup was a bit much.  I ended up eating around the syrup.

We first headed to the National Museum of Beirut.  I wish I could have taken some pictures [...]

“At my wedding, the belly dancer…”

With a first line like that, you can finish the sentence with almost anything.  That was how my Arabic teacher, Maha, began to describe her wedding while we were at her massive apartment in Beirut on Friday evening. 
The four of us in the class had to prepare Lebanese dishes and describe the ingredients and [...]