my deepest sympathies

i am so proud to be from lebanon. i have learned so much about life here and the culture. i admire the people of this country so very much. they deal with things on a daily basis that we dont even think about. i think, as americans, we tend to take a lot for granted. anyway, i want to send my deepest sympathies out to all the families who lost someone in the earthquake in iran. last i heard, 20,000 were found dead and over 60,000 were critically injured. imagine the feelings that you felt after the attack of 911 and multiply those feelings by thousands. i wish the families of those lost the best.

also, a plane on its way from africa to lebanon crashed yesterday. many, many lives were lost and of those lives over a 100 people were lebanese. yesterday, there was a huge procession through lebanon. there was a red cross van for each person that died. they were taking each person to their home village to be buried. it was quite an amazing and sad sight. all the flags in lebanon and the lebanese flags at all the lebanese embassies across the world are at half mast today. again, i send out my most deepest sympathies to those lost and their families.

i firmly believe that the middle east has had to deal with so much tragedy. i admire so much how the people here continue to thrive and rebuild their lives again and again. it is unimaginable to me what they have been through. for those of you who dont do it often, take some time to remember how fortunate we all are. i hope you all have a great new year. lets start the year off right.

life in lebanon

all is still going great here. i am really enjoying my time with my family. i have learned quite a bit about this country while here. it has been the vacation of my dreams. the only thing missing are all my friends. you know that i consider you all family. the holidays without you all are a bit less special. i miss everyone very much. i have only a few more days here and i hope they will be wonderful. i look forward to coming home. i hope all your holidays were perfect. happy new year everyone!!!

merry christmas everyone!!! i hope all your holidays are wonderful.

all is well in lebanon!!

well, my dad and sis made it in fine tonight. their flight went well also. it is really crazy how much i missed my sister. i am glad she is here now. i am having a great time. my cousins are keeping us quite entertained. it is great to see everyone. i miss everyone at home very much. i hope you are all doing great. we went to a lebanese night club yesterday. it was quite fun. we drank and danced on the bar and on tables. it was a wonderful time. just imagine 12 cousins who havent seen each other in 3 years dancing and drinking and partying the night away. it was wonderful. well, i have to run.

just wanted to pass along the great news

first off, i love the internet. you can stay connected, even when in lebanon. well, i just checked my grades and all A's one more time. :) i have one more semester and i graduate with a 4.0. I bet some of you who knew me as an undergrad never thought that could happen. :) sill having fun and missing you all.

my cousin wants me to let you all know that there is an 8 hour time difference, so when my post says that it is 8:30 am, it is really 4:30pm. just didnt want you all to think that i am signing on at the wee hours of the morn. i'm out.

my cousin, ziad, would like to write in my journal. he says hello to everyone in the states (my cousin says everyone but the jews :). you got to love this country. :) he is standing over my shoulder as i write this post, so for that reason it will be a short post. i am trying to check my grades, but the system is down, so no luck on that. the day has been nice here. very busy and full of much fun. i am taking pics of everything. we went to harissa today, which is a huge statue of the virgin mary. it is way up in the mountains. the view of the city underneath it, jounieh, is so wonderful. it is quite breathtaking. tonight, we are going to hit the clubs in downtown beirut. yeah for that!! i have to run. i miss you all.

signing in from lebanon :)

just wanted to let everyone know that i made it into lebanon just fine. the flight was not too bad at all. it was long, but it was also pretty hassle free, which is very nice. seeing all my family was very nice. i do miss everyone at home, but it is nice to be here. i went for a jog this morning among the lebanese mountains. it was quite beautiful. anyway, i have to run. i will try to post again soon.

well, i am all packed

i am ready to head out to lebanon. I cant wait to see all my family. it is going to be a great time full of family fun. :) well, i am going to really miss everyone here. i hope your holidays are all wonderful. i will do my best to keep posting while in lebanon, so stay tuned to hear all about the journey. I'm out.

more stuff

this post will consist of good news and bad news. ok, bad news first. i want you all to leave with a good feeling. So, i went to my internship today and it was quite a day. One of the teachers that works at the school i am interning at killed her husband, her 19 year old daughter, and then herself on monday night. It was a complete surprise and the kids and teachers and staff at the school are really having a hard time with it. it was very shocking to me. It is definitley a tragedy. the teacher was not well liked by the students and that is making it even tougher for all of them and us to work through. needless to say, today was a tough day. all the kids i saw today were still pretty shaken up or they were completely ambivalent which makes me very sad. i have always had a hard time dealing with suicide. i lost a good friend that way when i was younger. it is so hard to wrap your mind around the reasons someone would do that. then, there is always second guessing about if you had done more, maybe it would not have happened. Anyway, i know life will go on, but it is still so sad to know that something like that can happen so close to home. Anyway, it is just a reminder that we never know what others are going through. we never know what lies behind the masks that so many people wear.

ok, more bad news. it seems that there was a suicide bomber attempt at the American Embassy in Beruit. He did not succeed, but it still is not good. I hate it how so many people make so many generalizations when they hear about something like this. i am leaving in a few days to spend much time in lebanon and some of that time will be spent in beruit. I am not scared at all, but people keep asking me if i am. I guess i should be, but that is where i am from. I have never been afraid of lebanon and i dont plan on starting now. Anyway, i hope people can keep separate the actions of some crazed individuals from those of the rest of the country.

ok, on to the good news. well, this is just actually good news for michael and i and actually it is sort of bittersweet news, even for us. Well, this post is not very uplifting at all. :) the good news is michael and i get to spend all evening together tommorrow night. that is something we have not been able to do in a while now. we are going to simply fondue and then hanging out together for the rest of the evening. i anticipate many good times. it is going to be a bittersweet evening because michael leaves to visit his family on friday morning and i head out to lebanon on sunday and then we dont see each other for 3 weeks. how sad. i really am going to miss everyone here. I will be thinking about you all while i am partying it up in lebanon. :) i will definitley keep you all posted as much as i can about my trip. my cousins all have pretty decent internet access, so stay tuned. I'm out.

ok, i'm back

wow, who knew life without work could be so great. :) well, the weekend was a blast. hanging with May-Ling is always so much fun. It was a busy, but relaxing weekend. We fall into the roomie groove so easily, it is nice to feel that comfortable around such a great friend. Well, friday we went to see a film at the alamo drafthouse. the prospect of a film titled "the 100 sexiest scenes" is pretty great, but the film turned out to be a big flop. It was really horrible. It was basically 100 totally random sex scenes from movies. some of the scenes were so great and then others were horrifying. The good scenes were randomly interspersed with the scenes of rapes, bloody scenes, and animal sex. It was really bad and nothing like what we expected. all i can say is that you only live once. i dont regret going because we tried something new, but we definitley know that we didnt like it. :)

anyway, saturday and sunday were full of shopping, movies, and fun times with my old roomie. we did so much shopping, more shopping than i have done in quite some time. It was nice to go with mayling, she is such a great shopper. I had to buy some clothes and stuff for lebanon and she helped motivate me. it was good times. we hit the wheatsville coop arts festival and we also saw a documentary on the war in iraq. moveon.org was screening it and we saw it at the rhizome collective. it was a very unique place. it is an urban project that relies on community, organizing and environmentalism. it was a very unique experience, it was way cold inside and there were lots of different types of people. the documentary was pretty good. it offerend many perspectives from people who used to work for the government. It gave me a lot to think about. I enjoyed it. it reminded me to keeping thinking globally, we often forget about all that and live our own little lives in our own little bubble. the weekend was a blast, it was nice to get out of town and just have fun.

i drove to arlington on monday to hang with michael. It is quite scary how much you can miss one person. it was great to spend some time with him. We hit the malls, more shopping for me. well, kids, i am all shopped out for the season. :) we spent some quality time together before he had to head to work. tonight is his last night of 7 work days in a row. yeah for michael!!

well, the rest of my life has been a blur of preparations for my trip. we are heading out on sunday, i cant believe it is so soon. Yeah!!!!

more delinquent blogging on my part :)

sorry, folks. My delinquent blogging has become pretty bad, but times are a changing. so, i had my last class of the semester on wednesday. Yeah for that!!!! i registered for next semester, my last semester of grad school. Even more Yeahs for that!!! Well, i head out of the country in 9 days. Oh my god, how crazy is that? I am heading down to austin today to spend the weekend with my forever roomie and best bud, may-ling. more yeahs for that!! i hung out with my family a bit last night and it was wonderful. yes, you all just read that i enjoyed hanging out with my family. more craziness. they were so great. I was feeling pretty shitty when i went over there, but after talking with them for a while, they made me feel so much better. This is two times that this has happened now. who would have thought that my parents really are good people. :) good times.

Well, this past week has been somewhat of a blur between school, internship and spending much time with Michael. we are not going to be able to see each other this week (Michael works like a crazy man, but that is just one more reason i respect him so much). so, we tried to spend much time together earlier this week, it was good times, as usual. i am so excited about going to lebanon, but i really am going to miss everyone here.

Well, good news. I bought my first big christmas tree last year and i was planning on setting it up this year in my apartment, but since we are heading out for the holidays, i was so sad because i couldnt put it up. But, Michael and his roommate didnt have a tree yet, so we set up my tree at their apartment. Yeah!! now, my new tree has a home for the holidays. :)

well, i am feeling pretty damn good nowadays. The holidays are here, i am not working, have no classes and my internship will be finished for the semester next week. It looks like it is just a lot of relaxing and partying for me before i head out for a 3 week long holiday vacation full of fun times with family. sometimes, i just need to take a second to sit back and realize how fortunate i am. I feel very fortunate for so many reasons. Life has such a strange way of throwing you for a loop. well, on that happy note, i am out. have a great weekend, everyone.