The First Few Days.

Well, after a five hour bus ride, an eight and a half hour flight to Milan, a four hour flight to Beirut and a half hour cab ride to Zouk Mosbeh, I was finally at my destination. I arrived on Wednesday at around 6 o'clock in the evening. On the way I saw some cool stuff I need to check out later. Including tons of Brazilian flags, but more on that later. I got to my room and it is pretty swank. I have a double bed (or a full, I don't know, but it's bigger than a dorm bed), my own bathroom, a balcony, a flatscreen TV with cable (including several English channels), a fridge and internet. There is also a shared kitchen, in which I have yet to cook. My internship is literally down a flight of stairs from my room so I went down and knocked on the door expecting everyone to be gone. Luckily, the director was still in and she showed me where I could find some food and get some money. Which was good, because a body can only eat so many granola bars. It also turned out it didn't really matter whether I could get Lebanese currency because apparently they take dollars everywhere. Taxis, restaurants, everywhere. The director said they had "dollarized" their economy.
Thursday I slept till 11:00, then went down to talk to the people at my internship. One of the guys who works there gave me a tour of the small museum that the organization runs. The organization is called the "Lebanese Emigration Research Center" for anyone who doesn't know/forgot what I told them. (The guy, incidentally, whose name is Elie, looks like the actor who played Odo on DS9, so that put me at ease). The museum is cool. It is artifacts that they have collected from Lebanese emigrants. Old documents, pictures, passports things like that. Actually Elie is Lebanese but he was born in Nigeria, so he is a "white Nigerian" and does not have Lebanese citizenship. Weird right? He is actually third generation Nigerian, his great grandfather emigrated there. After the museum another guy, also named Elie I think, a young guy, showed me around the campus. It is nice. The university is called Notre Dame University or NDU, I don't know whether it is affiliated with the American one. It is a catholic university and the only one in the region. It's actually kind of strange because everyone is Christian. And you think, well I'm in the Middle East, where are all the Muslims? It is a Christian area of Lebanon, which, because of its history, has areas which are Christian or Druze or Sunni or Shiite. For the rest of the day I just kind of hung out and watched bad movies on Dubai One.

Today, I started my internship. I wore khakis and a button down shirt and I think I was over dressed. Everyone seems to wear jeans. Well, I will be the best dressed in the office because I brought a lot of dress clothes, so I have to make use of them. I will be/am working on the center's new Iraqi refugee program which is perfect because that is what I wrote my grant for. Today I was just doing some literature review, which is basically reading academic and news articles and finding the relevant information and recording it. So, not the most interesting thing in a way, but also interesting in another. Then for lunch they took me and another guy, who was leaving for a few months, out. Which was very nice. They said, "Do you like Chinese?" And I'm American, so of course I do. By the by, everyone speaks English, which is also really strange. So, we went to eat and got a ton of food and they gave me all of the left overs. Ha. They must have sensed it. I met a lot of the staff at lunch and got to ask a little about Lebanon. To put all fears to rest, I asked point blank: Is there anywhere I should not go?" Everyone said no. It is safe everywhere now. Security has improved and no one will bother you. I even asked if I could go to the Shiite area of Beirut, which is the area where Hezbollah operates. They said it was fine. Just don't take pictures. But that I should not be worried and that again, no one will bother me. Also that everyone will be very helpful. So, there it is. And these are Christian Lebanese. So, you know. It was funny though because they were talking about Lebanon in the car ride back and Odo said, you go north and it's mountains, and you go south and you're in Iran. Because the south is the Shiite area. It was funny to me, anyways.
So, now I've just been hanging out and that brings me to now. This is my first ever blog so, you're welcome Zibby. Just a few more interesting observations:
1. I had Pepsi at lunch, dad. It tastes totally different. I think because it has real sugar, and not corn syrup.
2. Back to the Brazilian flags. I think that maybe there are so many because either a. the World Cup is starting and people like that team or b. the largest community of Lebanese outside of Lebanon is in Brazil, which I didn't know. I guess there are more Lebanese in Brazil than in Lebanon itself.
3. Most of the billboards are in English, and you can certainly tell it's a mixed religious country. I have seen no women with covered heads so far and the billboards have words like sex on them.
4. Finally, yesterday I heard what I could swear was gunshots. But I just chalked it up to construction or something. Then today all morning. Pop, pop, pop. More gunshots. And I thought, huh? Is there a clash going on between the political factions? Why isn't anyone concerned about these gunshots? So I finally asked and I was told that yes, it was gun fire. However, it was people hunting birds, illegally.
So, there you have it. I will post another post soon, inshallah.

PS. People say yallah (go with God) all the time. Which is awesome.

Alright, thanks for reading.

Jake.