AUGUST 23:

Sitting at Qasid with what may be the last time ever. I took the test on Thursday and I think it went pretty well. I only slept 1.5 hours the night before and was running on about 2 cups of Nes Cafe when I took it. Nes Cafe is really popular here. You can buy a box of packets for really cheap and it is instant coffee that has "3 in 1" cream, sugar, and coffee all in one packet. Very convenient for travel or drinking on the go, haha. Anyway, I think the test went really well, but we'll see. On Friday we flew to Beirut, and this is when the fun began! Beirut is AWESOME! Right when we got off the plane you could feel the humidity, it was just like Alabama. You could breathe in the smells of the sea, as well as alot of the greenery and mountains. Beirut is basically a Christian City and you could tell the difference between this and Amman, which is technically an Islamic State. Most all of the taxis were Mercedes Benz and there were scooters everywhere as well. None of the taxis had meters either, so we had to haggle with all of them. Prices in Beirut were more expensive but very American. We stayed in a hotel close to the American University in Beirut right off of Hamrah Street which is like the Champs Lysses (sp?) in France. It is the most famous street in Lebanon. They call Beirut the Paris of the Middle East and it shows. I have never been to Paris but I don't know how it could be any better. We went to a Kareoke Restaurant the first night we were there with Dima (our former Arabic teacher) and a couple of her friends; Jeannette and her boyfriend. The place was really cool because it was a restaurant/bar/dance club/kareoke/hookah pipes. They sang English and Arabic songs and I'm pretty sure that everyone I met knew English, French, and Arabic. It was alot of fun! Before we went to the kareoke place we went to Bay Rock which is one of the symbols of Lebanon and Beirut in particular. We took a boat around the rock and the surrounding caves and it was pretty cool. The next day, while Dima was at work, Cameron and I went back to the rock, jumped in and swam around in the Mediterranean for a little while. THe water was deep, but clear and really refreshing. We talked with a couple of guys that had just come in from snorkeling and spear fishing, they were really nice and I realized that I can understand Lebanese pretty well. I kind of feel bad whenever I turn down something that people offer me. Sometimes when you're talking to people for a little while they offer you a cigarrette, since I don't smoke I always turn it down even though this is probably dis-courteous... Anyway we swam some, took some pictures, changed, and met Dima at AUB. The campus is beautiful! It is green, there are fat cats lounging around in the shade, the soccer field is right down near the sea and the buildings have ivy growing on them. We walked around some and ate at a place called Barbar (like the elephant) and we ordered Kabob plates and they were excellent. It was funny because after fasting (we drank water but didn't eat) you get this awesome feeling once you eat and as we were walking back to the hotel to check the Wifi and hangout, Dima started singing "Proud to be and American" haha so we chimed in and sang as we walked down the street., haha. It was kind of random but really funny. We met some of Dimas friends on a rooftop restaurant in downtown Beirut and ate dessert while we people watched, and hungout. All of the men in Beirut are very conscious about how they look and smell and all of the women are super models. You wouldn't believe it until you go. The next day we went down to Saifa, which is Southern Lebanon, because Dima lives there and she needed to take laundry home. We took the bus for about 30-45 minutes and arrived at the bus station in Saifa. Once you hit Southern Lebanon you are entering Islamic territory. Unlike Beirut which is very Christian, modern, and hip. Southern Lebanon is more run-down, Islamic, and real. No tourists go to Saifa so we saw an authentic Souq where we tried forever to find a "Ma Shallah" sticker for your car, which means "What God wills". This is an awesome phrase because the meaning may be Islamic but it is VERY Christian. In the core of the Lord's Prayer we pray the "God's will be done on Earth as it is in heaven..." We have seen these stickers on tons of cars and taxis in Jordan and a couple of taxis in Southern Lebanon. Anyway, we must have asked about 15 different people seeing if they sold them. At the end of the day we didn't find one... Hazeen (sadness). After Saida we went back to Beirut and ate Iftar at a restaurant in a mall. it was excellent and we picked out all kinds of different food from the menu so we could try all types of Lebanese food. We had something that was like Spinach, also:fried cheese, a kabob plate, bread, hommous, salad, and it was really good. We took a cab to downtown Beirut and had dessert at (to be continued out of time right now).