Wow. It has been a long time. So much unexpected. So much new and different. So much exciting and so much intriguing. Wow. You haven’t heard from me because internet upload/download is limited at my place. So I come now from a lovely starbucks café. ahhh.  finally. Finally a time to sit and write and edit and post and listen to john mayer. time to phase-out. time for me.  This is really an unorganized post, sadly, but I had to put up something… it’s been forever. Since I arrived I have been busy learning language, experiencing culture, and traveling all around.  All I have is really a mishmash of photos (not great ones) when I have taken my camera out with me.  These first few weeks have really just been time for adjustment and adaptation.  It has only been fun and interesting   and a teensy bit exhausting. City life is new for me. but really amusing.

The internet rules are just one little new adjustment. We also have daily power cuts for 3 hours each day. the times vary.  So that means some showers and potty by candlelight which leads to another teensy detail, no toilet paper in the potty! in the trash please.  Don’t drink the water from the faucets, stops signs actually mean go, what is a One way sign?, honk your horn every minute because you’re the most important driver, drink coffee (extremely strong) several times a day, don’t pay over $2.00 for a taxi to anywhere, eat tabbouleh, pita bread, and hummus, dress modestly, don’t put your purse on the ground (ever!), Say ‘yani’ and ‘al-Hamdillah’ several times in your sentences when you speak. [i mean and praise/thank God]. When walking across the street, just go, but try not to get run over by one of the millions of buzzing/screeching mopeds. oh and you’re pretty much a loser if you don’t smoke [something].

These are some of the details of being here that I have noticed. Some are funny and don’t make sense, but all are livable just different!   As I lit my candle for my shower one day, the little wick kind of fell over and the flame almost went out. I quickly whispered to it, ‘aw, stand up little flame!’  Thankfully it did, and I got to take my shower. But I repeated those words to myself over again, and I thought about how it relates to me right now and how it relates to a lot of other people.  stand up little flame.     Here I am a foreigner. i’m the minority. I don’t even have to wear a sign across my shirt, everyone knows the second they look at me.    Upon arriving, I was hesitant in how to react to this.  how do I make myself blend in, how do i minimize this attention. . .  i don’t’ speak the language, i don’t dress the part, i don’t look the right way.  I smile a lot. too much.  After really no luck with any other these in the few weeks that I have been here. I concluded, hmm.. I am just going to shine Foreigner. i decided to happily simply be myself wherever I went. with caution of course – but as far as the core parts of me, how i carry myself, how i greet people with a smile on the street or in a store, just how i am.   Well, I’m going to be that. And for those that are stressed or struggling, discouraged in any type darkness – stand up little flame. just shine yourself.

Have you ever stood in the middle of a Roman mosaic thousands of years old?  

~Khalil Gibran

i ate a perfect purple fig right off of the tree

pomegrantes – i think i walked up when they were in the middle of a conversation

Saint Charbel

these rocks are actually huge. although you can’t tell. picture a dot on the side of it, and that’s the size of person out there.