Beginning

I am not usually one for blogs or diaries. I have a horrible inability to maintain them and after a week or two stop updating them altogether. Hopefully that won’t happen with this one, insh’allah. This is quite an experience and opportunity and I want to preserve the details for the future if I can. I am in the CAMES intensive Arabic program this summer at the American University in Beirut from June 23 to August 7^th. Since I just started this but it has obviously been a week or so that I have been here I will be doing the backlog of entries first until I catch up. Since I’ve been here my English spelling has apparently gone to hell and I’ve begun thinking of things phonetically. I asked my classmate the other day “studie amiya?” (i.e., did you study dialect). It was a low point. I will do my best to check for these and run spellcheck but in case some sneak through I apologize. The intent of this is not to be a travel blog but more a diary of my trip so that my friends and family can see what I am up to and as a way for me to preserve my memories. As a result it will be incredibly detailed in terms of what goes on each day and people who don’t know me (and those who do) might not care at all. All pictures, once posted, can be found at my flicker site: here.