Beirut Day 22 – July 15, 2009

After today, the program is about halfway done. There are 45 days (including weekends) in the program and today is, as you can see, day 22. I am two minds on this. On the one hand I am amazed that there are only three and a half more weeks of class and only three more weekends left in which I can go visit places in Lebanon and Syria. On the other hand, I am totally ready to go home. It is not that I am not enjoying myself because clearly I am, it’s just I am ready to return to my life and everything that I know. It also seems that I’ve been here much longer than three weeks.

In dialect class we listened to and translated a song entitled “EL Haq Ma Beymout” (The truth doesn’t die). It’s a sort of nationalistic pride song about Lebanon written after the war in 2006, encouraging people not to leave Lebanon and that Lebanon will return. Interestingly one of the words we translated showed up in MSA class.

The MSA test turned out to not be too bad. I got an 80% but I made some stupid mistakes that cost me 2 points out of a total 20 (which could have gotten me an A, maybe). I misread some directions and therefore got no points in that section instead of something out of 2. I did better on the reading section than I thought and my worst section was on the writing with a 8.75/10. Ah well, I didn’t fail it. The afternoon was mostly spent with translating some poetry (including a Classic example of defamatory poetry).

After class I took my traditional nap and did homework. I sadly realized that I had I not wasted time, mostly on the internet, I probably could have finished my homework by 8 or 9pm. At 10 Claire and I went to Bliss House to get more ice cream and on the way we accidently incited a literal cat fight. This cat, who some of us named Assad, was following us and we’d encourage him every few steps with petting. Unfortunately by following us he strayed into foreign territory and got into a short conflict with three other cats. But he was fine when we saw him 20min later back at the dorms and didn’t seem mad at us for luring him into a trap.

Part of the homework tonight was to watch a 45min program on Al Jazeera on swine flu. I am having horrific problems loading it and have only been able to watch it in 15 second bursts, which is a real problem with a 45 minute program. The text of the program is written under it but its length is off putting. I have decided to leave my computer on overnight and see if I can watch at least most of it in the morning.