Beirut: Round Two!

It is hard to believe that I am about to begin my second year at the American University of Beirut. I will have a few new responsibilities this year, such as advising undergraduates (accurately, I hope) about which courses they should take and coordinating the MA comprehensive exam. Other than that, I'm just looking forward to another year of teaching American literature to my sharp, pleasant, and always entertaining students. It is really nice to start the year off already having an office, a phone, and an email account, not to mention a familiarity with the inner workings of the department's photocopier!

Still, Beirut feels a little new right now, as Jeff and I just returned from a whirlwind visit to the U.S. (I'll take this opportunity to apologize en masse to all of you whom I did not see but would have liked to. There just weren't enough hours in the day, sadly. I hope you'll understand.) Our visit started in St. Louis, where we had a nice visit with Jeff's sister and her family. We were also reunited with Jeff's pickup truck and all his worldly possessions, which the park service shipped to his sister upon his separation from the park service.

We then had a fun road trip from St. Louis to the East Coast, stopping along the way to visit friends and see sights such as Mark Twain's boyhood home in Hannibal, Missouri:

It was really neat to roam around Hannibal, although the town seems to blur the line between fact (Samuel Clemens actually lived there) and fiction (Tom Sawyer did not).

That didn't stop me from going overboard in the gift shop, however. Yes, I lugged a copy of William Dean Howells's My Mark Twain back in my suitcase, not to mention a Mark Twain finger puppet, keychain, and shot glass! However, I resisted the urge to dress up like the man himself and wander the streets of Hannibal, which apparently is something of a problem there:

Upon reaching the East Coast we spent a little time in Manhattan visiting friends of Jeff's. We had a great time eating Mexican food, which is very hard to come by in the Middle East.

and walking through Chinatown, where I had a cone of green tea flavored ice cream. Neat!

Manhattan made me miss the diversity of so many big U. S. cities. Beirut, for all its charms, is really very homogenous racially and culturally, at least to an outsider. Locals consider the differences between Christians, Druze, and Sunni and Shia Muslims to be huge, as well as the differences between Lebanese, Syrian, and Jordanian people. From an outsider's perspective, though, the streets of Manhattan seem full of a variety that Beirut can't approach.

We then headed up to Connecticut, where we spent time with Jeff's family.

We feasted on far too much great food that his mom cooked for us and tried to undo the damage by jogging in a nearby park.

After a trip to Willimantic, Connecticut to see my old friends there, we headed up to Maine. We moved in for a week with the mice who had been living in my cabin since I left, and spent a fun time hanging out with my mom and other friends and family. The contradancing, bike riding, and step aerobics (thanks, Karen!) made me feel somewhat human again after weeks of sloth and delicious food!

Upon returning to Beirut I was struck by the noise of the city: even Mahnattan is quiet compared to the constant car horns and construction noise here. The language barrier also seems new again. I really miss being able to understand what people around me are saying, and I think I'd have to put a lot of time into learning Arabic to even come close to understanding.

Returning to Beirut after some time away also made me a bit more appreciative of the fashionable flair that people--especially women--bring to their everyday lives here. For instance, this time last year I was perplexed and a bit horrified by housewives who wore layers of makeup and stiletto heels to go grocery shopping on a weekday morning. Now, when I see a woman at the gym don a purely decorative belt of beaded fringe atop her workout spandex, I just smile and think "Ah, Beirut." It may not be home, but it's still good to be back.