Holidays

It's hard to believe that this is my second Thanksgiving in Beirut. Last year I think I had take-out hummus and a chicken kabob for dinner. I'm not quite sure what's on the menu this year, aside from a giant slice of the fabulous cake that my Aunt and Uncle had delivered to me unexpectedly at work. They also had a gorgeous bouquet of flowers delivered.

I would post a photo of the cake, too, but it has been gnawed pretty well already! The surprise gifts from them were especially nice because they made Thanksgiving actually feel like a holiday. My school does not recognize Thanksgiving, so it's just another work day for us.

Luckily, though, there are other holidays this time of year. This past Sunday was Lebanese Independence Day, which marks the sixty-sixth anniversary of Lebanon's independence from the French Mandate, which is what they call the period when France governed Lebanon after carving it out of Syria because it had Christians in it. The occasion was marked by the overflights of many helicopters--or maybe they were just the same helicopters over and over again. We watched from the balcony as they flew by.

When Jeff waved at one of the helicopters the guy leaning out of it waved back. Neat.

We were not supposed to get a day off for Independence Day, since it fell on a Sunday. After reassuring my students on Friday that we would meet on Monday as usual, Saturday morning found an email from AUB in my inbox declaring Monday a holiday as per the government's surprise directive. It was great, of course, but required much rearranging of course schedules, emails to students, etc. I'm just not used to having surprise holidays. I guess if you live in an area without snow days you have to liven things up somehow.

Even though Thanksgiving is a work day, we do have Friday off for Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday marking the end of the pilgrimage to Mecca known as the Hajj. There are some interesting posters around AUB that honor the holiday by sharing people's Hajj experiences, as well as decorations showing that people come from all over the world to make the pilgrimage. The Hajj sounds like a real ordeal that involves a lot of fairly hard traveling and tremendous crowds.

Jeff and I plan to spend our holiday weekend doing some fairly easy traveling--to the ruins of the temples of Baal and Jupiter in the valley east of Beirut. I am thankful for the opportunity to get to see such neat things and to learn about holidays I'd never heard of before moving here. And thankful for the continued peace and stability in the region, of course. And for cake. Happy Thanksgiving to all!