...and thus commenceth our common life in Beirut.

We spent our first week in Beirut waiting to find and then move into our own apartment. Then we spent another almost two weeks waiting to get our shipment. The day after it arrived, we all got food poisoning, and so we spent this past week recovering, while waiting for our bookshelves, and trying to sort out the house. I feel like our first month here in Beirut was spent in limbo; we waited at the mercy of some uncontrollable force, unable to make plans or take charge.

Tonight our house is tidy, most of our books are on shelves, and nobody has thrown up since yesterday. Our cabinets and fridge are not full, but contain enough food to last us a few days. We have everything here that we need to start our normal life.

What is that? What kind of life is it that we want to be leading here? I have been reading books, articles, and my favorite blogs to get inspiration; how to organize our time and effort, and what to prioritize. I have thought about our goals and aspiration, and what we need to do to achieve what we want. The professor and I have talked about everything; are continuously discussing what our direction is. It’s difficult, fun, scary, and exciting to think about these things, but very refreshing.

For the boys’ well-being and school matters, our most pressing and one of the most important issues at the moment, I still need to finish last years’ report cards and write out the curricula for this year, but the boys have already started their academic work for this semester, and are doing well. We have been debating the possibility of putting them in school, mainly for economical (homeschooling is straining our budget) and social reasons, but they are thriving so nicely, that we’ll continue with our home education for now. This week the boys will start a couple of new sports activities at the AUB campus, and hopefully with a house that is in order, we can give our family’s social life a push, starting with a small party to celebrate August’s birthday on Tuesday.

As for everything else; I need a little more time before I can write out exactly what it is that we are doing here. I know my list will contain a lot of exercise and outdoor exploration, as well as learning and reading. There are things I want to do, things our family can do, and whatever comes first and we end up doing, we are all excited about our new life here in Beirut.

Finding affordable bookshelves in Hamra

It took a lot of searching, asking around, walking, and discussing to finally find affordable bookshelves for our apartment here in Beirut. We asked our employer’s carpenter, who offered to make us shelves for an astronomical amount. We looked in a few furniture shops where the prices where even higher. Finally, a colleague of the professor told us to go on getforless.com, and there we found the cheapest shelves so far. We could order them online, they were delivered to our home within a week, and we paid after they had been installed. Awesome!

Funny English in Lebanon

We went shopping today at Idriss, and got a lot of things. We're still stocking up on thing our cabinets usually contains, and today we got one step closer to a complete kitchen. When we got home I noticed however that I had made one small mistake:

I had meant to buy the TASTIEST Burger Bun Ever! Now we were stuck with the slightly lesser "Tastier Burger Bun Ever." Sigh.

Recovering from food poisoning

It has been five days since our devastating meal at Roadster Diner, and we’ve somewhat recovered. The boys are still in need of absolute proximity to a bathroom, but after about a day and a half, at least our fevers broke and the aches went away. What remains is diarrhea. Once that’s gone, well be able to go to the playground, and everywhere else, again. I can’t wait for this family to get healthy!

Roadster Diner on Hamra Street - never again!

Yesterday we went to have dinner at Roadster Diner on Hamra Street. We didn’t mean to, but we were out looking for shelves before going to the grocery store, and the timing was bad. Everyone got really hungry, and nobody was going to last through the shopping. So, we decided to try out the restaurant. Free refills on drinks, if nothing else, sounded enticing too, in the heat.

We all had Buffalo BBQ chicken wings for an appetizer, which was tasty, and for a main course Courtney had the chicken burger, and the boys and I had the classic burger. Courtney ended up eating part of August's burger. Abraham only ate the fries. The food was nowhere near as good as the diner type food we had a Crepeaway a few weeks ago. The cole slaw was too salty, the burgers were hard, and nothing special. They even had a slightly funny taste to them. The service was really bad as well. They announce free refills on drinks, but there was never a waiter around to ask, so we really couldn’t take advantage of it. When we finally got someone, they acted annoyed. All on all, it was a bad experience, especially taking into account that it was very expensive. Everything was extra, and overprized.

Oh well, we thought, we’ll just never go back there again. Right, we won’t! Around 3 am I woke up with horrible stomach cramps and a high fever: chills, diarrhea, and nausea. When I went to the bathroom I noticed that William was on another toilet, with the same thing. Soon thereafter, August got up. It was a night from hell, with everyone running back and forth to the bathroom, drinking water to try to keep the fever down. It’s all in a haze now; it’s 5 pm and I just managed to crawl out of bed. The house is a wreck since we got our shipment, and everyone is just sitting around sick. Misery.

Only poor Abraham (who didn’t have any of the burger) hasn’t shown any symptoms and hopefully it will stay that way.

Yuck!

Our shipment!

We called and called, begged, pleaded, threatened, cried; we tried everything, yet our shipment was simply not coming. Not only did we end up waiting over two weeks for it, but we were continuously given false hope. “It will probably be delivered today,” we heard for days, waiting, staying at home keeping by the phone, and then, “Sorry, not today, but probably tomorrow.”

Then on Friday afternoon while at soccer, I got a call from a man saying he would be delivering 30 boxes to our house within an hour. By now, I had heard “Wolf” so many times however, that I couldn’t entirely believe him, although it sure sounded more positive than any other phone call we had got, so I went home. Two hours later I had almost given up hope, when it suddenly arrived. There they were, our boxes that we last saw in Cairo mid-August. They looked like they had been through a lot; some of them were coated in an oily substance, and most of them were so beat up they literally just fell apart when the men put them down. Some boxes had been opened, and virtually all of the boxes were put upside down. But they were all there, and we all started opening them as they entered the house, like Christmas. "My Darth Maul!” and “Ahhh, my Groundworks, how have you been?” Abraham’s high chair, his bed, my cups and tea pot, the boys’ toys, our pictures, sheets and blankets, our books; our dear personal belongings had finally arrived. Home, sweet home!

Retail rents in Beirut

Confirming my point the other day, this article talks about retail rents in Beirut...

Beirut is not a bike (stroller) tire friendly city...

We’ve been in Beirut for two weeks now, and I’ve already had three flats on our stroller. As nice as it is, my wonderful-so-easy-to-navigate jogging stroller, we’ve concluded its tires were not made for usage outside, or at least not in Beirut. I keep finding little prickly things stuck in the tire – from a tree that grows on campus, and although not very long or hard thorns, most of them have made holes in the tube. We’ve concluded we need tube guards, but the only bike shop we’ve found (so far) around here doesn’t carry any. In fact, the shop doesn’t even carry fixing kits, but will only sell us new tubes (which are expensive). Today, the guy said he would see if he could order guards. I hope he can. Sigh.

An afternoon at Beirut's public beach

We walked down to Ramlet Al Baida today, Beirut's public beach. It was about a 45 minute hike through town. The beach is nicely maintained, the sand and the water clean, but it was absolutely packed! Men were definitely in the majority, and most women I saw wore the full body suits; between me in a bathing suit and our blond boys, our family definitely drew a lot of attention. However, did I stop caring a long time ago about people staring at me? Yes. Also, the stares didn't seem hostile as I have experienced elsewhere. So we had a good time. The water was really warm, and after a good swim the boys played in the sand for a long time. We had snacks, another swim and sand play, and then we walked home in time for dinner. We'll definitely do this again soon!

One of our first encounters with Lebanese food

Tonight we went to Café Blanc a second time. It’s a modern Lebanese restaurant on Hamra Street next to the Crown Plaza. We liked the food very much the first time we went last week, and felt there were many different dishes yet to try after our first positive experience. The only drawback is that the service is awful. The waiters are slow, inattentive, and obviously annoyed with Abraham, who keeps spilling. They have a high chair though, and if you ignore the service, it’s a good place to go with a family: not only is the food fun and interesting (lots of different 'dip-like dishes, warm and cold), but also, we can eat five or so mezze items with bread (which is plenty for our family, and we all like to eat a lot) and a large water for under $30.

On shipping our personal belongings to Lebanon

Between all the paperwork, administration, errands and orientation sessions, we’ve been working on receiving our shipment. Every day Courtney calls the poor man in charge, and every day since the end of last week he has been telling us “You shipment will probably be delivered today.” Now, I have experience with difficult administration, and Middle Eastern administration in particular. I’ve done waiting, yelling, making friends, threatening, sobbing, bribes; the whole shabiel. If somebody tells me, “It is a complicated process,” I can understand it is going to take time (or money), and if someone uses the term, “Insha Alllah” in *that* tone, I get it; it may be a while. Here however, we’ve continuously heard nothing but “No problem, it will be today.”

Not only is it the hope thing that has got me either. It’s the fact that things we really need – things we count on in our daily life – are in that shipment, and I just want my freaking forks! I want the baby high chair, because I’m tired of Abraham trying to have his meal sitting in a normal chair and turning our dining room into a food sprayed disaster zone. I want our baby bed because my neck is killing me from having to share a small double bed with Courtney AND all-over-sprawling Abraham. I want my comforter, dammit, because well, I like wearing a blanket while I sleep. I want the colander so that we can have spaghetti. I want my other kitchen utensils, the kids’ school books, and their toys. And you know what? It’s not even the hope OR the fact that we need these things; it’s the combination. If I knew we weren’t getting our colander any time soon, I might consider buying one in the meantime. But buying spaghetti in the store, expecting to have my colander in the morning, and then not getting it; this is just really annoying. [Please note that the colander plays a representative part here.]

Well; it’s weekend now, and we cannot expect anything at least until Monday. Sigh. I get two days off, not having to hope and get disappointed. On Monday, Courtney starts work.

Moving out of hotels and suitcases, and into our new home

After a full week at two different hotels in Beirut - Le Cavalier, which was simple, small, but good quality and excellent personal service (except for that one waiter in the breakfast room, who would sigh and roll his eyes every time he saw Abraham, because he – God forbid – spilled while eating!), and Gefinor Rotana, which was just pure luxury; a world class five star hotel - I was very happy to move into our apartment at the end of last week. We moved our bags to the house in the morning, excited; it was big and empty, except for the sparse collection of furniture our employer had supplied us with the day before: beds, bed tables, two dressers, two couches and a chair, a coffee table, a dinner table and chairs, a side table, a desk, and a washer, there was nothing. We spent the rest of the day hunting down the bare necessities we would need to pass our first night in our new apartment; sheets, pillows, cups, plates, spoons, towels, cereal and milk. We ended up finding much of what we needed at a larger store called TSC, just a few blocks away.

We passed the weekend doing laundry, visiting campus and the beach (as well as the tennis courts), and filling up cupboards and the fridge with food. On Saturday evening we had acquired pots, pans, and supplies enough that we were able to prepare a meal in our new home. It was so great to cook for ourselves. It may sound strange, but after months of living out of a suitcase and eating mostly cheap fast food, we had so been looking forward to it. We had a drink before dinner, and Lebanese red wine with our meal; chili con carne with a large salad, corn chips, and hamburgers. Yum!

Live-in maid's room

Having seen a handful apartments here in Beirut, I’ve learned that a maid’s room with a private bathroom and a closet is a standard feature in most larger Lebanese homes. We have one in our apartment, adjacent to the kitchen.

Since we certainly will not have a live-in maid however, and probably can’t afford one at all, I have no idea what to do with this special, extra room. It even has a custom-made bed in it. What do you think?

On generators: a must in Beirut

The apartment we settled on renting this year is very nice; three bedrooms, spacious and in the heart of Hamra, close to the university. All costs are included in the rent (in our experience, this will help avoid a lot of misunderstandings), there’s a dishwasher, and the house has a generator. I have to admit that at first, this fact did not have a huge impact on our decision to settle for this apartment, but from what we have found out later, it’s a life saver. Our Housing Department guide told us the electricity goes out on average 3/24 hours in downtown Beirut, which apparently is much better than in the suburbs, where it goes out on average 12/24 hours. We almost didn't believe him. Having lived here for less than a week however, we have learned to appreciate this subtle but important perk. The light in the hallway that indicates that the generator is running seems to be lit every time we go out, and we’ve been coming and going a lot, running errands. Three hours/day seems like an underestimate.

Who in the world can afford to live in Beirut?

On the Monday after the Eid, we went around Beirut with a Housing Department representative to look at off-campus apartments. On-campus apartments are in short supply, and we were told we would not be able to get an apartment on campus until next year. Bad news for us, as it turns out, because not only is off-campus housing further away from campus (obviously, duh!), but it’s also very expensive; extremely so, in fact, I wonder how anyone can afford to live in Beirut at all. If the university was not sponsoring our rent, I know we certainly wouldn’t!

Here's another note on the high rents in Beirut.