I stayed up to watch the Patriots win the AFC Championship Game. Very exciting. I feel like I was the only person on this continent who is remotely interested. At any given time of day I can find no fewer than seven soccer games on TV. Often many more and at least one is always live.
But I have to flip through eighty channels on three different televisions before I could find the Championship games of the National Football League.
Very sad. But at least I got to watch. The Superbowl should be fun. One of my friends here is from Phily and we might be able to rent out a bar with a large screen.
The weather changes everyday this time of year. Beirut just had two days of storms and rain and thunder and lightning and hail and wind. It was really torrential. Meanwhile, an hour away up in the mountains they got three feet of snow. The skiers are happy. Today is sunny, but the waves on the Corniche are HUGE. They are crashing over the seawall and right over the road. There's one spot that looks like a car wash as the traffic tries to dodge each incoming wave.
We had a four day weekend for Eid Al Adha. That's the Muslim holiday which commemorates Issac's attempted sacrifice of his son, Jacob. God, of course, was so touched by Isaac's generosity and blind faith that He sent Isaac a sheep (or goat or lamb or something) to kill instead of his son.
Traditionally, each household slaughters a sheep (or a goat or lamb or something) and it is a coming of age rite of passage for each teenage boy to be the one to draw the blade across the jugular of the unsuspecting ungulate. In Egypt, rivers of blood would flow through the streets and pool at storm sewer drains where revelers would dip their hands and leave bloody palm prints on street signs, busses and shop windows as a symbol of good luck. Fortunately for people with weak stomachs, none of that goes on in Beirut. I'm told there are some ghetto neighborhoods where some slaughtering might happen, but the closest I got was the big Lamb Brisket sale display at Spinney's, the local mega grocery store. ("Super Marche" as the French say)
This week marks the end of a grading period. Semester one ends on Friday so I'll be busy preparing reports and assessing student progress this week. We also find out about school housing for next year. The apartments that the school has on campus are being renovated over the summer into classroom spaces. So a bunch of us have to move. The school currently leases some apartments in the neighborhood and they dish them out according to seniority. The rest of us will get a monthly stipend and have to find our own place to live. Should be stressful. I'll keep you posted.
I'll be watching the Superbowl in two weeks and rooting for the Pats. If you tune in, know that I am watching the same game at the same time. (A modern twist of wishing on a star, I guess.)
Stu