So. This blog is becoming very difficult to keep up.
I have been so busy, so happy, my life has become so full, that I don't have the time to write down everything that I'm doing. But it's more than that - in Egypt, writing this blog was a way to keep my mind together, to keep my emotions under control, to explain as best I could to people at home the crazy life I was living. But here, my life feels so much lighter, easier, more exciting. I woke up one morning and decided to go to Tripoli, alone, and I went, and had an great day with two friendly, helpful, generous, un-creepy Lebanese men I met that day. I'm singing in two wonderful choirs and learning so much new music. My dad came to visit (!!!) and we spent five days just running all around Beirut and places nearby (everything in Lebanon is nearby). Dad and I went into my first cave, and I had my mind blown. We took a teleferique (massive cable car lift) from the coast straight into the mountains, and stood under the tall white statue of Our Lady of Lebanon, opening her arms to the sea, the sky, and the city. We ate so much delicious Lebanese food that I can't even remember all the places we went. I went on Take Back the Night march on International Women's Day in the pouring rain and was interviewed for a French newspaper. I go out on weekends with my friends and always end up making new friends. This weekend, I went out camping in the mountains with three other girls and we had a mad, wild, body-painting, dancing, singing, fire-burning pagan ritual for the spring equinox. I woke up the next morning to the most perfect spring day, deep in a green river valley, and swam in the snowmelt river, ate lemons picked right off the trees and breathed for what felt the first time since Skyros. I've begun volunteering for an amazing NGO that works with children in a poor neighborhood right next to the Palestinian refugee camps, and it was absolutely the highlight of my week last week. I've fallen in love with archaeology. I've heard lectures by Rashid Khalidi, met Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dorne, and begun to really dream happily about my future again.
Any one of these things would have been enough in Egypt for a full, detailed blogpost. My days were so difficult that the smallest triumph was incredibly important and worth celebrating. But here, if I took time to blog about every good thing that happened to me, I would barely have time to do anything! I feel like I am coming back to myself here - my mind, body and spirit are coming back to themselves in important and delightful ways. As I was once told by a wise woman, "You can never lose what's really yours." But I worried in Egypt - worried that I was staying too long in the fire, and that I might be burned down into a pile of ash, with nothing to do or to be. I'm pulling myself back together here, and it's easier than I thought it would be, and I like what I'm finding.
So. That's why I haven't been blogging recently. Maybe I'll go back and retell some of these amazing stories in the detail they deserve, but I think I really have to find a new voice for this blog. A new voice, to go with my new life!
Oh - and I'm going to Jordan next weekend. PETRA. And even better, my ROOMIE LIANA!!!!!!!
I have been so busy, so happy, my life has become so full, that I don't have the time to write down everything that I'm doing. But it's more than that - in Egypt, writing this blog was a way to keep my mind together, to keep my emotions under control, to explain as best I could to people at home the crazy life I was living. But here, my life feels so much lighter, easier, more exciting. I woke up one morning and decided to go to Tripoli, alone, and I went, and had an great day with two friendly, helpful, generous, un-creepy Lebanese men I met that day. I'm singing in two wonderful choirs and learning so much new music. My dad came to visit (!!!) and we spent five days just running all around Beirut and places nearby (everything in Lebanon is nearby). Dad and I went into my first cave, and I had my mind blown. We took a teleferique (massive cable car lift) from the coast straight into the mountains, and stood under the tall white statue of Our Lady of Lebanon, opening her arms to the sea, the sky, and the city. We ate so much delicious Lebanese food that I can't even remember all the places we went. I went on Take Back the Night march on International Women's Day in the pouring rain and was interviewed for a French newspaper. I go out on weekends with my friends and always end up making new friends. This weekend, I went out camping in the mountains with three other girls and we had a mad, wild, body-painting, dancing, singing, fire-burning pagan ritual for the spring equinox. I woke up the next morning to the most perfect spring day, deep in a green river valley, and swam in the snowmelt river, ate lemons picked right off the trees and breathed for what felt the first time since Skyros. I've begun volunteering for an amazing NGO that works with children in a poor neighborhood right next to the Palestinian refugee camps, and it was absolutely the highlight of my week last week. I've fallen in love with archaeology. I've heard lectures by Rashid Khalidi, met Bill Ayres and Bernadine Dorne, and begun to really dream happily about my future again.
Any one of these things would have been enough in Egypt for a full, detailed blogpost. My days were so difficult that the smallest triumph was incredibly important and worth celebrating. But here, if I took time to blog about every good thing that happened to me, I would barely have time to do anything! I feel like I am coming back to myself here - my mind, body and spirit are coming back to themselves in important and delightful ways. As I was once told by a wise woman, "You can never lose what's really yours." But I worried in Egypt - worried that I was staying too long in the fire, and that I might be burned down into a pile of ash, with nothing to do or to be. I'm pulling myself back together here, and it's easier than I thought it would be, and I like what I'm finding.
So. That's why I haven't been blogging recently. Maybe I'll go back and retell some of these amazing stories in the detail they deserve, but I think I really have to find a new voice for this blog. A new voice, to go with my new life!
Oh - and I'm going to Jordan next weekend. PETRA. And even better, my ROOMIE LIANA!!!!!!!
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