Back to Lebanon

We have now been back in Lebanon for three weeks, which is wild to think how fast the summer went. As we start our third year here it's fun to think about how much more we know then when we arrived the first year. This year we have more friends that moved away from Beirut going to new jobs or retiring but we have made some new friends with the teachers that are just arriving, which is the incredible part of this job. We have friends all over the world now and friends 
from all over the world. 

School officially started for the students on Wednesday. I'm really excited for my classes this year because I have three sections of the 11th grade IB history and we are doing a new curriculum. I have taught most of these students before as well, so we already have a great rapport. I also am teaching two classes of senior seminar which is fun since it is my second time teaching it and I am looking forward to making the class better. I start volleyball on Monday-the girls are so excited and have been coming by to talk volleyball all week. 

After a great summer visiting family and friends in Florida, Chicago, North Carolina, And driving from London to Scotland, I was excited to be back and in a routine. This year we moved to a different apartment building, which is Nabil's building where we spent most of our time anyways. It feels like home already. Nabil is an incredible man with amazing stories, as he has lived here since the 60's and experienced some remarkable things during the civil war. He is a generous man and has friends all over that he shares with us. For example this past weekend he took Ryan and m, Nick, Erin and Debbie to his friend'so house in Deir el Qamar, just south east of Beirut in the mountains. The woman who owns the house collects antiques from all over the region and had them displayed in her home. After we had a delicious lunch at a relatively new place in Beit Eddine called Bouyouti, which the cooks are the same as one of our favorite places in Beirut, L'Autre Bistro. It was so nice to be out of the city, in a quiet green space, with temperatures not in the 90s!