Christmas Cookies and Rain days

The rains came finally, and it actually got chilly here this week, not chilly Chicago chilly, but still into the 50s, which felt cold here. This week we had our first "RainDay". Alexa-the storm that hit Lebanon, came in Tuesday night, and the Minister of Education cancelled all schools the next day. It actually wasn't that bad here in Beirut, but the mountains got hit with snow. The ministry canceled the next two days as well, but we still had school. It is interesting to walk the corniche now with the snow on the tops of the mountains. This weekend was our Christmas Cookie exchange. It was quite the interesting production trying to make cookies here. I wanted to make my mom's favorites, mint meringue, but that didn't go over that well. First of all, I bought a cookie sheet, that after I came home I realized it was too big for our oven. Hilarious. Then, after going to 5 or 6 stores, I couldn't find mint extract or food coloring, or mint chips. I decided to try anyways, and started cooking, and tried to whip up the meringue, without a mixer, needless to say it didn't go well. I scrapped the whole thing, and turned it into chocolate chip cookies that I brought to school. After talking with one of the teachers, I decided something stove top made would be best, so I went with fudge, and caramels. I had to go to four stores to find wax paper, but I found it. However, the caramels never hardened, so now it is a nice dip. Oh well. Saturday about 9 teachers came over with their favorite Christmas cookies and we had a great time listening to Christmas music and eating cookies. That night, we went to another teacher's Christmas party. Her husband works the university here, so it was a great mix of people. My favorite part was when a group of people gathered around the piano singing carols. It was beautiful, since they are all very talented, unlike some of us... Anyways, it was a great party. Today we went to Classic Burger, which is a great name for this place. They have a great quinoa burger and the fries are legit. So far we have found three places that serve veggie burgers, which is excellent. One week from now we will be back home, we fly through London, and are spending time in Chicago and Florida. The break will go fast, and I am sure we won't be able to see all those that we will want too, but it will only be a short time till the summer. Also, there have been over 5000 views on our blog so far, which is crazy. I'm sure a lot are my mom, but still. There have been some from 10 different countries and 4 continents. It is so fun to think of other people actually reading these blogs. I enjoy sharing what is happening in this amazing country, that I knew very little about, and I know a lot of people I knew also didn't know much about Lebanon. It is a beautiful country, with amazing people, and we are very lucky to work with such great students and teachers here.