Valentines week

This week was a shortened week, with school off Friday for Commemoration day.  This is a day in remembrance of the 2005 assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. During the week, my students stayed after on Thursday for a Skype chat with some Argo students.  It was a really great chance to see some former students and for our classes to share and ask questions to each other. I was really impressed with the number of students that stayed late, due to the time difference on the day before a day off. They were a great group of students who had a lot to share.

Friday morning we woke up to some bad news. Our pipes at our townhouse in Chicago are frozen. There has been others that have been frozen since the beginning if January and ours is just the latest in the bunch. We have a great property manager who is on the case but it's just a reminder if how terrible the weather is in Chicago compared to here. 

Friday we went up north for a trip with 8 other people. We took three cars and headed off on our weekend extravaganza  full of hiking and sight seeing. Our first stop was Baatara gorge which is a 3 waterfall gorge just recently discovered in the last few decades. It was a beautiful spot. The drive was amazing as well through tiny villages in the mountains. Next up, we stopped at the cedar reserve in Tannourine. The cedar is the national tree and there are not many left so when you get a chance to hike in them you take it. We had a nice picnic there, and walked through the reserve. During our hike the fog began rolling in. We were able to get some great views and pictures. 

After that, we went on to Becharre. We stayed in a hotel and had a fun dinner in town. The next morning we went up to a ski village, but there has hardly been any snow, so it was a ghost town. It did start snowing when we were up there, which was the first snow I've seen since last winter. It was a nice, fluffy, warm snow as well, so I'm not sure it counts. We headed to the Qadisha valley for a hike next. This was so incredibly beautiful I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. We had a nice hike until it started to hail so we headed out. Overall it was a great weekend.

Jai, softball and CAS

This week felt really long but probably just because we did so many fun things. Monday night we went to a Super Bowl party at Mike and Gretchen's house. They replayed the game here at 7 pm so it felt like the real deal, without the commercials but with the halftime show. I watched about the same amount I would've in Chicago.  We did have a lot of great snacks though, which clearly is the most important part.

Wednesday night Ryan and I went to Jai, which is one of the only places here for legitimate Thai and Indian food. This place only has one table and you eat right in the kitchen. They do a lot of take out and catering as well as the one table to dine in at that can comfortably seat four. They only have a few reservations a night so it is tough to get into. The food is amazing and really decently priced.

Friday night had us at ACS with 4 basketball games. JV girls and Varsity girls won, the JV boys and Varsity boys played tough, but lost. I worked the book for the Varsity boys game, made me miss the old team that I worked games with at Argo! The book is a little different but the hilarious part is how serious the officials took the book. Now, you should know that these officials barely call any fouls, and yet, I wrote 5 instead of 05 for number of points scored and it was quite the big deal. Hilarious. It was fun to be at all the games and to see all the players working hard. We went out for Italian food at our new favorite place Dottore after with Phil, who is the Varsity boys coach and current Assistant Middle School principal and next years Middle School principal. He is from Indiana, and actually played basketball growing up with Scott Skyles, the old Bulls coach, so it is always fun talking with him. He has been in Beirut for about five years, so he is a great resource on all things Beirut. 

Saturday in the morning Ryan and I ran down to the farmer's market at the Souks. The Souks are theh shops downtown, set up like an outdoor mall. The farmer's market happens once a week there, and they have fruits and veggies, as well as cooked food. There also are soaps, wicker items, and pottery. There was a guy there who had this bike that was modified so the front he could put bags in, and he would drive people's purchases home for only 6,000 lbl. Ryan was really interested in that. There was a lot of great food, and crafts to look at and sample, but in the end we didn't buy that much. We did end up buying some homemade fruit roll up type things which are delicious. Everyone there is so friendly and always offers lots of samples.

Saturday was also Mike's birthday and him and Ryan planned quite the celebration. We played a softball game at school with a 16" ball-just like Chicago-and teams of five and six. My team lost but only by one run. There was only one injury which involved me barreling down the baseline and knocking over Tracie who was trying to tag me out. She's ok, I felt terrible especially when I saw her later with a cut on her face from where her glasses cut into her face before they broke in two. What can I say I'm a Chicago white sox fan and we play hard.  After softball we all got together to watch Liverpool destroy Arsenal which was another great thing for Mike and Ryan and a few other fans. We do have some Arsenal fans we work with, so they were not pleased.

Today started a new adventure. Two great students are doing their CAS project and they asked me to be the teacher there during the project. CAS is community action and service and it's a big part of the IB program. All the students have to do a project. These two decided to do a basketball camp for 10-12 year old refugees. There were about 15 kids there and they were so fun. Now I know some of you who know me are stopping here to think you, basketball? Not Ryan??? Those are good questions, but I can come up with some fun games and Jessica and I did do a basketball camp in fourth grade that I remembered some drills from not to mention my amazing stint as a double b team bench warmer. Either way, the kids were great and maybe I'll learn more Arabic from them. 

We finished up the weekend with a nice Lebanese lunch with Mike, Gretchen and their wonderful landlord Nabil. We had a lot of nice mezze and even better conversation. All in all a great week. 

This week we have Friday off. We are heading up to the mountains with some people for the night. I am looking forward to getting out of the city and up to the mountains for some hiking. 

Jai 

Softball

Farmer's Market

Fruit Roll ups

Kids from the bball camp

Sports and more

The last two weeks have found us in familiar territory. Ryan is back coaching basketball and had his first game. He has the JV team and they looked great. He has some 8th graders in the team as well as 9th and 10th and the team they played against were all big 10th graders, so it was impressive. They played on Friday afternoon and it reminded me of the last few years going to games on Friday night. Only this time we were done before 7, which was great. We went to eat at Bread Republic after, which I don't think I have written about. It is a restaurant that does local on season food, like sandwiches, pastas, salads, and of course all kinds of fresh baked bread. We were sitting at our table in the tiny alleyway outside laughing at how it was February and we were eating outside, and our family home in Chicago had just gotten another 4 inches of snow. Definitely want to stay in warm countries for the rest of our teaching career if possible!

 Saturday we went to the cross country meet that ACS hosted in the mountains. It was a beautiful day. There were a lot of amazing student volunteers that came to help our team and the other team on the extremely tough uphill course. Our kids did a great job running and it was a eeay fun day complete with a Lebanese picnic after. Saturday night we were invited to our neighbor Jamil's house to play a game with his friends, which was fun to meet a lot of new people.

We had a parent teacher conferences Wednesday. I was really impressed with how many parents were able to make it out, which just continues how much parental involvement there has been at the school. It is really nice to work somewhere where the parents can be involved. 

This week is my last session of coaching little kid volleyball. It has been really fun and a whole new challenge. 20 third fourth and fifth graders running around after school is quite the sight! I was lucky to have two great 11th graders helping me out especially for the trip to bring them down 6 flights of stairs and over to another building to wait for their parents at the end. Starting the next week I will be the conditioning coach for the track team which I am excited about, and any of my forner players reading this will remember how much I love conditioning! Another exciting project coming up starting Sunday will be the CAS project of two students. CAS is creativity action and service and all ib students have to create a project that helps the community in some way. Two students are going to be running a basketball camp for less fortunate children for two hours on Sundays. They asked me to be the chaperone-obviously they have not seen me play basketball! I am really excited to see this work. The students have been setting up their practice plan and getting some fundraising ideas together. This is one of many impressive community service projects the students here are involved in. There are a lot of refugees here in different camps that the students often work with or gather supplies for them. 

Today is another beautiful day, we did get a little rain last week, but it was mainly at night. I am planning on a nice long run today down on the waterfront path that reminds me of the lake shore drive path, but way less crowded. It is really peaceful out there. 

Last weekend after our long run we decided to take the kayaks out again. We paddled to pigeon rocks and went into some caves until we heard the bats, which Ryan hates. We paddled around for an hour or so, which was a great shoulder workout on top of the bootcamp and TRX workouts I started going to at my gym. 

Check out the digital photography students work from ACS at www.acsdigitalphotography.blogspot.com for some impressive photos taken around Beirut. The students have inspired me to take the camera out today and try to get some good photos too. 

Kayaks at school

The Radio Shack next to Bread Republic

Bread Republic Alley

The GNC by the Bread Republic, seriously a Radio Shack and GNC

Ryan's team

Classic example of Beirut traffic on a one way street

Trophy Table

Horses on the cross country course 

Horses on Course, mountains in the background

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Amazing fruit plate, best tangerines ever

Ryan presenting the awards

ACS team

Picnic lunch, hummus, veggies and more