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.

Thanksgiving

This week went by fast again. We had four days of school this week, with Friday off for Thanksgiving. Ryan was extremely busy running two volleyball tournaments and two soccer tournaments. Tuesday and Wednesday he had the volleyball tournaments, with our varsity girls and boys getting second place, jv boys getting first place and our jv girls getting second place. So, I guess it was four volleyball tournaments now that I think about it. Then Thursday night he had two teams come in from Egypt. One team was hosted by our players, and we hosted their coach, a guy from the US who has been working in Egypt for four years. Thursday night we went to Gretchen and Mikes for some Thanksgiving football, Detroit vs Packers, which was fun watching it live, just like we would have been at home, but only at 8 o'clock at night. I tried rooting for a tie in this game, but it didn't work. Friday we went to our middle school principal's house for a huge feast with about 50 of us expat teachers. It was a wonderful evening where we got to spend time with a lot of people we don't always get to see. Saturday I went  to a German Christmas fest at a building near by that we call the German building. A few teachers live in this apartment building, and then behind it is a German church. Kind of random. The fest was great.  A lot of homemade crafts, Christmas decorations, sausages, cheesecake, Gluvine, and of course beer. All day Friday and Saturday Ryan was at school running the soccer tournaments in which our girls and boys varsity soccer teams came in second place. Saturday night we took Josh, the coach staying with us, out to dinner. Today the teams leave, and then we are going to go to Gemmayzeh because they are shutting the streets down to cars, and there will be a lot of great booths up for homemade crafts. Then hopefully tonight we will be going to see the Beirut Chants opening night, with a choir singing Handel's Messiah. There will be a number of shows the next few weeks, as well as the philharmonic orchestra playing shows too. There are a lot of great cultural events here to take part in, so I hope to be doing more of that.
Here are some pictures of the holiday decorations around town, and thanksgiving.

Mike carving the turkey

My table at Thanksgiving

German building crafts

German Santa Claus and angel

German Christmas fest

Streets of Hamra

My favorite poinsettia salesman

Stores selling decorations

Grocery store selling xmas stuff

Vacation time!

This past week/weekend was another amazing adventure. We have off of school from Monday-Thursday next week for Eid al Adha. Originally it was just going to be Tuesday through Thursday, but on Thursday the Ministry of Education decided to add Monday as well. Jackpot. A lot of people are traveling during this time and we decided to stick around and get to know Beirut more. This weekend we had a potluck dinner at the home of our headmaster, which is on the roof of the school. It is an incredible place. Saturday I went shopping for the first time here, which really made me feel like I was at home. Shopping is shopping no matter where you are at in the world. Saturday night we had made the plan to go to Vinifest with Gretchen, Mike, Jesse, Tue, Joe and Jessica. It was a blast. It was at a place called the Hippodrome, which is where they do the horse racing. Explaining in English to a taxi driver who speaks Arabic was hilarious. Ryan mimed out riding a horse, more like the Jump on it dance. We did make it. It was 35 thousand Lebanese for two people to get in and have all the wine you wanted. That is like 20 dollars. There were probably close to 20 wineries there, all from Lebanon or Syria. They had a lot of food and different kinds of wines to sample. We got a lot of business cards from the owners who said they would give us tours of the wineries.

Today we continued the brunch tradition, this time at Jesse's. There were a good number of us there. Ryan made some amazing stuffed peppers as well. Ryan and I decided to go to the Hotel Riviera to enjoy the pool, which is on the Med. It was incredible. There were hardly any people there so it was very relaxing. We are going back tomorrow with some others as well.

But probably the highlight of the weekend for Ryan was tonight's dinner. We finally went to Joe Pena's in Gemmayzeh. Now, there is not a lot of Mexican food here, and for those of you who know Ryan, you know how hard that is for him not to have a burrito every two days. We have been able to make some, but it really isn't the same. Well tonight, the dream came true. First of all, during happy hour the drinks are half off, which is nice, but more importantly there is a self serve nacho bar for free. We also ordered the guacamole before we knew about the nacho bar, and the waiter made it right at our table. It was great. I ordered fajitas and Ryan had a quesadilla/burrito type thing. All in all, it was a delicious night.  We walked the around 2 miles home through the city at night, taking streets we hadn't really walked on before, so it was really interesting. The Souks (shops) were so busy with everyone visiting for the holiday. It is crazy how much money is here, every store is Versace, Armani, Rolex and others like that.

I'll probably blog later this week, we have some fun things planned. Tuesday night we are going for a Lebanese cooking class, and Thursday we are going on a hike. Saturday we will be going camping and hiking as well.