Baking in Beirut

Well, Mike did call at 6am, but I did not make it to run with him. I slept another hour, then took my jump rope out to the jetty to get some exercise. I won’t say jet-lag is defeated yet. I’ve had it sneak up on me a day or two late before…


The brutal setting

We held a mini-fair for two schools today. It was outside. What the HELL? Today in Beirut, it felt like Southville about a month ago – hot and humid as a bulldog’s breath. Of course we are all dressed up. Guys always get it worst with the long sleeves and ties. Ugh. It was miserable. I could feel the heat coming off my table, the sweat dripping down my back beneath my undershirt. We couldn’t get out of there quick enough.


Mike, before his laptop melted, and he started crying

Back at the hotel now, catching up on answering student email that has been piling up this week. We will probably go down to the café district for dinner tonight. I should have some great pics tomorrow after our morning excursion…just wait.

Battling Jet-Lag with Recreation

Flights: Savannah-Atlanta-Philadelphia-Paris-Beirut
Start: 12 noon, September 12
End: 5 pm, September 13
Time difference: 7 hours
Total travel time: 22 hours

Whew! Have seats gotten smaller, or have I gotten larger? I think my ass spread out over the course of the trip, you know, kinda like how you get shorter over the course of the day as your spine compresses? You didn’t know that?

So the flights were the usual. Some reading, some sleeping, some wanting to punch the passenger in front of or beside me. I lucked out on the Philly-Paris flight and got an interesting seat-mate, a young lady named Andrea going to Athens for a semester abroad. She laughed at my blow-up chiropractic neck pillow. It didn’t make sleeping any easier or more comfortable, but it did save the neck-crick afterwards. Paris: as soon as the plane door opened my eyes started watering from the cigarette smoke. Thank Allah it was only a 90 minute layover.

As soon as I checked into the hotel I changed and went to the pool. It is very lively, as it has club members as well as hotel guests. Swam some laps and did some reading. I also watched the sun go down. Hopefully, this will imprint onto the reptilian core of my brain: it is NOT NOON, even though it thinks it is. I am determined to beat jet-lag quickly on this trip. I have read that getting sun and exercising really help. So do pills. I took some OTC stuff and slept 12 hours.

In order to get the sun and exercise, I met up the next day with a tour buddy, Mike Wigal, to go scuba-diving. Now, the last time I went was two years ago, on the Honduran island of Utila, and that was when I had my open-water course, and never sent in my info for the card. No problem. The swarthy fellows here took my word for it and only rolled their eyes slightly when I tried to put my regulator on my tank backwards. They also said, “En Shallah.”

The dives were great. One in the morning as a refresher, during which we did go through a short cave, then one in the afternoon on a wreck just offshore from our hotel. Mike and I were hoping it was sunk during the civil war:

Mike: So how did the ship sink?

Dive Master: Like this… (imagine the dive master twinkling his fingers downwards and making bubbling noises)

We all got a good laugh out of that.

In between dives we cabbed to the center of town and walked around a bit. Most of this stuff I saw the last trip, but it was new to Mike. I love central Beirut. What a great café, shopping, and sight-seeing area. We need to come back here at night sometime. This evening however, we met up with other tour pals (Stephanie, Joy, and Katherine) at ate across the street at “Snack M.Barbar.” I had a Tawood pita sandwich and a platter of hummus for about $3. Can’t beat that. Now it’s to bed. Mike’s going to attempt to wake me at 6am for a jog along the corniche. Our tour organizer, Joseph, said to just be careful to stop running south when we begin seeing black banners. That’s Hezbollah.

(ps – pics to come. for now, check Mike’s site)