Sadly, the first thing I should state is that my internet connection is not supporting pictures. So all you fantastic regular readers will have to wait a few more days for some pics. I hope you'll accept my apologies.
India has made me entirely more observant of my environment in the last month and a half. I haven't been to Lebanon in 6 years and in that time my opinions on everything have changed drastically. So this time I'm looking around for different things and therefore noticing different things. I've spent most of my time so far reacquainting with cousins and family, meeting those that have been born since my last visit, etc...
In that time, I've basically had to explain over and over why the HELL I'd ever move to India. In the end the basic explanation is that India has some amazing mathematicians that I want to work with. Furthermore it's in an exotic part of the world. This gets the point across slightly. Then I have to explain how poor people are and explain what I understand of the slums (which is nothing) and then my family implores me to come to Lebanon...
During these little explanation sessions we devolve into other comparisons. Lebanese people are, by the way, HORRIBLE DRIVERS! They all know this and complain about all the other drivers and how bad they are. It's quite comical to my eyes. What's great though is that I try to explain how much crazier and more hectic the traffic is in Chennai. Chennai, you see is nearly double the size of Lebanon in population and so you can imagine the congestion is worse than that. My cousins stare at me with jaws agape at the news that some country has worse traffic than lebanon. I enjoy that.
What's also funny to me now is that last time I was here I was in the same boat. I couldn't imagine worse traffic, but now I live in it.
The first real observation to make is that Lebanon and India have almost nothing in common. Ok, they are both in Asia, there are lots of Muslims, horrible traffic, crazy population density and poor in comparison to Europe and the english speaking world.
Lebanon is tiny. There is NOTHING small about India.
I'm enjoying the scenery here. It's completely gorgeous in the summer, but I've never seen it in winter (another reason my family deigns me crazy, "why you come in winter? why you not come in summer? Weather good then."). The scenery in winter here is also something special. My family lives way up in the mountains and the views into the valleys and simply spectacular (pictures ASAP I promise!) The scenery and the weather are complete changes and are both welcome for me right now. Today, it was sunny and the high was almost 50F. In the coming weeks I'm hoping to bounce around LARGE sections of Lebanon. Again, the whole country is ~120 miles tall and ~50 miles wide (~175km x 30km). Despite the small size there is a lot to see here. Lebanon has an interesting history including getting conquered by basically everybody (included in that are Israel and Hezbollah <---- not a fan) and a cuisine to match it. In addition I should mention last, but not least, we're in the advent season and Lebanon is part of where Jesus did his ministry. The versions of Christianity that exist here are slightly bizarre within christendom and it will be interesting to spend christmas away from what I have always known. On that note, I'll leave you with something just passed along to me. I would have sworn this was not american, but then I realized how utterly and completely american it truly is, thanks nickelodeon.
The "strangest" jingle bells ever.
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