- It's the only Middle Eastern country that doesn't have a desert.
- The only country in the region, and I would imagine one of the only countries in the word, where you can go to the beach and drive an hour then go skiing.
- Lebanon is home to the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, Jebeil or as Americans would call it Byblos.
- Some Lebanese considered themselves Phoenician rather than Arabic or Middle Eastern.
- The Lebanese Police force is more like a military force and they are called The Internal Security Force. In fact, many small towns have their own militia in charge of security.
That's just a few of the many very interesting things I've learned about this country.
My language studies are coming along fairly well. I have an A+ average, but I'm not sure how long that will last. I have two classes: Classical Arabic and Lebanese Dialect. The latter of which I hate! It's extremely hard. Basically I'm learning two languages. Classic Arabic is the more important of the two and I spend a lot of time on it. It's the core class of the program; however, they fail to recognize that you can't learn a dialect until you learn the language. The best way to describe this would be to say that romance languages are like classical Arabic and Lebanese dialect is like French or Italian etc…They use similar alphabets and share some words but ultimately they are different languages. I wouldn't mind learning the dialect but teaching it to beginners is not the way to go about it.
This weekend I'm taking a trip to Istanbul to check out some old stuff...hahaha j/k That should be fun, especially since the little Arab I do know isn't going to be very helpful in Turkey.
This is how my name is written in Arabic. Remember you need to read it from the right to the left.
Well I have to attend a lecture on the Lebanese Civil War.
مساء الخير [Masa L Kheer] Good evening!
-Joe
