A problem I’ve been running into at the grocery store is finding smaller packages of pita bread. I live alone and don’t have time to go through a whole package before the bread starts to mold, so I’ve been on the lookout for smaller packaging. But then it occurred to me that no one lives alone in Lebanon, so why would stores sell small packages of anything?
Also, I got stuck in the elevator the other evening. Not because the power went out, as it does 4+ times a day, but because it just decided to malfunction. With me in it. Apart from being buried alive, getting stuck in an elevator is one of my biggest fears. I am not a fan of confined spaces, literal or metaphorical, and I usually opt for the stairs in any reasonable situation. But I live on the sixth floor….and I get lazy….
I certainly don’t want to be a drama queen (it really could have been so much worse), but I was in there for a good 10 minutes before my friend Wael was able to talk me through what to do on the phone while the building’s super and her friend pounded on the door and yelled in some Indian language so loudly that I could hardly hear what he was saying. (Side note: I seriously owe Wael the next two years of my life for the amount of times he’s saved my butt since moving here).
Needless to say, I will be taking the stairs from now on. The upside is that I will have a toned derrière in about two months. Mmm…maybe three.
Something that makes me chuckle is how puzzled people look when I tell them that I recently left Sweden to come live in Lebanon for a couple of years. They’re like, why?!? Everyone from the college student to the lady at church to the taxi driver will say, “Man, if I lived in Sweden I’d never leave. It’s so nice there; why would you come here?” And their puzzled expressions will grow even more pronounced when they learn that I live alone. Like, really?? You don’t have any friends? Or my favorite: You don’t have a husband?
Not yet. But I almost caught one in the taxi ride home this evening. The driver could barely speak a word of English, but I managed to explain - in rudimentary Arabic - that I’m from Sweden (again, the puzzled why would you come here if you could live there look) and that I’ll be here for a couple of years. He said he was 32 and I said I was too, and then he asked if I was married and I said no (another puzzled look) and then he asked if I lived with family, to which I again said no (a third puzzled look). Had his English been better, I’m fairly certain he would have proposed marriage.
Shucks. Next time.
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