Friday, April 10, 2009

The Picnic from Hell!!

7:30am or so in the morning my housemate knocks on my door. I am awake so this doesn't bother me, but still...it is a little annoying. He asks me if I have received my Residency Card. Fortunately, the previous night I had, so I proudly replied in the affirmative. He said he and my other housemate were going on a picnic and that I could come since I had my RC. They would be leaving in half an hour!

This does not leave me a lot of time to get ready, so I sign off from chattng, jump into the shower, and hurry up with everything I need to do before we go. And then, I wait. And I wait. And I wait some more. At around 10am other people show up who are also going. There are many things to pack, so I help where I can. We finally get on the road at around 11:30pm. We then have to make another stop to pick up 4 other people. This stop takes a few minutes as well. We are finally on our way again at around 12:30pm. Then we drive and drive and drive.

As I have not eaten since the little snack I had for breakfast, I am feeling pretty low and getting quit cranky. I am ready to just go home and forget the whole thing! We finally make it to the approximate area we are going, and no one can decide on the perfect spot. We need somewhere fairly secluded because they bought alcohol and the women who were there were going to drink it, and they did not want the possibility of being hassled because of it. One was wearing a skirt, and that could cause a problem as well.

They also wanted to try to get near the water or a tree or something. Of course, since we started so late, all these good spots were taken. We eventually did find one that was very nice and quite secluded, though we could see another large family over the way dancing and having a good time.

I wanted to help, but they had everything under control, and had their specific way of doing things, so I stood and watced for a little while feeling like an idiot, and then I went to the other side of the vehicle and just sat and relaxed. I really felt like crying and had little energy...this is a sure sign of my needing to eat (I should have eaten much before this actually). Of course this bit of antisocialness lead to other problems. But after a while, I was able to join them again and be fairly happy.

We ate fatoush, hummus, dolme (of course), fruit (including apples and watermelon), and chocolate cake for dessert! We ate rather quickly, and most of it was brought home because there was lightening in the distance and then it actually started raining.

As we left we visited the ruins of an old fortress of somekind and a 700 year old grave yard. It was quite nice, so I was not too disappointed in this. We finally arrived back home around 7pm. The people stayed much longer than i would have liked. They played cards and smoked shisha for hours. I kept leaving because the smoke hurt my eyes. Then I just went to bed to avoid it all.

This morning I just wanted to sleep in, and I managed to do so until 7:30am. I woke up and decided I would stay in bed all day because I could. This didn't work out so well though. My housemates decided that today we would all have brunch together! So up I got at 11:30am and had croissants, a bread with some sort of unitifiable spice that I topped with a Lebanese yogurt, tomatoes, cucumbers, and tea.

It was quite delicious, and I didn't regret getting out of bed for it....

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