My Hope

Our neighborhood is different than most in Lebanon.    Generally speaking in Lebanon neighborhoods classify people…by faith, socio-economic levels, and cultural backgrounds or ethnicities.    Ours classifies too, but only by socioeconomic level.    Unlike most, we are surrounded by Muslims and Christians, both orthodox and evangelical.    We live on the outskirts, in a building that would probably be classified as gentrification.     We’ve been told that 80% of our neighborhood was foreign born, primarily moving in as refugees.      The buildings bear the marks of the civil war decades ago.    Other areas around Beirut were hard hit too, but many of them have been rebuilt.    Nabaa hasn’t had that luxury.    The walls bear the marks of bombs long gone with no repairs in sight.     It isn’t just war that has quickly aged the area.    The winds blowing through have ...

  Do you ever have those moments where you walk away and realize what you actually should have said to someone?    I’m not even talking about a quick comeback.    Just the words that would have gotten your message across clearly.     That is how it has felt with language learning.    I walk away from people and then it dawns on me what they’ve said to me or how I could have responded.    I know with time the words will flow more naturally, but for now, if the words are ordered differently than I’m used to hearing them, it throws me.    (Conjugation is something even more difficult). Sadly, it isn’t just with Arabic either though. We went to a New Year’s party at the pastor’s house and played a game.    They wanted to include us, so someone offered to translate so we could give clues…. And I still froze.    (Granted, there’s a good chance I would’ve frozen in the States too, but I especially felt li...