After Easter

Hi everyone, it’s a little late but I hope everyone has had a wonderful Easter! The long weekend here was great and filled with sunshine. Because everyone I know had plans with their family during these days, I went to Byblos (or Jbail, the Arabic name) on my own. Byblos is north of Beirut, about half an hour by bus, and is believed to be one of the oldest cities in the world. It is a lovely little town but extremely touristic.
The small bus I took from Beirut stopped somewhere by the road and after the driver yelled ‘Jbail!’ an American carrying a huge photo camera around his neck, a Chinese with a ‘Lonely Planet’ in his fanny pack and myself (a sleepy Dutch girl who’s face disappeared under a cap ;) hastily got up and left the bus. Outside we were standing by the side of the road looking at each other hoping someone would start walking in the direction of Byblos. The Chinese man and me decided to just walk towards the water and see were we’d end up and the American followed. It turned out to be a good decision and we went our separate ways once the old streets of Byblos split.
After this early arrival I wondered around the beautiful archeological sites of Phoenician, Roman and Crusader ruins. I also went into the old souk (market) were all the little shops filled with cheap souvenirs temped me to but all your giftes at once ;) There was however one nice shop were I could buy a fossile with a certificate (don’t ask!) but the thought of having to carry it around for the rest of the (very hot) day made me decide not to buy any.
I very much enjoyed wandering about the town and being one of the many tourists. The sea sparkled beautiful under the bright sun and many people were swimming and fishing. Even though I used sunscreen crème I started to notice my skin was burning so I decided to go home. When I arrived at the main street where all the buses passed I stopped the one going to Beirut and hopped on. I knew it was going to Beirut because I read it (in Arabic!)on the paper note taped in the front-window. Feeling very proud of myself I relaxed in my little seat while the busdriver and a friend sitting next to him lit some sigarets and seemed to be discussing politics. More and more people hopped on and it was quite crowded when we arrived in Beirut. At home I established that I did have sunburns so the next day, even though the weather was very nice again, I stayed out of the sun.

Now it’s back to work again. It felt like a small vacation and many of my colleagues also left Beirut to enjoy the nice weather and family time somewhere else. There are so many places I have to visit in the future :)
My supervisor is also finally back from his emergency mission to Egypt. When he came in quickly just to greet us everyone got up and gathered around him to hear his stories and play with his one-year-old daughter he brought along. He seems very friendly and professional but we didn’t have time to talk about the work yet because he’s been very busy with all the regular work which ahs been waiting for hime at the office. There is also a second intern for the filereview project: a woman from Greece who used to work with refugees there. She seems very nice and it is good to have someone else not understanding the language around us either, haha!
For the last two weeks I have not been working on the file review because there were some decisions that needed to be made by David (my supervisor) and since he wasn’t there I was given some research to do about international and national law concerning refugees in prison. Very interesting. I am almost finished with that and now that David is back I’ll probably we starting on the file reviews again soon.

Have a good weekend everyone and hope to hear from you soon!
Marlies