November?! What happened to October?

Still in Lebanon. Time is passing quickly here; it is already November (and yet still sunny most days :). Again I am uncertain about my future. I will have work with the UNHCR until the end of December 2011 but after that… My supervisor and I are looking into ways to keep me with the current project because I want to continue with it and she wants to keep me, but it is not easy. My friend and former colleague Eva has returned home so I was working alone for a while. Now there is a new intern and most likely two other interns will join our team soon. It is funny to train new people about the issues I have been working on, and hear their new views and possible solutions. The project is getting more shape and I get more tasks and responsibilities, which is one of the reasons I want to stay. Another reason is that I really like Lebanon and I am finally doing a good course to learn the language. However, at the same time I think about all the other challenges there are in other countries in the world - or even only in the Middle East - where I would like to work and know more about… Sometimes I wonder if I should move on instead of fighting so much to stay in Lebanon… Anyway, maybe my fight will be decided without me when I cannot find a way to stay here. So I try not to worry about it too much and just enjoy as much as I can the sea view at the boulevard, the wonderful Lebanese food, the mountains and the friendly people!
Even after eight months here the Lebanese still amaze me. A few days ago I was waiting for a fried to pick me from this big parking in front of a mall. While I waiting my eyes gazed over the jeeps and family’s going or returning from shopping. I saw a guy in his early twenties leaning strangely towards the side mirror of a jeep I assumed was his. It took me a few seconds to realize he was checking and adjusting his hair using the mirror of the car. I looked away, a little embarrassed. When I looked again (had to check if I saw it right) he was still carefully placing the gel-covered tips of hair and twisting in front of his cars’ mirror to admire his work from every side. I couldn’t help laughing quietly to myself, but after five minutes his hair bored me and I focused on the street again. Two minutes later the guy with his perfectly arranged hairdo is standing next to me, stops a taxi and drives off. I stand amazed on the side walk… He spent five minutes twitching his neck and moving his gel-spikes to the right vertical position in front of the side-mirror of a strangers’ jeep???? I will never understand these Lebanese men and their vanity. Maybe it is a Beirut-thing.
Though I really like this city I also love leaving it during the weekends. Especially to go into the mountains. Last Sunday I went to a small village to help a friend and his family picking olives from their trees, since it is the olive-season and they could use some help. After a morning of shaking trees and picking the fruits we brought the harvest of today and the previous four days to the presser in the next village. In the evening we went to pick it up but it was not ready yet and we got to see the whole process from olive to oil. Very wonderful for a girl who only knows both shapes of olives and never saw the transforming from one into the other. It is done (surprise surprise) by a big press. Two big stones in an ever bigger bucket smash the olives and then they are placed under a press, after which the oil mixed with water disappears into a machine while it looks like very dirty brown dishwater at best…But this magical machine separates the water from the oil and a dark green, pure and tick looking substance drops out of the machine in a bucket and from there in the gallon my friends family will take oil from for the rest of the year. About 80 kilos of olives produced an impressive 26 liters of oil and my friend very excitedly called his mother to convey to good news. A very good day. While we drove back to Beirut we enjoyed a view of the mountains covered in little lights. I remembered when I first looked at those mountains from the plain and how they amazed me then… and how they make me feel at home now.