Welcome to Beirut!

After nearly 17 hours of traveling, we arrived safe & sound in Beirut on April 3rd. Upgrading to business class was key, and Joe was a champion traveler, saving his major meltdown for deplaning at the Beirut airport.

Over the past two weeks, we've been learning about our new hometown. Of course, having worked and lived in Latin America for so long, that's my frame of reference. At this point, I've decided that Beirut is like a smaller, cleaner version of Buenos Aires albeit with more bullet holes, tanks, and fancy cars. The restaurants are phenomenal, the nightlife is supposed to be amazingly fun (we don't get out much since Joe's bedtime is 7p), and shopping/grooming might be considered a national pastime. And nearly everyone here speaks English - all the waiters, most shop workers, even some taxi drivers. One of the best qualities however -- especially with a 4 month old who requires you to be at home from 6:30pm onward -- is that EVERYBODY delivers, from fast food to the best Lebanese restaurant in town. Having fresh and delicious hummus and kibbeh at your front door within 20 minutes is quite a thing.

While Ben is hard at work during the day, Joe and I explore the city. (We'll post more on our adventures later.) Joe's also mastered skills such as rolling over (back to front, and front to back if he keeps one arm tucked under), a baby version of army crawling, drooling copious amounts, making ugly crying faces, laughing, and making his parents dance around to Lady Gaga to entice him to laugh more. Check out the photos and videos...

This one is from when we learned that Joe (finally!) responds to qzerberts with laughter:


This is one of Joe's very impressive back to front roll overs that we've been able to catch on film. Getting this on video is a little like catching the bird of paradise mating dance on film (for all you planet earth fans); we know it happens all the time, it's just so rare to catch it on film...


And here are a bunch of pictures from our first two weeks. Enjoy!

Beirut First Weeks

Goodbye DC...

We have now officially left our home in Washington, DC and moved to Beirut, Lebanon. At the end of March, Ben returned from his 5 weeks overseas to spend a week packing up the house and moving us as a family out to Lebanon. During the insane week of organizing, packing and watching house get emptied out and all our belongings either put into storage or shipment (hopefully the right things going to the right places), we were lucky to have visits from Grandma and Grandpa Rempell to help out with selling the car (goodbye Blancanieves, it's been fun!) and then from Aunt Randi, Uncle Arnie and Cousin Leslie to help us with the packing day and moving and painting day. While their help sorting through random knick-knacks collected over the past 3 years was invaluable, I don't think they minded when we passed Joe off to them in the morning and asked them to spend the entire day with him. From a completely objective viewpoint, this kid gets cuter every day. You can see by the pictures here.



We'll keep you posted as we get settled in Beirut. While we enjoy our sushi delivery that just arrived, please enjoy this post and updated pictures. More to come soon...