Getting Settled

This past month has been busy but exciting. We have finally moved into our new apartment and our shipment arrived just last weekend, so we are starting to feel a bit more settled every day. We still have no internet access in the apartment, so we won't go into much detail on this post other than providing a few pictures. A couple of pics of our apartment, more to come once we furnish it...

This is our empty kitchen


This is one view of our balcony. If it weren't hazy (which it often is) the sea would be there in the distance...


Municipal elections are happening in Lebanon this month. Each weekend is a different part of the country. These are only the third local elections that Lebanon has seen in its modern history. While there are calls for decentralization, most of the fiscal authority still lies with the central government. The elections have been somewhat interesting, though also have left many disenfranchised as many of the primary political parties undertook last minute backroom negotiations to form unified lists of candidates in many of the municipalities, which have resulted in either elections being cancelled due to an absence of competition or elections where lists of independent candidates have virtually no chance to gain access to the municipal council. The Beirut elections happened recently, and while turnout was embarrassingly low (20%, which is pretty bad even for US standards of election participation), the owner of the taxi stand across the street from our apartment ran to be one of the Mukhtar's of Beirut, which is sort of an official community representative with limited official powers but acts as the link between the average citizen and others who have more power. He won, and they threw quite a party outside our apartment the night after the elections.

This is from our balcony:


and this is the famous Geryes of Geryes Taxi.


As a family, we've gone up to a vineyard for a day of eating and breathing of fresh air, visited as many outdoor spaces that Beirut has to offer, taken Joe to his first beach where he watched dad play some ultimate frisbee, and introduced to Joe the concept of putting himself to sleep at night, which has been somewhat stressful and so far moderately successful.

Here is the link to a bunch of new Joe pictures. Enjoy! Love, B, D, and J.

4 months