Khalas, bitti, done

Well this is my first time writing here for awhile because now is the first time I got free time to write on this blog. However, the program is over which is what is giving this free time. Beirut has also been very quiet since the prisoner exchange so I have really had anything that I urgently wanted to right about. At least until now. First some reflections on the program. My professors were great and in the in-class time was great and really helped but the amount of homework assigned left me feeling a little cheated. It was enough busy work that kept me from seeing more of beirut, making more friends and hence kept me from interacting with more locals (granted some of my friends are from places like Jordan and Saudi Arabia but you get my point), and the homework left me feeling so drained that I didn't want to learn anymore arabic or speak it. Granted it is incredibly difficult to run a program like this and learn a lot of arabic in a month but still I was hoping for something more like my turkish program last year even though that was four months.

The other thing I was thinking about a conversation I had with a teacher and a friend of mine yesterday. We were talking about being pride and being self-critical in the Arab world. Despite the image Americans have of all Arabs only criticizing the U.S. for anything bad that happens in their lives, the majority of my friends spend the most time blaming themselves sometimes I think unnecessarily. What also happens is they think I am way to self-critical of my country. My teacher put it best when he explained the pride that exists here and criticizing your own country is like criticizing family which can make you look really crazy. As long as my friends understand that I love my country its fine but otherwise its bad. In most cases it was pretty minor but I had a friend who when he heard I wanted to study in AUB for my masters in psychology he passionately tried to dissuade me from studying in Lebanon and tried to get me to study in the States until he realized that I was firmly and genuinely committed to studying cross-cultural psychology in Lebanon. I'll be writing more over the next couple of days as I unpack my whole experience here in Lebanon to make up for the lack of updates during the program.