Routine

Three months, a quarter of a year. The goal to update my blog every two weeks has proven to be slightly ambitious. But it wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to write about and I can’t blame the many visitors for keeping me from updating my blog. I think it was the fact that a certain routine has settled in. Yes, I have a great job, love my team, my apartment, Beirut, Lebanon, my life – everything. But (and yes, there is a but) it’s not as exciting anymore as it was in the beginning. Even though as a student you long for your first real job – the reality of actually having one is somehow frustrating. You have a very limited number of days off (and yes, I do know that I am amongst the more fortunate ones), your budget is always strained and days resemble one another to a large extent. In the daily routine, the small stories that I thought in the early days to be captivating and interesting enough to put them down in words on this site have somehow faded in the multiplicity of them and then you just get used to your surroundings. Habits drown surprises; the daily grind of getting up, going to work, compiling a daily update on events in Syria, get some other work done, go home, study, sometimes go for drinks and go back to sleep dominates things. It’s the same in every place, whether you work in Bern, London or here. As my dad somehow pointedly put it when he was visiting two weeks ago: We (referring to him, his wife and my gran) can leave, but this is your home, and you have to stay.

I got accustomed to the little things that draw your attention when you first visit Beirut and Lebanon. Such as the many buildings riddled with bullet holes from the civil war or another of these many struggles fought in Lebanon (it seems to me that whichever book you open on Lebanon at any given point of its history, the country is just always witnessing some kind of conflict – some bloodier than others).  And there are the soldiers that sometimes gather around the Downtown area where I work and you never really know, what is going on and why they’re there. But as long as they lazily look after you, it can’t be that serious. It was through visiting people’s eyes that I saw some things afresh – and also rediscovered Arabic food which I had neglected a little (or say a lot) over the past weeks because I suffered from a falafal and fattoush overdose after Amman. You get used to many things. Traffic behaviour was another thing I was reminded of. My dad was impressed by the way Lebanese and Jordanian drivers zip in and out of lanes, not really caring for the lines on the ground or the traffic lights – but how they somehow organised the chaos, without anyone getting annoyed at one another or the old lady crossing a busy road and forcing everyone to slow down. Yes, they honk, but no one would make a bigger fuss about it – as opposed to order-loving ever so slightly over-controlling Swiss who have to make sure other drivers don’t go to fast by purposefully driving slowly in front of them. I got used to such manoeuvers. And I will – most likely – have to re-train my hand not to constantly hover over the honk once I get back – if I do, that is.

Adaptation is a virtue, I guess. I started to make the „eh“ sounds Lebanese make when approving. So far, I managed not to also copy the „ts“ which indicates „no“ and which constitutes a sound that is slightly disconcerting (and let’s be honest, a little rude) when you hear it the first couple of times. I am also starting to pick up other characteristics of the Lebanese accent, even though I still much prefer the Jordanian dialect (yep, I admit it. They still think I’m crazy for my love of Jordan). My Arabic is improving, but it’s a language where the more you learn it, the more you realise you’ll just never get anywhere – a very humbling experience. And that’s not me being overly pessimistic. It’s just reality. As an Arabic student you will have these days when you think: wow, I actually understood what this guy was saying and could respond – and you feel extremely proud. Then, the next minute, hour, day or week, you sit there and your brain is blank, not recognising any of the sounds they make.

This is maybe more of a down-to-earth, not everything is always so bright (and maybe always a little greener on the other side) post. I have this image in my head that probably fits my current state most appropriately: it’s the „after-the-happy-ending“ situation. Imagine any of these Disney characters after they married their prince/princess and live happily ever after (in case you haven’t figured, I love these movies). Well, I’m sure they don’t. That’s when the movie ends and you don’t see what happens to them afterwards. We forget that a daily routine is just not that exilirating, wherever you are and whatever you do.