D minus five days, or: let there be rambling

So here it goes, the quasi-mandatory abroad blog, where I will discuss my adventures in the Land of Cedars for as long as possible before I get bored of this writing venture and decide to move on to co-author yet another unfinished novel with LKat. Long-term writing goals have never really been my strong suit, but I keep going back to them as if I can somehow distract myself from the inevitable premature demise of one project by starting another.

Anyway... I'm on the road again, off to another location where I barely know anyone... although I think I've topped myself this time. I've never before made plans to stay this long in a country as unfamiliar... and it is a little scary. It took me a while to get used to New York (although a lot of factors that made that particular move difficult are thankfully no longer relevant...), so I definitely have some apprehension about starting from scratch again. But somehow, relocating across the world to Beirut is the most sense-full decision at this point in my life—and this despite the looks of genuine concern regarding my mental health which might indicate to the contrary.

I definitely have concerns; my Arabic is terrifyingly rusty, and I know practically nothing of the Lebanese dialect. My longest stay in the Middle East thus far has been an hour spent in the Qatar airport, and what I know of Lebanon (and the Arab world in general), I gathered from books, movies, second-hand accounts... which is to say, in a sense, that I know nothing.

But knowing nothing... is strangely freeing. I am looking forward to no longer being labeled a "Middle East expert" by people around me who think I am somehow qualified enough to make assessments about an entire region based on a couple of classes I've taken or articles I've read. I want to finally experience firsthand what day-to-day life is like in Lebanon—well, day-to-day life as I can observe it from my privileged and self-consciously orientalist point of view...

Hopefully, I'll have some interesting/not-so-stupid things to share with you all (Hopefully, I will also learn to use fewer ellipses). I've been waiting for this moment for a year, and it's so hard to realize that less than a week from now, this will no longer be projections, scenarios and hypotheses; this will be real.

So here's to my new beginning.