Hello again,
And happy Christmas to you all! (I will also say Happy New Year at this point as well as it will save me doing it separately next week). Before I give you the details of the last month of term, I will say a quick note of apology for the lack of Christmas cards sent back home. There are 2 reasons for this: 1; Christmas cards are difficult to come by in Lebanon, and thus quite expensive. 2; the lady who works in the post office in the village is quite senile and posting letters there is something we try to avoid. She must be nearly 80, speaks very little English, doesn’t understand any of the Arabic we try to use, and just doesn’t have a clue what to do. She has to phone her daughter-in-law every time to ask what to do – but it takes her several attempts to remember her phone number!
Well, last time I wrote, I was preparing for the exams and complaining about the amount the kids here get pushed and tested. The exams for the majority of the class went well and I know that the exams were pitched right because of the spread of grades. Two boys in my class failed overall though (they are the 2 special needs kids). One of them is a quite dim and lazy, but that runs in the family as far as I can see. The other it a little dim but is new to the school and understands little English. He couldn’t say a word to me in September, but now he can hold quite a good conversation, so I’m actually very pleased with him, even though he failed.
As soon as the exams were over, we began major work on the Christmas play which was due to be performed the next week! My class played the nativity scene. Casting Mary and Joseph was easy, but the animals proved to be a cultural minefield. Parents took particular dislike to donkeys, horses, goats and, in one case, animals full stop. The kids came in with threats from their parents saying that their children were not going to come to school if they had to be a particular animal. There wasn’t much I could do, as we needed people to play the animals. So I said that they were only animals and there was nothing wrong with them and if you don’t come to school it’ll be your loss. They all settled down after that (to my relief).
The play had a Good News message in it and before it started the big cheese from the village fellowship delivered short talk for the parents about the true meaning of Christmas. A lot of the parents don’t know the story so it was news to them – this is displayed in the fact that Joseph turned up with a Batman costume to wear that his mother had given him! The day was a success though.
During the week of preparation for the play, there was a large bomb in Beirut. A prominent anti-Syrian Christian MP was killed. This caused a lot of upset for most Lebanese and the school had to close for two days (a national strike and day of mourning). Some psychic had predicted it the previous year (as well as several other killings). We’ve done some research into it and it is true that the psychic did predict all of these events at Christmastime 2004. A lot of people are now scared, confused and getting sucked into following this man’s predictions. We had to tell our neighbour that God would never use such people and that some people have these abilities and they only serve to lead people from God and away from hope.
Now to the present, i.e., Christmastime here. It’s been very nice not having the commercial side of the season bombarding you everywhere you go. You can go into shops and not listen to Cliff Richard, ‘Feed the World’, Noddy Holder… it’s bliss. There are only a few decorations around the place too – certainly no tacky reindeer models or trains with flashing smoke plumes (what on earth do trains have to do with Christmas anyway!). All in all, you have much more control over your experience of Christmas – thus, I’ve seen much more of the true meaning of it all.
Christmas day was very nice – we had snow in the night so it was my second white Christmas (the first was last year in Wales). We all contributed various items for the meal. I cooked lunch (Random Spiced Vegetable Soup) as we were not having the main meal until the evening. Mr D cooked his famous chestnut stuffing which contained many whole garlic cloves!
I hope you have had a nice Christmas,
Pete_K.
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