Happy New Year

A very happy, healthy, successful, exciting 2006 to all of you!!

The Holidays here have been really nice, I went to a really nice Christmas dinner with a bunch of strangers that I'd met recently, and it was really good fun. Almost felt like Erasmus, with two Jordanians, a Swiss girl, an Italian, two Germans and an Armenian there.

The new year's party I went to had been organised by somebody I met through work, a guy who works at the World Bank here, and some of his friends. They are all consultants, work in banks and come across as very serious people - but of course, being Lebanese, they know how to party!! So my friend Sherine came to pick me up wearing a bright red, curly wig, whereas the last time I'd seen her was on a panel at the conference we'd organised a few weeks ago. And all the other economists at the party soon were very drunk and started wearing funny party hats and all of that. Later on I drove to a different club with a few friends, six of us in the car piled on top of each other, nobody sober and the car going really fast...a good thing, in that case, that nobody is serious about traffic controls here. Anyway, unfortunately I always forget to take my camera when I go out, so I have no pics...

Had to spend the past two days in bed because I already had a cold before all these parties started - after New Year's I unfortunately could no longer talk, my voice was completely gone. It's coming back now... Luckily they gave us today off at work, very nice, and it's a beautiful sunny day with 20-something degrees, lovely!

On Friday I was feeling slightly more convinced about my work for the first time. After the Ehden workshop experience I talked about last time, and after meeting all these people who talk about ending feudalism and interconfessional dialogue but essentially are completely racist and locked up in their own communities..... we are now applying for a new project. The whole office got together and discussed several ideas - the overall theme was 'youth and political participation' - and in the end my plan was chosen!! To be honest it was easy because none of the other people really felt like writing a project proposal until Friday, but still, I felt a bit chuffed about it. So now we want to try and get young people from different regions together and train them in facilitation and moderation methods so they can go back and pass on this knowledge - at least giving people the tools to cross confessional and regional boundaries, should they want to. Whether or not they do it is of course still up to them. But first we have to write the proposal and get the project working of course. I will keep posting in 2006, of course! :)