Lights out!

As hard as I try, I can't seem to pin down the sentiments or attitudes of the Lebanese people. An older woman may point at me while shaking her head for wearing shorts on the street, but two minutes later I will pass a group of girls in micro-minis to whom no one pays one bit of attention. I just can't figure it out. My aversion to attention and deep need to be respectful makes it SO hard to decide what to wear to the gym.

In this land of inconsistencies, one regularity is that power outages happen ALL THE TIME. Every single time I've been to a restaurant, we've all been plunged into momentary darkness for a few seconds until the generator has kicked in. They've become a normal part of life in this city.

Until today.

After munching on last night's stir fry for lunch with a group of coworkers, three of us decided to treat ourselves to an elevator ride back up to our offices. One is pregnant, so she had an excuse. I guess I'm just lazy! We piled in and pressed the button for our floor. Halfway between "-1" and "0," the number panel started to flash a bright red question mark. Nervous, one of the women pushed the alarm button and filled the building with a continuous, shrill siren. The doors made a feeble noise like they were trying to open, but they quickly closed again.

"Are you nervous?" the pregnant woman shakily asked.
"No..." I managed to squeak.
"Me too."

Suddenly, darkness fell and we couldn't even see our own feet. I resisted the urge to scream, telling myself that since we were in the basement already, we couldn't fall too far.

The lights flickered on again and the elevator eased down to "-2," even lower than when we started. I was so happy to see the world beyond that tiny cube. Instead of waiting to ride back up to the first floor, I ran out of there as fast as I could.

Needless to say, I'll be opting for the stairs from now on. That's what I get for not wanting to walk up two flights! I think it'll take me a few more weeks to get used to the power outages again. That's my favorite thing about being in a foreign country...learning to adjust. Then again, it's always easier to say that AFTER something scary has happened. This is truly a different world, but I'm not so sure it's worse than the old one.