Another Camp is over... the last one for this period of Caravan!

Camp 1 review will follow :-) But we had a great kick-off!

In the meetings we had held before we were afraid, that due to the small group of volunteers motivation and volume would become an issue. But Dubai and Caravan proofed us wrong! We had blasts during all the day, shouted „Trullalas“ in the morning, during the day until the very end just before night prayer. Our strict rule, that whoever does not participate in the cheers has to do his own, brought us some nice solo‘s from our Lebanese friends... BTW: thank you so much Rani, Dani, Hady, Jimmy, Ray and Joy, for spontaneously coming up to ChabrouH and staying longer than planned! You helped us out in the kitchen, in the shower, feeding, singing, dancing and especially translating. Also thank you for the fabulous concert you gave the boys, they were extremely happy (as everybody could tell!)!!

Also many thanks to our Dubai Friends, who did an AMAZING job in the Camp! When I look back at me at the age of 15-17, I did not have that strength and perseverance to stick to one boy 13 hours a day. Caravan is extremely impressed by the work that you did, and we hope to see you in our apartment when we come back to visit within the next few years! :)

A big „thank you“ to Patrick Jabre as well, who was in ChabrouH during the entire camp, took care of Elias and did all our shopping. I think we never had such a vast variety of treats during a Camp, and we really appreciated all the sweets we and the boys were given.

We are Caravan

Between the camps !

In between our two Easter camps in Chabrouh, we’ve had the chance of enjoying a few vacation days in Beirut. We came down from the camp on the 14^th, and took the afternoon to rest a bit. But astonishingly, some of us we still motivated to go out in the night. So they did, showing great strength and determination after this exhausting week in Chabrouh. Only Stéphane, Carole and Matthieu stayed home to play endless Risk games.

On the next day, the Risk players went to Batrun, while the others finally had to surrender to their beds. We met all together in the evening for a very nice barbecue at Hadi’s place, 5 minutes away from our house. Hadi’s flat is quite amazing, I have to say, with an awesome view on Downtown. No need to describe the evening, I guess: every Lebanese party starts with arak and ends up with guitars. Stéphane and Carole had to leave us during this night. We enjoyed their presence a lot and hope they had a good time here in Lebanon with us.

On the 16^th, some of us stayed home to write their essays, while other left to Kaslik to do some shopping. Mafi, Amelie, Maxi and Matthieu plundered all the shops and came back with heavy bags and light wallets. The most important event of the day, however, remains the 5 hours team meeting we’ve had from 7h30 to 00h30. We talked about the camp, giving feedback ad providing ideas for the following camp. (Even) more motivation was what came out the most in our feedback, which we all loudly agreed to improve. Then we discussed all the issues of a normal team meeting, meaning organisation of the week etc… The last topic, which took a heck of a load of time, was normal feedback. We were all released when that endless meeting finally stopped.

On the 17^th, some of us stayed again at home to write all of these papers for university, while Johanna, Marie, Josepha and Matthieu went to in the Shouf region for some site seeing. They stopped by Deir El Quamar, then Beiteddine, then the beach and finally came back home after watching the sunset in Corniche. We went out almost all together that night. We met at Barometer for some arak and dabké. Cosy night that was, but for the Austrian guests, Luci and Matthieu who decided to go for a bath in the sea.

On the 18^th, the main event of the day was the visit of the Jeita Grotto by Caroline, Suzi, Maxi, Matthieu and Luci. They all loved the site, which is quite impressive indeed!

The 19^th was the last day for Marie and Josepha, Johanna’s friends from Austria. So we decided to go party (like almost every evening of the week, but this time we had a good excuse). We had a very nice evening in Hamra which ended up in the lower apartment. We said goodbye to our guests and wished them a safe flight home. It was a great pleasure to have them with us not only for the camp but also during this time of vacation! We enjoyed their presence and hope they liked their stay among us. Another important event of the 19^th was, of course, the arrival of our German doctor, Dr. Hans Peter Müller, whom we thank from the bottom of our hearts to make the journey from GHANA (!) to take care of the boys and us in the camp.

The 20^th was the day of the great news. Amelie got accepted in PPE in Bolzano, and Yan in the TU München. Suz, Maxi and Daniel kindly took care of inviting the doctor to visit Byblos. The others finished their essays or this blog.  

 

Jordan Trip

As you might have read before on this blog, some of us had planned to go to Jordan during the Christmas break, only it didn’t work out because of multiple reasons… So Matthieu proposed to go during the Easter break, but then again, most of the team couldn’t or wouldn’t come. Just a few days before the break, Amelie and Caroline decided to join Matthieu on an adventure of 5 days through Jordan. As he had already been there, Matthieu organised the trip and served as guide.

So we three left on the same day as Moritz, and flew to Amman. We were quite scared as the steward announced a local temperature of 5°C. A bad joke obviously; we fried during our entire trip! After passing through immigration and getting cool stamps on our passports, we rented a car at the airport and began our journey on the great Hashemite Kingdom. We drove West to Madaba, where we were completely immerged in a different Middle East than the one we are now used to and saw quite impressive mosaics. We quickly drove further West to the Dead Sea. Now that was some proper self-spoiling. We landed in a four star “spa” hotel, with our own bungalow as a room, 3 or 4 pools, a great view and a lot of awesomeness. So we spent a bit more than a day there, going to the sea, floating for a while, then putting mud all over ourselves, and resting a bit in the sun to rest of all these previous efforts and to work on our tan a bit…

We left the Dead Sea fully relaxed and drove South the next day on the Kings’ Road. So the afternoon was mainly spent looking at amazing landscapes and wadis along that road. We lost our track right before sunset, which seemed to bother no one but Matthieu. The girls were more into playing with the kids than finding our way before the night fell… We fortunately found our way after a while and made it safely through the desert to Petra.

It would be pointless to describe the awesomeness of the hotel we stayed in, as we would only appear spoiled (again!). We woke up early in the next morning to start a day that will probably stay in our minds for a very long time. Petra is a world wonder, no wonder why. Seriously though, it is proper amazing. Matthieu did the guide during the whole day and obviously enjoyed his explanations more than the girls who seemed a bit more concerned by taking pictures of themselves while posing or jumping or whatever. We hiked the whole day from temple to tomb, from cistern to monastery or sacrificial place. Quite impressive, the whole thing! And then happened something unexpected, to say the least. We were coming down from the mountain as two Bedouins proposed to take us on the top of a temple to watch sunset. We accepted and enjoyed some appetizers on the top of this huge temple, our feet almost hanging in the empty, watching sunset over Petra. Cool. Very cool! But that was only the beginning of our adventure. The Bedouins invited us to share diner at their cave in the middle of nowhere. We also accepted and were off to a memorable evening. Matthieu first had to run next to the donkeys while the girls and the Bedouins were on them until we made it to the Bedouin village. There, we first enjoyed tea at their family home before setting off to the desert again. We arrived on a sort of a cave which was more of a platform on a rock in the right middle of the desert. There, we lit fire and they started to cook an absolutely delicious diner and boiled tea. We ate with nothing above us but the Milky Way. We talked quite a lot and learned a lot from them. These guys were completely free. It inspired us a lot and instigated reflexions in our minds concerning our own life and conception of happiness and freedom. Then they brought us back to our hotel and wished us good night. As we laid in bed, we thought to ourselves that this night had just come out of a dream… It did, in a way.

On the next day, we left Petra and drove South again direction Aqaba. Amazing landscapes again, but the temperature was rising by the minute. When we came to Aqaba, we were just about toasting. So we dropped our stuff at the hotel and left to the beach. The Red Sea wasn’t so warm, unfortunately, so we decided not to spend too much time bathing but rather to go for a drink. And so we did! But after one or two cocktails, it was about midnight already and we somehow felt like a little bath again. So back we went and bathed under the stars in the Red Sea… Don’t be jealous, maybe you’ll do it one day, too.

We woke up early on the next morning, and drove North to Wadi Rum. Vast, echoing and Godlike were the terms used in the tour guide to describe this area in the desert. We spent our morning walking in this desert, chasing the camels and drawing words in the sand. And then it was already time to go back to Amman. 350km of highway through the desert. That might look cool, and indeed it is, but it’s also quite long, especially since that highway is just about straight… Completely straight. We eventually made it to the airport and back to Beirut safely.

It was an wonderful trip. We three enjoyed it so much, the words are missing me. The atmosphere was funny and relaxed between us and everything went perfect in this dreamlike journey. Coming back to Beirut felt like waking up.

Since we had no Uni this week because of our vacation , our Tuesday began with the first service in Deir el Salib this week, where some of us Caravanistas went with the boys to the garden, to the playing room or just entertained the boys down in St. Dominique by playing games or playing with the guitar for them. It was again great fun for all the boys as well as for us to spend the afteThis week we started our service as usual in Deir el Quamar and this time as well with the friendly support of some of our Lebanese friends. In the service we visited our disabled friends again in their different rooms, sang with them, danced, played the Bseine- Khalib Game and afterwards went with most of the girls for a little walk outside, where we picked some flowers with them. We ended our service again with the singing round. At the spiritual meeting we had this day an interesting talk with Father Thom about bad spirits and their influence. On Monday evening we had a visitor in our apartment: a good friend of Mathieu’s sister, who is working for the UN in Lebanon and who could tell us more about the work of the UN in the region and their mission in Lebanon. It was a very interesting talk for us and we appreciated her presence very much.

Wednesday morning we left our apartment in Naccache quite early to drive with our bus to Faraya. Not for skiing, as you might think but for preparing Chabrouh for the Caravancamp starting at the 10^th of April. So preparing and cleaning the kitchen, carrying mattresses, decorating the rooms with pictures, checking the storages, etc. were our tasks on this day.

Also at our service in Antelias we had again the great support of our Lebanese friends. This week we had again service in the 2^nd floor, where we made a long singing and dancing round, played Bowling, stop dance, and the Bseine- Khalib game with the boys. All in all we were able to make more different activities because of the bigger number of volunteers in the service, which caused obviously more fun, entertainment and attention for all the boys. At Thursday evening we invited our Lebanese friends to our apartment to celebrate the last evening together with Moritz, since he had to leave us to start his studies in Germany. So we had a nice last evening together with our friends in the apartment, where Moritz also donated Pizza for all of us. Later on some of us still went out to continue partying in Moritz favorite nightclub BO18.

Friday we had our last Caravan service in Deir el Saliib before our vacation and the two Camps we are organizing in Chabrouh. So we all used this last possibility for a while to spend a really good time with our Boys from St. Dominique and gave our best to make them feel happy and loved by spending our afternoon with them. We just will continue the service in the homes at the first of May because of our two camps and the week of Easter vacation.

Friday evening we Caravanistas had a nice last dinner, which Lucas and Moritz prepared as cooks in our kitchen (very delicious Spaghetti Bolognese), before we brought him on early Saturday morning to the airport. There we said goodbye to him in our way by singing some songs for him in the airport. We are all sad to lose one more of our friends before June and wish Moritz all the best for his studies and his plans for the future. Anyway we all will see each other again.

Caroline, Amelie and Matthieu also left on this morning for their trip to Jordan. We’re sure you have to tell a lot about your trip in the next blog and can’t wait to see you back in Naccache.

On Saturday the little rest of us left to Deir el Saliib to bring the boys of St. Dominique with the support of the Lebanese youth to the “Palm Sunday” Mess. It was a great success to go with the all nice dressed boys this day to church. Also some of their parents and relatives came to attend Mess and to spend this time with them, which is always nice to see for us since we spend a lot of time with the boys. After the Mess we took part with them in the procession and afterwards brought them back to St. Dominique, where we helped the caretakers with feeding the boys. In the following days many of the boys go for Easter vacation home to their families and are very happy about it as we are for them. Some boys already told us weeks before that they leave to their families.

On Saturday Mafi also arrived back from Germany together with her brother Alfons in order to bring our empty apartment back to life since Lucas and Maxi also left on Sunday morning to a hiking trip in the mountains and the surrounding of Sourat. Also Daniels parents arrive on this Sunday to spend a week in Beirut. But we will be united again as a complete group shoi shoi this week. 

Week ending 25th March

Emancipation week

This week was a very fun week. Lucas pronounces when we had lunch in Deir el Quammar that this week is going to be emancipation week. He immediately gave the ‘good’ example to sit on the floor during lunch he explained: ‘woman has to sit under the table.

Lucas and Moritz where really motivated in this week: Girls could open the door and be the last ones who were coming in, the girls get NOT at first there food and if they want water they have to fill their class by themselves, also the girls had to carry heavy stuff. In the end the girls didn’t want emancipation anymore and the boys reach there point: to show the girls that the same rights mean the same duties.

The other part of the week looked quite normal; on Monday DEQ, again we went to the different floors, singing and of course THE Guitar was with us, with Maxi who was playing it. No spiritual meeting but a team gathering in the evening about the eastern camps and afterwards feedback round.

On Tuesday and Thursday we had uni I and our lecture was Fr. Tom, he talked about minorities in Lebanon what was very interesting. In uni on Thursday there was really loud commercial music outside, so after the lecture we went there; there was a DJ, cable line from the 5^th floor you could slide down, the best part was though the manoushe they made and it was for free, Caravan ate almost everything, it was delicious.

On Wednesday we had a spiritual meeting with Abouna Romanus, he came to our house and we talked about the way to the cross and that you have to trust in him because he leads you in the right way.

Afterwards we had our last team meal; Maffi was leaving to Germany this night and she will return this Saturday in the night and Moritz will already away to Germany for his university. We had a really good Lebanese meal it was so cozy.

Lexi and Marijke who just landed came to say hi to us. It was really nice to see other Caravan people again.

On Thursday we went to Antellias and we had a great support from Joy, Patrick, Lexi and Marijke. Thanks a lot guys. Because we had two Arabic speakers we could play top schlagen and we played Pool (Dutch ball) with some boys.

In the evening there was a Lebanese youth event. First a talk of Marwan about all the great work the Lebanese Order off Malta is doing. Than we had a really amazing dinner the best sandwiches you can’t imagine. The dessert was just awesome. Patrick Jabre: ‘I am going to ask if you can take the desserts with you home.’ In the end Moritz and Matthieu were walking with 3 bags full of cake.

On Friday we had a relaxing day with only DES.

This week was perfect for the boys off DES because after a long winter we could take them out to the garden again. Spring started in Lebanon. Every day we took them to the garden, gave them sweets and drinks. They were so happy to be outside.

Saturday we split the group: Lucas, Suzanne and Daniel went with Dr. Isaa to Batroun and walked there, went to the souks and later to Sourat to spend the night there.

Matthieu, Johanna and Caroline went skiing in Faraya. Afterwards Matthieu and Caroline went swimming in the sea.

Amalie, Maxi and Moritz stayed at home slept, chilled, wrote stuff for uni and got new gas bottles.

Maxi and Amelie went also to the sea and Maxi also swam in the sea.

In the night Amalie, Maxi, Moritz and Matthieu went to this great party (they came back with green shoes, pants, because some people put green paint all over the floor)

Johanna and Caroline had to stay home because there skin was really sunburned from skiing; they were real Banadoura’s.

The next day we all came together in Sourat (except Johanna who couldn’t come because her skin would get worse). After the mess in Sourat we went with Dr. Isaa to a really old monastery which was built in the rocks. It was an orthodox monastery so the girls had to where long skirts what was really fun.  We continued our trip; we walked next to a river. It was so beautiful; everybody agreed it looked like a fairytale. Some people where so crazy to swim in the fast streaming mountain river. In the end they had to walk with totally wet trousers and sopping socks.  

On our way we saw many animals, cows, 500 goats with 4 dogs and shepherds and a really big frog.

We had a nice lunch with wine next to the river we chilled and talked.

In the evening we had dinner with Dr. Isaa and then some of us returned to Beirut. It was an amazing week and an awesome weekend!

We really want to thanks Dr. Isaa for organizing this amazing weekend for us 

Week ending 18th March

So what happened last week. After coming fully relaxed and filled with a certain spirit from the spiritual meeting, we had Monday off to come back into the “normal world“. The girls used the free day to go shopping in the ABC Mall, the boys cleaned the apartment in the meanwhile.

On tuesday morning we went quite early at 8 up to Deir el Quamar. Before the service with the girls we visited Beit ed Dine. Lucas and Suzanne got slightly wet, because of some childish Caravanistas. In the home of the girls we had the possibility to visit them in their rooms. We saw loads of new girls. Most of them were just lying their beds and never have any input. So we came and proofed one more time, what an amazing choir we are. The girls really enjoyed this little change in their daily life!

Wednesday we had as usual service in Deir el Salib.

On thursday we had service in Antellias. It was a very musical service. The motto of the service was “Be Hippie“, so we sat all around Maxi, who was playing guitar and sang together songs of Bob Dylan and Co. The boys enjoyed our little Hippie-session a lot and were very comforted be the sweet voices of the Caravan.

On the weekend some of us decided to go with our Dr. Issa to Sourat. They went to beautiful  villages in the mountains and to the famous Tannourine waterfall.

PS Suzie wants to say Happy Mothers Day to all mothers in particular her own mother who reads this blog religiously !! 

Last week

So what’s up this week? Thank you to Moritz mammy for allowing some of us on their little trip to beiteddine – Amazing but who was to know that museums, palaces etc don’t open on Monday. A lovely walk was had! Then off to Deir El Quammar for service followed by the synagogue hunt, these tour guide books have a lot to answer for – 45 minutes up a few hills and we had no clue where the synagogue was! We eventually looked up to the sun and realised that we would have a good 1 hour trek to get on the right road- Mission Aborted as we were rushing to spiritual meeting. On the same evening, Marwan the president of the Lebanese Order of Malta came with Dr Issa to speak with Caravan. We admire and acknowledge Marwan and Dr Issa honesty with us – we appreciate you both and look forward to seeing you again soon. Poor Dr Issa was subjected to another Caravan dinner of pasta, egg plant, onion and garlic! He brought the most amazing ice- cream which made up for the dinner– Yum!  Service in Deir El Quammar was amazing but I won’t hesitate in saying we were a bit tired after it, we had great fun doing theatre with the girls dressed up as kings, queens, princesses, princes and 3 unknowns. Also our infamous singing rounds with Chabrouh classics as well as our Caravan classics always enlightens the day. What happens on Tuesdays – well now we had university where we are studying Druizism – it is a very interesting lecture and insight into Druizism, we also had an amazing service in Deir El Salib, Most of us went to the garden to adore the sun – the boys where all in great form, Chamel is practicing his walking yet again with slight bribery. Ok he got Suzie and Lucas chewing gum to chew for the corridor walks. He nearly ran with pleasure after that treat. Many of the boys are coming along well in their walking nowadays and we see great improvement with balance especially Simon , Ayla , Eli , Chamel , George , Kassem , Mostapha A and Raed  .  On Wednesday , we had university , Deir El Salib and Jamhour – our schedules are often busy seeing us out of the house from 8am-8pm between driving to university , service etc.  On Thursday, yet again we had university where we had our last topic of Druze- this course was very insightful on the Druze religion although the secretness and refusal to answer questions was rather frustrating. Service in Antellias this week was lovely,

We were also very fortunate to receive an invitation to visit the archbishop of Damascus, his eminence Samir Nassar. A thorough and deeply insightful private reception was held for Caravan and we are grateful to Matthieu for organising this visit. The insight that his Eminence gave about the Situation in Syria, Lebanon and indeed throughout the whole Middle East was hugely important, a very interesting thought crossed my mind as we sat there. That just 2 hours from our location there is a conflict beyond all reason, thousands are dying or been displaced, their are no human rights and the suffering is insurmountable with life. There are violations taking place that at this time we cannot do anything about although we can continue our prayers for peace we are not assisting those in most need.  And in Caravan fashion we where super excited to be on an outing and fortunately Fawzi did not mind stopping for us to get falafel, schwarama and fries.

Ok so Friday – well what a busy day it was, service in Deir El Salib and then departure for the spiritual retreat. So what can I say , the boys in DES love to keep us  on our toes – a beautiful day in the garden was just coming to a close when Johnny decided to have an epileptic seizure . Always testing the first aid skills that we learnt either on prep camp or before! He recovered very quickly and was eating dinner just 50 minutes later- ah the young are so resilient. We left DES knowing what awaited. A weekend of peace, tranquillity and spirituality under the watchful and astute guidance of Abouna Romanus. After arriving in Sourat and finding a new road there, we entered the monastery at 7 (cough cough Michel was the lead car followed by both Fawzi and Father Romanus!  and noone realised that we where directionally challenged) we settled in and prepared ourselves for a light supper and a meeting. Fr Romanus explained the use, purpose and idea of a spiritual retreat and it was quickly decided that we would remain in silence for the duration.... um how that is possible with 10 Caravanistas, Michel and Fr Romanus????? – Well actually there were times to break the silence, prayer, personal counselling and conclusion of the day talks. Also it would have been rude not to say Hi to Dr Issa, Fr Andre, the residents of Sourat, the flowers, the birds and of course the wonderful trees that some Caravanistas felt the need to hugJ. What transpired this weekend was nothing short of miraculous, silence just blissful silence. To seek, to explore, to strengthen and to gather our thoughts and build, rebuild, create or maintain our relationships with our Lord. Fr Romanus words offer peace, comfort and reflection in an otherwise turbulent world .I cannot begin to tell you how important this retreat was for the morale , strength and rest of the team.  We are grateful that Fr Romanus will become our spiritual mentor for the next 3 months, and furthermore that Fr Tom Sicking will also continue as our spiritual mentor.

Organic week was also the topic for this week – Amelie – I hope you are reading ORGANIC week not bad taste. It started off with some choice outfits, no showering, linen bags, showering in a spring. As you can imagine some took it far more serious than others – although we do not yet have a winner for this week, we proved albeit for half of the week to be a lot more organic then the Lebanese. We had many ideas that gratefully we did not follow up on – I heard mention of a campaign in the middle of a busy highway to promote organic week – phew I cannot even imagine the reaction of those responsible for us if we tried to pull this off.

Anyways over and out for another week!

Caravan x

26th Feb-3rd March Approximately

The week began, as usual, with the service in Deir el Quammar. This time we made something special: we brought from home all our old loo-paper-rolls, the girls painted pictures which we glued on them, filled them with rice and put aluminium foil on each end so that they had a selfmade new toy. The girls liked it very much and enjoyed to shake it during our singing round.

The service in Deir Salib and Antelias was as usual. Little John returned from his visit at home where he stayed after his operation. We are all very much looking forward for him to get better soon.

The weekend was very relaxed as usual. On friday night Moritzes mother arrived in lebanon for a ten days visit. Unfortunately his godmother, who was supposed to come as well on friday night forgot her passport at home and had to return from istanbul. We felt very sorry for her but fortunately the arrived on sunday evening as well.

Best and Worst Memories of Lebanon

From Lucas

My best memory of Lebanon is definitely a wide smiling laugh out loud Elias running towards me for a clumsy jump on my stomach. I love this
guy.

Worst memory-The cockroach fight for sure. No wait, this huge hairy spider coming
out of Moritz bed. Horrible, gives me the shivers...

From Amelie

Best memory: Generally the work with our handicapped friends, and once a memorable Holy Mass downtown with a 3 hour brunchinner (breakfast, lunch, dinner)

Worst memory: Policemen! very rude people

From Moritz

My best memory of Lebanon: the village festival in Bkassine and the BO evenings for free

My worst memory of Lebanon: stone in my window and strangers in my room at 4am , working moral of the Lebanese people

From Daniel

Seeing most of the boys and girls very happy about the smallest presents from Papa Noel such as towels, underwear, shoes and scarves, which were made possible by all the Christmas donations and our fund raising campaign. 

Staying one week of service and university sick at home in bed. After weeks of service it's just so boring with nobody around you singing, dancing, talking or doing anything, because the team leaves at 7.00am and returns earliest to the apartment at 4.30pm. 

From Maxi

My best memory in Lebanon: There are loads of "best  moments" during my time here in Lebanon. Most of them are with the boys and the girls of the homes. I have one moment in my mind which impresses my till now. During the Winter camp Taghrid, one of the girls from Deir el Quamar, was lying in her bed and could not sleep. So I went to her and asked her why? She was smiling at me, with a smile which was brighter than the sun in the Sahara, and told me, that she is just too happy to sleep. Her day was so nice that she just does not want it to end.

My worst moment in Lebanon: Of course during our time here, we experienced some sad moments. Problems in the family at home, boys are sick or even die. A really tough moment for me was, when i heard that my boy i took care of in the Summer camp, was about to die. In the end everything went fine and he is healthy again, but such moments are really the toughest for me.

From Caroline

My best memory of Lebanon is that one of my boys in Deir el Salib, Nicolas, suddenly hugged me. He is a really shy boy and every time I was sitting next to him he was walking a way from me. Of course I was always trying to get a better relationship with him but it didn't help at all. On one day I was trying it again, this time it went better than all the other days, weeks, months before suddenly he came very close and hugged me very tight. He laughed and was smiling! It was wonderful, I was so deeply touched by it, not only I was glad that the effort i gave was answered but the strange thing was i felt glad because he came out off his shy-self.
 
 My worst memory of Lebanon is the timing of the Lebanese. They some how mange to never come on time. Of course there are some exceptions but for the most people it is like this. If we say be there at 13.00 they come at least 30 min later. They use most of the time the traffic as excuse, and indeed the traffic here is really bad. Now we are used to it so we are more clever and say that the meeting is at 12.30 so they come at 13.00. So we try to attempt this culture what is not always easy

From Johanna

Best experience: Work with the boys and girls, every time again amazing!

From Suzanne

Best Memory – Actually there are many , but one that really stands out for me is the first time that I saw Karim standing really tall and reaching up for a shock – his determination and strength our things that will stick with me .

My worst memory was possibly been head butted by one of the boys in Deir El Salib , I think the pain and blood will always stick with me as I got such a shock .  Or second worst memory was in preparation camp when I ended up telling Letti that we where going to Lebanon for 10 months instead of 6 months , the information she received was incorrect and she was all organised for 6 months . Another negative memory was getting bitten by a dog in Deir El Quammar and having to travel around half of Lebanon to get the medication - it was an ok experience as I had Lucas with me and Fawzi our arabic only speaking driver . Unfortunately once Fawsi brought us to downtown Beirut we had to get taxis  , this left me with a rather sad memory as I was already very upset without getting taxis and traipsing through a country that I do not speak the language alone. 

From Maffi

Best memory is when Maroun from Antellias recognised her after an extended time . Maroun was my boy in the 2^nd camp and I was pleasantly surprised that he recognised me after 3 or 4 weeks . Maroun has down syndrome and is a very docile and calm boy who really liked the beach , playing with a football or chilling in the hammock. it was with difficulty to gauge the emotion of Maroun as he barely reacted even with a smile . When he saw Caravan arriving in Antellias we could all really see how happy he was and that he probably connected us with the good memories of Chabrouh .

Worst memory for me was coming from Chabrouh to the apartment and been sick for three days . We had to do a lot for cleaning and organising while we really needed a rest. It was easy to become homesick when I realised that everything that we had spoken about for the last 6 weeks had just become a reality and that we will not be returning home for some months .

From Matthieu

 Best memory so far:

Johanna's birthday. It started like a very bad evening. The way to this restaurant up the mountain was absolutely endless, we had to wait in the car for ages in the freezing cold and even had pretty bad arguments about tiny things. But then we made it to this place, which was rather cosy, and all our friends were gathered for a nice open-food and open-arak meal. The evening was spent eating amazing food in huge amounts and drinking arak, then dancing until late in the night. The atmosphere was amazing! And then it was time to go back, so Maxi and I hopped into Elio's car (his fathers actually, a nice Mercedes) and drove down. But in the middle of nowhere, a wheel broke. Maxi looked out of his window after I shouted that the bumpy feeling most probably came from a broken wheel, and seeing nothing on his side, just shouted back at me: "No, the wheels are perfectly fine!" Hopefully I was sober enough to know that there were wheels on both sides of the car, and we stopped to change it. Then followed a good hour of intense efforts, changing this wheel somewhere in the mountains. Maxi and I knew how to do it, so Elio was just holding the light. We were cracking out laughing from time to time, for reasons that shall not be mentioned on this blog. Finally, the wheel was fixed and we made it back to the apartment, exhausted, more than full and slightly drunk. On the next morning, we all went to university in a secondary state. Arriving there, Maxi and I realised that are pants we full of mud, and neither of us both had been bright enough to see that before. A good laugh!

Worst memory:

Being sick in the camps. I've had a very bad tonsil infection and I could hardly swallow. But I had to continue on with service. I really didn't want to pussy out, so I kept on going, although my girl gave me a hard time. Every minute was spent trying to look alright while actually being completely f*cked. Worst moment: realising I would not be able to eat the fancy diner because nothing would even enter my mouth. That also meant I had crossed my limits, I had to leave my girl.

Life

The week from the 22^nd to the 29^th of march has been a very typical week of service and university.

The lectures about Islam were really interesting and we all had to study a little bit because we had an exam on Tuesday.

In the homes everything is going well, but little John Iskander and Elie Flouty from Deir el Salib had been really sick. John had an operation on his brain and Elie had bad stomach problems so both went to hospital last week. Elie is already back but little John is still there so we pray for them and ask all of our readers to think of them in their prayers!

Furthermore Sr Manal asked us to walk in the corridor with Charmel, Kassim, Simon , Spiderman George and  Mohammed because they actually can walk a little bit and now we are trying to improve their skills.

The service in Antellias is getting better and better. On the one hand it is still really challenging because we have a huge amount of boys we cannot divide, but on the other hand its always a big party and a lot of fun! Suz and Caroline are the sporty champions, a few of the boys love to play tag and soccer with them and the singing and dancing round is always a great success.

In Deir El Quamar things are going very well too! Last Monday we tinkered rattles, which was a great success because the girls loved the beans stuffed toilet paper rolls.So much about the service.

The last few days we have had a bad storm in Lebanon. There was snow at 300 meters, the streets to Faraya were totally closed, and we were freezing. We remembered the time in the Preparation Camp where we danced in the rain because we thought we´ll have heat and dryness for the following ten months – nope, not at all, we experienced the coldest Winter in at least 30 years! So for all the following Caravans – we highly recommend you taking warm clothes with you!!

However, we had a great week, and we sadly realised, that it´s just three months left in this project! So we decided to make the best out of this short last period, and started planning some more Saturday services/parties, and we´re working a lot on the organisation of our Caravan Camp after Easter and the Camp for the volunteers from Dubai, which takes place just afterwards!

We´re still searching for volunteers so everybody which is free either from the 9^th to the 15^th or from the 20th to the 26th  of April is very much welcome to join us!

Moreover, Moritz mum is here at the moment and we had an amazing dinner together with her in the Caravan Apartment! She spoiled us with delicious meat she prepared and desert. We all loved having a mummy for one evening, thanks Moritzi for sharing ;-)

Well basically that´s it. Sorry for my bad English!

We promise some updates soon but in the meantime enjoy some pictures