La crisis de los casi treinta

So it has hit me like a ton of bricks, I am now 29, and lets be perfectly honest, 29 is practically 30! I realize that 50 is the new 40 and 40 is the new 30, so I guess 30 must be the new 25? (because really who wants to be 20 again?)

When I was younger, I wondered (as so many of us do) what my life would look like by the time I was 30. Clearly I would be married to a wonderful man, have the job of my dreams and probably a kid. I would be living in a great city in my own house and life would perfect. Little did I know, that instead I would turning 29 in Lebanon because I live in Saudi Arabia.

I turned 29 in the company of friends who understood that I did not want to hit this "milestone" in KSA because I was going to need a stiff drink to face the reality of what my life had become. The weeks around my birthday were among my worst here. I had gotten really down on myself and was really tired with the job, the life (or lack thereof) and everything in between. I was disappointed in myself, as if somehow I had made a mistake somewhere along the way that had gotten me to that point. Everything looked gray and miserable.

The birthday weekend itself was fraught with it's own series of problems. A friend of mine was detained in passport control upon our arrival in Beirut because was born in Iraq and his name was on some list. Turns out there are at least 1,000 people with the same name, and a number of them are wanted for doing bad things. On top of that, Iranian president Ahmedinejad was also going to be in Beirut for the weekend, so everyone was on high alert. A bad time to have a common name. Long story short, after two days of going back and forth to passport control, my friend was finally able to prove that he was who he said he was and allowed to travel within Lebanon.

As for Ahmedinejad, we actually did cross his caravan thrice! All in the same day. All within about an hour. The first time, we saw them in the distance as the president must have been giving some speech. The second time we saw the caravan drive by and were even privy to seeing men point their very large guns at us as they went by. One of them was literally holding the back door of an SUV open with his legs so as to have his arms free for said very large gun. The third time, we saw the caravan at what must have been the hotel where the president was staying. I think it's safe to say, that by then, the glamor of our "celebrity sighting" had worn off.

The rest of the trip was fun. We saw Baalbeck, the Cedars and went up the "teleferique." Overall, however, I was not as impressed by my trip as I thought I was going to be. I was expecting over the top partying and we didn't really do any of that, it was after all the Saudi weekend, which is right smack in the middle of everyone else's work week. So maybe that had something to do with it. Oh well, will have to give it another go at some point, but this time will make sure that it's a Fri - Mon kind of thing.