4th of July

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Happy 4th of July to all my friends back in the States! Sophie and I slept in and then went to the club to swim. We ended up calling her friend Rosie from the States who is spending the summer with her family visiting her grandparents in Beyrouth (as they spell it around here), to come swimming with us. We had a fun day and Sophie ended up swimming for 6 hours!
Later Eddie's friends Lena and Laudi brought dinner to our house that they had prepared all day. They brought kibbeh neighe (like steak tarar) especially for Sophie. She was in heaven. She was so excited that she had to take a picture of it! So even though she was very tired (dinner starts around 10 pm here!) she stayed up just for that!
From there we went to my friend Sami's new restuarant/club called El Ranchero that's up in the mountains (elrancholebanon.com). It sits on 25 acres and they have planned 3 different themed areas (Mexican, Texasan and Indian) that will all have hotels, bar/restaurant and places to have receptions. They also have a stable with 20 horses for riding, as well as some cattle and quail for eating. They raise all of their meat organically there. The idea has really taken off and even though they only have the Texasan restaurant/bar open it was packed with people! They have a guitar player/singer as well as a fiddler that play all kinds of American Texas music. The crowd loved it!
So, the night being young it was time to go back and play tarnib. Its a card game similar to 500 that I learned as a kid. I hadn't played in 6 years but my partner and I were able to at least win one out of the two games we played. At 3 am I called it a night!

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