The Lebanese Flood Festival 2012

After basically swimming the Beirut Marathon in freezing water, I’m pretty sure I’ve become part fish.

Thousands of people will undoubtedly agree with me when I say yesterday was the wettest I’ve ever been in my entire life. Booming thunder, flashing lightning, rock hard hail and floods everywhere; I will never again be able to feel my toes.

Yet despite the cold and wet and impending hypothermia, yesterday was one of the funnest weekends I’ve had in a long time. You simply feel awesome after running a 10K – even if you happen to grow gills along the way.

Even the entertainment was having a blast, trudging the newly created rivers of Beirut with crazy instruments and unstoppable enthusiasm. @La_Tsarina tweeted one such such picture, dubbing it the official opening of the “Lebanese Fayadan [Flood] Festival.” And what a festival it was, what with the thousands of runners, the music blasting, the weather so ridiculous that you forgot what the word “dry” meant, and the new friends formed along the way.

And even though the weekend is over, I still like to pretend the surrounding thunder is just a super excited drum beat asking me to crazy rain dance. And who am I to refuse the weather?