One student's frustrations: Still trying to get out

Omar Muakkassa '06 writes from Lebanon.

We went to the embassy today, as we heard a couple U.S. chartered cruise ships were evacuating U.S citizens. What happened was perhaps the most frustrating experience of this whole ordeal. The officials at the embassy were keeping a list of who would be allowed to evacuate and who wouldn't. Nobody seemed to know why some people were on the list and some weren't. We were not on the list, and even though we waited for several hours and asked every official we could, there was nothing we could do to find out on what criteria the lists were being decided. The whole process is extremely frustrating, simply becuase it is not at all transparent. It was very dissapointing to see the US government operate in such a manner. What made things worse is that nobody knows how many of the 25,000 Americans in Lebanon will want to evacuate, so it is impossible to tell how long it will take to be evacuated.

Luckily, this afternoon, we got a call from the embassy telling us to show up tomrorow morning. With any luck, I'll be in Cyprus tomorrow.