Inside the villa

Our front door is glass with twirly wrought iron on the inside. The floors are all tiled inside and the ceilings are high (~ 10' stud) which keeps it nice and cool. There's a bathroom with washbasin and loo immediately inside the front door so that visitors can freshen up when they arrive - a common thing in the middle east.

This is the tidiest corner of the lounge. The couch on the opposite wall currently has Ian having a wee nap on it which makes it look very untidy. The blank wall above the chairs is going to have a TV above it the purchase of which, I have been told, is "none of my business"! Apparently buying TVs is only able to be done by the males of the family. Presumably so that a suitably large model can be bought without the annoying sound of me trying to talk sense into them.

This is the other end of our living area, waiting for a dining room table. The curtains were installed the other day by Zainah Curtains. Over several weeks I chose material, practised my fledgling arabic on the poor Syrian guys (Samr and Hassan) that manage the shop, managed to convince them that I didn't want beading or fringes or multiple swags of material or pelmets, just plain. They managed to sneak in the extremely ornate tiebacks which I now really love - that's the little arabic touch in the room.

This is looking down on Robbie and his friend Russell playing Need for Speed Underground 2 in my messy space under the stairs. One day it will be an office with a proper desk.

This is the top landing, looking down towards the middle landing of the stairs. The banisters are all wrought iron with little gold leaves at the end of each twirly bit. The chair is one we bought here - it's square with a hole in the middle, no it's not a commode.

Here's Leo in Ian's study which occupies the top landing. He's playing Age of Empires III. As you can see we are having an extremely cruisy day at home today.

Ian has woken up now.

I'll spare you the pictures of the posters on the boy's walls and the loo and bidet that Robbie took when I sent him off with the camera to take some photos of the house to put on our site but I can't resist putting a photo of our whiteboard in the kitchen with some of the Arabic we are learning every week with a wonderful Lebanese woman teacher called Hala.

There's a portrait of Robbie's little pink rabbit at the top!