Just got in from a Lebanese festival in the Chicago burbs

Just got back from a Lebanese (Catholic) church festival with mom and dad in the Chicago burbs. Was quite interesting, as it was almost like a Greek festival (almost familiar, I told mom) but different. The food, almost similar but different, and the same goes for the look of the people - though I'd venture to say, based on my very unscientific study of one Lebanese church festival, that the Greeks are actually a darker (physically) people than the Lebanese - I don't mean skin color, per se, but rather, we're almost more Arabic looking at times than these Lebanese I saw at the festival. Maybe it's our (Greek, our) centuries of intermingling with the Turks. But a lot of these folks looked like cuter Greeks, for lack of a better description.

The food was great, especially the baklava that was made with some kind of cream filling, and the kefta (which is similar in name and taste to a Greek meatball, or "keftes"/"keftedes"). They also had a woman making manakeesh, a kind of very thin pizza dough with thyme, oil, sumac and other spices on it. It was a bit too spicy for our tastes (not hot, just too much of the sumac I think). The woman told me they eat it for breakfast, among other times.

And of course, lots of loud music (my dad called it "belly dancing music," or at least that's what it would be in Greece), and lots and lots of hookahs (interestingly, the smoke from the hookah was downright pleasant, totally unlike cigar or even pipe smoke (not as pungent somehow).  Interestingly, young girls (teenage or college, it's getting hard to tell at my advancing age) were smoking hookahs too- - I didn't (culturally) expect that.  And of course, the Lebanese dance more like the Persians (or vice versa) - again, we'd probably call it belly dancing - whereas the Greeks (traditionally) only do circular line dances at events like this.  The music, however, could almost have been Greek (at least one form of traditional Greek music).

All in all, a surprisingly interesting mom-suggestion of an evening.