Culture : Milk-and-Honey Dream Sour for Some : After spending most of their lives abroad, ethnic Lebanese find it hard to adapt to their ancestral homeland.

“Last year my life turned around. I found out I was moving to Lebanon. Everything that was familiar to me would be gone: my school, friends, home, even the little things like music on Fridays in the quad, or fresh milk.”

Speaking was 17-year-old, California-born Jumana Nabti, who spent the 1992-93 school year here in Lebanon. This year she’s back in her quad at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, deeply changed by her experiences.

Jumana is one of thousands of ethnic Lebanese, born or raised abroad, whose families returned to their home country at the end of the 1975-90 wars.

Raised abroad, often with a milk-and-honey vision of Lebanon, the teen-agers particularly face a dose of reality when they arrive here. It’s culture shock; they are square pegs being slammed into round holes, and many of them hate it. Many others learn from it.

“I’ve learned about my country and culture,” the Palo Alto teen wrote in a school essay before she left Beirut. “I have added the values of the American and Lebanese cultures, and I can pick and choose what I like between them. . . . I feel more connected to my father’s heritage.”

There are the simple problems of everyday living here, such as the irregular supply of electricity. But, for the foreign-born, the limitations on their freedom pain them most. This restriction is felt predominantly by girls, whose wings are quickly clipped by grandparents, aunts and uncles who have a say in this culture about how young women lead their lives.

In some cases, the fathers have remained abroad for business reasons, so the wives and children move in with a member of the family--and that’s where the friction begins.

For instance, in Lebanon, unlike in America, teen-age girls are warned not to talk to boys on the telephone. Fathers in Lebanon are far more strict than American dads, say U.S.-raised girls. And life paths are bluntly explained. A Lebanese uncle told his America-raised niece, “Either you get an education or you look for a husband.” At this end of the Mediterranean, you cannot do both at once.

Another returnee challenged the system by taking a part-time job at a pet shop and announcing she would walk to work rather than take a taxi or drive the family car. “Not socially acceptable,” her cousins told her.

Many of the returning foreign-raised Lebanese find some relief at two educational institutions in Beirut that operate along U.S. lines--the American University of Beirut and the American Community School, which includes kindergarten through 12th grade.

Randa Cardwell of Seal Beach teaches at ACS and has coined the phrase foreign Lebanese to describe most of her students. They were born overseas or left Lebanon when they were very young, fleeing the brutal civil war and other conflicts that have racked this country.

Their identities were formed abroad, Cardwell points out. Now, when their families return to Lebanon, the parents see the voyage as leaving a foreign country and coming home. But their children feel like they are moving to a foreign country.

In interviews, the teen-agers say the parents have given them unrealistic expectations. Blossoming roses, that’s what she was told, said one young woman who came back. “The Paris of the Middle East” was another glowing term that she and her friends heard. Their homesick parents seemed oblivious to the fact that these nostalgic impressions were contrary to what their children were seeing on TV in their homes abroad.

Jumana Nabti wrote for Cardwell’s English class:

“I had been to Lebanon before on visits . . . (and) the only things in this little country that I could relate to were a small village where my father grew up and what I heard on the (U.S.) news--two things which were totally contradictory.”

But some of the children had reason to believe their parents’ talk of a paradise awaiting. Their families had returned before in summertime, when the war itself often took a vacation. An American University student remembers the fun she had on her previous visits: cousins, bumper cars, movies, things she didn’t have in the West African country of Liberia, where her father was a businessman.

“I remember wishing we could live here; it was like a dream,” she said.

But she also remembered mail from her cousins during the rest of the year, letters that described life in shelters, the sound of shells crashing and the shriek of ambulances. But these visions somehow seemed unreal.

Sometimes, the violence factor can tilt another way. Los Angeles-born Keith Aboul-Hosn said he came back when his father, weighing the security situation against that in Los Angeles, decided in favor of Beirut.

Some “foreign Lebanese” students express shock at the difference between their U.S. universities and the American University here. “I got to AUB and discovered no one cared,” one student said. “I got no guidance from anyone. For others it was the archaic, anarchic registration system. Back home we do this by phone.”

Making friends is also a problem for the newcomers. Few speak Arabic well enough to feel comfortable with the language.

Ned Chami, 16, born in Queens, N.Y., said he found his best friends at AUB were, like him, non-native Lebanese. “Mainly it’s a problem of communication,” he said.

Dating and just plain-old hanging out is not accepted within Lebanese cultural norms, though some teachers confide that Lebanese girls engage in these pastimes on the sly.

An attempt by one student at the American Community School to keep her old habits proved disastrous. “Everyone here thinks I am slutty because I have a boyfriend,” she said. “I should have known when I got dirty looks just for wearing cycling shorts.”

Being yourself, being American, cannot work for Lebanese returning here, says Dr. Mariam Ghandour, a student counselor at AUB.

“Some students sink into depression, even attempting suicide,” she said.

Still, Cardwell says most of her foreign-born students make the adjustment--but it can take up to two years, and the road is rough.