Displaced by war and traumatized by lives turned upside down, the Lebanese schoolchildren jump for joy, scream, and run with abandon when their bus arrives.

It’s a dilapidated American school bus, covered in graffiti, but it’s their ticket to an afternoon of escape.

The children race to be the first on the bus for the ride from their temporary shelter in a school to a theater renovated by the Tiro Association for Arts. There, they will participate in games on the stage and art activities that could not feel farther from south Lebanon’s front lines – which is precisely the point.

As the children sing and dance, with music blaring from the bus speakers, they are clearly grateful for this excuse to leave behind the dangers and tensions of the escalating conflict between the Iran-backed Shiite Hezbollah militia and Israel.

Over the last eight months, the low-level war has displaced some 90,000 Lebanese from the border and left 100 civilians dead.

“Bombing chased us all the way,” says a mother, who gives the name Farah, about her family’s escape to the coastal city of Tyre from their border village of Beit Lif when the fighting erupted last October. Wearing a white headscarf with sunglasses perched on top, she rides the bus with her five children, who are bursting with excitement for the theater fun that they know awaits them.

While these children enjoy a brief respite, their moment of happiness is but one bright point along the wide spectrum of challenging and often debilitating experiences for the tens of thousands of Lebanese caught in this war, which began when Hezbollah launched attacks against Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian Hamas.