$8 to Tyre and Back

(The above shot is a panoramic wide shot of the city of Tyre following the curve of the Mediterranean sea ; I am standing on the ledge to the far left of the shot.)


As promised, this post will focus on my day trip to Tyre. To get there from Beirut required me to take a minibus about 2 hours south. I know some foreigners would dread the thought of having to be crammed into a minibus with locals for a 2 hour journey, but things like that excite me. I feel like I'm not really experiencing a culture unless I'm doing things how the locals are doing it. Anyway, it was really cheap; like $8 total for there and back. (Oddly enough, they use US Dollars as much as their own currency in Lebanon; the exchange rate is static and fixed so everyone will accept either currency or even a mixture of both.)


The first thing I noticed and was drawn to was the amazing harbor. It was so picturesque, like a postcard almost. I just sat on a ledge and took it all in for a while.


While sitting there I noticed a guy decked out in scuba gear slowly wading into the water. I have no idea what he was trying to do in the harbor, but it was fun watching him. Also check out the father and son fixing up this old boat. It always amazes me when I consider how different life must be like for people growing up in these different locales.


Directly behind me, overlooking the sea, was an old building that was in the process of being restored. It was incredible.


I began to walk around and explore the city and it's inner streets. I came across this neat little alley way where a group of kids were playing. I believe it was in the old Christian area.


I came out onto a little path that ran along the shore. There was a little peninsula jutting out into the water connected to the path by means of a sandbar. It was too inviting not to walk out onto it. I sat there and again just soaked it all in for a good while. The above picture was the view I had from the rock I was sitting on. (See my knee?)


I kept walking and made my way to the first set of ruins. These are the remains of an ancient Roman promenade which extended out to the sea.


Here you can see the mosaic tiled street which lined the walkway. Pretty incredible.


I continued to explore the city and see all its intricacies. It was a blast. This last picture is a shot of me with the sea and the rest of the city in the background. It was crazy how windy it was by the shore.

The next post will highlight my stop over in Sidon. Highlights will include a castle on the sea, local children galore, and an unwelcome eel.

Beirut-iful, you read that correctly

Last week I was gone. Where'd I go? Well I had the opportunity to travel around Lebanon for a few days. It was amazing. The next few blog posts I do will focus on different parts of the country I saw. (I promise that at some point in the future I will get around to writing the promised post about the Dead to Red Race; right now I'm too anxious to share about Lebanon.)

I started out my trip in Beirut so that's what this post will feature pictures of. Lebanon is so different from what I'm used to in a wide variety of ways. First of was the amount of GREEN things.


Being in the Middle East I've grown accustomed to not seeing much plant life, but Lebanon was full of it! It was beautiful and a nice change of pace. The above picture is taken from the campus of the American University of Beirut which I was kindly given a tour of by a student I met while near the campus. And yes, that IS the Mediterranean Sea in the background. Speaking of the Mediterranean...


The Sea was incredible. Coming from a country where we have mandated water rationing, I was dumbfounded by the beauty of the sea. Other places definitely had prettier views and vistas of the Mediterranean which I will show in a later post, but this was my first look. And I was mighty impressed.


Walking up and down the Corniche I got to take in a lot of the seaside sites. (From Answers.com: the word (corniche) typically describes a waterfront promenade usually paralleled by a main road, such as the renowned Corniche Beirut. I didn't know that either, but that's what all the locals called it.) There was a lot to just sit and take in on the Corniche. Admittedly I was a bit sad I didn't pack running shoes as a run up and down the coast would've been great.


These old boats were just littered along the rocky portions of the beach at points. They had a lot of character that I couldn't ignore; they were practically begging me to take their pictures. Later at other places I got kind of "boat obsessed" as you'll see in later postings when I post several harbor shots.


Something that I always have an eye out for is anything with a distinctly non-Arabic origin but which has been appropriated INTO Arabic culture, whether that be language or something else. Let's call it a melding of the foreign with the familiar. So, I suppose that's why it really interests me to see things like "Henry Ford Street" transliterated into Arabic.


This building was along the shorefront and looked like it had seen better days, but it still had so much life to it. I love the older architectural feel combined with the plants and palm trees. It kind made me feel like I was in a movie.

Alright, I have much more to come from Lebanon. Next time will feature scenes from Tyre.

Mister Q

I know I said that this post would be about running from the Dead Sea to Red Sea, but due to picture issues, I'm gonna postpone that.

Instead, I am gonna share about my new found Arabic adventures. About the time that I broke my computer I was getting ready to start with a new Arabic class. This class has been wonderful. It has given me a structure to the language that I was desperately needing.

The class instruction has components focusing on both spoken and classical Arabic. For those of you unaware, Arabic has two separate forms, related but distinct from each other. It makes learning the language somewhat tricky. I want to talk a bit about this experience.

The base form of the language is the classical Arabic, which all writing is done in. This is pretty much universally understood, but not as well as the local spoken dialects. It'd be like having all your newspapers, books, magazines, and TV subtitles written in Old English. Have you ever tried to read something like Beowulf or Chaucer in Old English?? It's ridiculous. (This is why it's not used to speak everyday language.)

The day to day language is the spoken language and it differs from region to region. Egyptian Arabic is different from Moroccan Arabic is different from Palestinian Arabic is different from Lebanese Arabic, etc. Some forms are closer to others, but all are vastly different. I hesitate to call it a mere dialect, simply because there are significant gaps between each.

(For example, our Palestinian friend who has grown up speaking Levantine Arabic, hearing Syrian and Egyptian Arabic on TV, and reading classical Arabic in books and movie subtitles has an extremely difficult time understanding Yemeni Arabic. We went to eat at a Yemeni restaurant with him and he laughed at the menu because he couldn't understand what any of the food was nor could he understand our waiter.)

So that's what I'm dealing with; we spend most of our time learning the local spoken Arabic common to our area but we also study the classical written form as well. For the most part it has gone very well. I've learned much and am still enjoying learning.

I've been designated with two similar nicknames in class: Abu Su'al (Father Question, or Mr. Question) and Mr. Q (again short for question). This stems from my desire to fully understand exactly what I'm learning before I move on. Sadly, I don't always understand things right off and I ask questions until I grasp it. However there are times when it's beyond my ability to understand and we have to move on anyway. I do not like it when that happens haha.

Until next time مع السلامة (Good-Bye). I'll try hard to have the running pics for the next blog.