Mercedes and Goats.

"Last Post Published on Oct. 28, 2009":  so reads my blog homepage when I signed in.  Gosh it's been a long time since I've posted anything.  Life has gotten busy, but I suppose that's always the way it is.  At the promptings of several friends, I will attempt to make regular posts again.

I noticed something the other day and thought it would make good blog fodder.  The lines between foreign and familiar for me here have dissolved into one another.  Let me explain what I mean by sharing the story which really made me start thinking about this.

I was walking through a neighborhood in a very nice part of town the other day.  Home to large houses, nice to extremely expensive cars, and families probably more well off than I'm used to even in the States.  I walked around a corner to see a Bedouin and his herd of goats walking through someone's yard.  Many of the goats were chomping away at grass, bushes, and anything they could find.  The man was dressed in typical rural-like garb.  I can remember a time when this would've made me think something was odd with this situation.  But somehow over the past year and a half the site of goats being herded next Mercedes and through yards became normal.

This part of the world is so mixed with parts of the old with the new.  So much so that I've managed to compile both old and new into the same working concept in my mind.  Mercedes and goats.  It's just the way it is here.  And it made me realize, this is normal everyday life for me.

No longer is it odd to walk through a neighborhood hung with streamers and full of Arabic graffiti.

No longer is it odd to go for a run and hear shouts in Arabic as the children chase after me.

No longer is it odd to see cats scatter out of trashcans as I throw out garbage.

No longer is it odd to see the dome and minaret of a mosque when I go to the park.

No longer is it odd to see drivers stick their hand out in order to "push" their way through traffic.

No longer is it odd to hear the call to prayer when I'm sitting and reading.

No longer is it a new experience to see a pink and purple sunset over the desert... though it does still amaze me.

No longer is this just some place I live, but it is now my home.  A part of me.  The people.  The food.  The culture.  The language.  The things I love.  The things that I don't love.  The things I still don't understand, but accept because that's the way it is - like Mercedes and Goats.  Who knew?

Louvre Panoramic

This is a the panoramic picture of the Louvre that I was trying to post yesterday. If you click on you click on the picture it'll open a somewhat larger version.  I'll have more panoramics up in the future.

A Week in a Village

A little over a month ago, I had the opportunity to help put on an English camp in a small village about 2.5 hours from where I live. I lived in this village for a week with a local family. They spoke nearly no English, and their Arabic took some getting used to. Despite that, I had a wonderful time talking with, sharing with, and getting to know these people.

Getting to know some of the kids we would be teaching English to.

The family that hosted me were so generous and welcoming. I could tell that at first they were a little wary of a strange American, but after only a few days we were laughing and talking like good friends. The family consisted of the father and mother with two older sons who were high school age and a single daughter about middle school age.

The father of the family insisted that I try on his kuffiyah (red head wrap) and take a picture with him.

The class I taught was the introductory level students. They'd had very little to no English exposure prior to our lessons. I was very fortunate to be able to speak to the kids in Arabic. Some of the teachers had no prior Arabic experience. The progress was slow going, but they did learn some English. It reminded me alot of my initial Arabic studies.

This is me with the class of kids I taught.

This is a picture of my roommate seeking respite from the sun in the shadows of the school building. It was very hot in the village compared to the city.

The old Bedouin influences were everywhere and much of the village relied on farming for income. I was amazed at the amount of green "things" to be seen. Living in the city, there isn't nearly as much vegetation. It was so good to see something vibrantly green and growing.

Many days after we finished our work teaching English, my roommate and I along with the local youth would walk and just admire the village and scenery. It was quite beautiful.

This is a picture of me in the middle of a watermelon field with the two older sons from the family I stayed with in the village.


In addition to the watermelons they grow wheat, tomatoes, and several other produce.


When we walked by one of the wheat fields one of the boys showed me how to pick the heads of grain, rub them in my hand and eat the grain. I thought of a very specific story when I was doing this...

I have alot more photos of the village and students to share. Those will be forthcoming soon...

Desert Road Trip

Silhouette of my roommate against the desert sunset.

A while back I went on a road trip. You might ask, "Where to?" To which I would say, "No where in particular." My roommate and I had rented a car in order to do a few things around the city, and so when we ended up with a free weekend with a car we knew we had to go somewhere. I had heard that along the desert highways which stretch the vast emptiness of sand and rock there were some desert castles to be seen.

So with no real destination really in mind, we headed out. We drove towards a "Nature Preserve" that ended up being less than impressive. However, along the way we did happen upon a few of the desert castles, all of which were relatively unpopulated. That said, we did make friends with the Bedouin man sitting in a tent outside one of the castles, and he then offered to show us inside the castle.

The castle itself was pretty impressive; bigger than I'd expected. Especially considering it's out in the middle of nowhere in the desert.

As we were walking up to the castle we were talking with him as best we could in his Bedouin Arabic. My roommate, making conversation said, "How are you?" and he replied "Better than you!" and immediately burst into laughter. Apparently this is an Arabic joke that we'd never heard before. (We've since used it, and gotten mixed results; some people laugh, some people get kinda put off.)

Getting a friendly High Five on the way in when we when found out that he was doing "better than us".

Inside the castle were mostly just empty stone rooms. We walked up some stairs, and the whole place was mighty impressive to be in and check out. I didn't get too many good pictures of the inner parts though.

Admiring a thousand year old plus stone doorway. It was crazy how well the castle was preserved for being built in the 8th cent AD.

Our little Bedouin tour guide (he was really tiny!) was very knowledgeable about the history of the place. Every room we stopped in he had an interesting fact to tell us. For example: there were something like 60 rooms in the castle, but only 1 "toilet." And even that was a hole cut into the stone floor. That's alot of guests for one bathroom....

A view of the inner courtyard. I know, I'm "haram" wearing shorts and all, but we were on a road trip and I figured I could wear them stealthily.

After all was said and done, we walked back towards his tent. He invited us in for tea, but we were quickly losing the daylight that we had left and we wanted to get back on the road as quickly as possible. Getting turned around in the desert at night would've been not too fun. We thanked him and tipped him (dunno if he expected that or not), and said our goodbyes.

Walking back towards his tent. Desert in every direction.

We did several more hours of driving that day, and we didn't get home until very late that night. On the way back home, we passed through an outskirt "suburb" on the edge of the capital city that we live in. In that smaller little outskirt city there was this huge mosque. It looked brand new, and it was very pretty lit up in the dark of the night.

I love seeing the various mosque styles the world over.

We had a great time driving and discovering some new areas that we'd never been to before. We saw a lot of the desert that most people don't normally venture out into. I definitely want to return to explore the many other areas of the desert that I've yet to see.

A Full Moon

Hello all. I realize that it's been about three weeks since my last post. I've been busy doing things but oddly, I've not really had the opportunity to take a large amount of pictures. That said, I've got a neat few for today.

I've always been fascinated by low light, long exposure pictures. I had built up a fair amount of nighttime shots before the whole cat fiasco in which I lost all of my pictures. One night recently, I spent some time up on my roof. The moon was out and it was very pleasant outside. The view from my roof lends me a nice vantage of most of downtown.


One of the crazy things I noticed upon reviewing my pictures is just how much dust is in the air. I remember thinking to myself, "Wow, what a clear night, this'll make for some good pictures." Yet, looking at the glowing halo around the brightly lit moon shows just how hazy it can be with the dust/sand being blown up. And like I said, this night was quite clear in comparison to other nights. What's crazy is that all those points of light probably only represent about 20% of the entire city.


From our apartment we can easily see the old Palace that rests atop a hill between two valleys. It's always quite impressive when it's lit up at night with the skyline behind it.


Here is a close up of the Palace with the city in the background. Sometimes when I'm out running late at night, I take a path that winds right by here and I just sit and take it in. It still amazes me that I actually live here.


This is a enlarged section of the town that was far off in the distance in the previous wider shots. If you click on it you should be able to see lots of little details.


Finally I end with a shot of the moon.

Nighttime here is really a wonderful thing. The temperature drops considerably from the daytime highs, and the people come out. Not that it's too terribly bad during the day (I think San Antonio is quite regularly much hotter in the day), but when you have no air conditioning, the nighttime temperature drop is a godsend when trying to sleep.

A Beach Below Sea Level

So I've been out to the Dead Sea area several times, but until recently I hadn't gotten the opportunity to actually go INTO the water. It was a wonderfully sunny day. I even got slightly sunburnt.


The first thing you notice upon walking up to the water's edge is the solidified salt that covers everything - even under the water in places. The picture above shows how easy it is to pull up handfuls of salt. That should give you an idea about just how salty the water is.


Upon venturing into the water you can definitely smell the salt and you notice the water feels slightly odd; almost as though it's oily. I know that sounds strange considering it's full of gritty salt and sediment, but it really was somehow more slick than plain water. See the sand under water ?


I was amazed at how buoyant I was. You hear all the stories about how you can't sink, but it's still a strange feeling to just lay back and bob at the surface of the water.


I tried to stand straight up, but that proved difficult; my legs kept trying to float up from beneath me. I finally managed to bounce like a cork straight up and down in the water.


Naturally I started goofing off and seeing just what I could do since I didn't have to work at keeping myself afloat with my arms and legs. I call this one "The Airplane."


As I was getting up out of the water one of my friends threw a glob of mud at me. Notice the big clump below my left shoulder? This quickly escalated into mud slinging. And at that point I was covered in mud so I decided to go ahead and do the cliché of covering myself entirely in Dead Sea mud.


Apparently people pay lots of money for Dead Sea mud; there are shops lining the Dead Sea selling the stuff. And for good reason! Don't I look especially attractive?

After about 10 minutes covered in it though, I'd had enough. I got washed off. By the way, if you ever go to the Dead Sea DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT attempt to swim under the water. I wanted to show the laws of physics it wasn't gonna keep me from sinking. Bad idea. I had my eyes tightly shut and my mouth completely locked closed, but it didn't matter. My lips shriveled and my eyes stung immediately. It was not cool.


This last picture gives a glimpse of what the shore looked like from the water; complete with Euro Speedo Man.

Saida! Saida! Saida!

Saida is the Arabic name for the city of Sidon. Tyre is in the far south of Lebanon and my route back to Beirut took me right through Saida. I only got to spend a few hours here, but the time was well spent. The city felt bigger and more alive than Tyre. It was incredibly beautiful, as Lebanon tends to be.


The big tourist site to go to is the seaside castle which lies about 100 to 200 meters out into the ocean from the shore. As you can see in the photo there is a long stone walkway that leads out to it.


Almost immediately upon entering the castle I come across two local boys with whom I begin talking in Arabic. This surprised them and we chatted for a while. When I got up to continue on they just followed. I had three shadows that afternoon. One of them insisted that I take his picture; he's the one above, I can't remember his name.


Climbing through the innards to get to the upper ramparts I came across this beautifully lit room. I can only imagine what this might've looked like when it was originally being used.


The view from the top was truly spectacular. The castle, the deep shadows, the coastline, the skyline - it was all too perfect.


Before I left, I made sure to get a picture of myself sitting on the castle walls looking out over the city.


When I got back to the shore I walked a ways down and just soaked it all in. I've noticed I really like to soak in my surroundings. I came across lot's of interesting people, but I seem to always atract younger males. These guys were neat. The one on the bike is actually from Germany but he now lives in Lebanon.


Naturally, there is alot of fishing going on along the shore. As I was walking past I saw this group of kids gathered around a guy about my age. I walked up to find that he had (unintentionally) caught an eel and they were trying to figure out what to do with it. I love the look of almost pained curiousity on the face of the kid in the red shirt.


As I said, there were many groups fishing. I'm not sure these guys were ever even aware that I took their picture. The sunset provided amazing pictures at the harbor.


This is the last picture I took of Sidon before I loaded the bus back to Beirut. I would absolutely go back to Sidon any time I have the chance. It was too much to get in one trip.

$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.