France - Part the Second

In addition to spending a half day at the Louvre, we spent a day or so just walking around seeing the city and sights. There is much to see and we had precious little time. The first thing on our list was to go to the Eiffel Tower.


As will become a theme in future posts, there were many monuments/sights that I wasn't too excited about seeing. I wasn't against seeing them, but they just seemed overly-touristy. The Eiffel Tower was one of them. However, it kinda blew me away. It is a very visible part of the city even from far away. But it's very physically imposing up close. Much more impressive than I anticipated.


We managed to find one of the "bagillion" tourists walking by to take a family picture for us. Ended up being a pretty good group picture.


Near the tower there is a little park where a lot of people just kinda hang out. This is a candid shot of my mom in said park.


The other main thing I really wanted to do while in Paris was walk the Champs-Elysées. It starts at the Louvre and ends at the Arc de Triomphe. So we went back to the Louvre (it was the only place we could find with open parking) and walked from the Louvre to the Arc. Here's my mother and I standing in front of the iconic Louvre pyramid.


This is what the first part of the walk down the Champs-Elysées looks like. It was really beautiful and full of runners. I really wished that I could have had a nice run through the park. My parents are wearing jackets here because it was already chilly in the beginning of September.


View from the park looking down toward the Arc.


My parents and I got a kick out of this statue since it looks like he's covering his head in shame from the bird nestled cozily on his head.


Getting closer to the Arc. It was pretty amazing to walk this strip of road when you think about the amazing history that had past through this one street. I had to brave the traffic to get this shot.


Here I am in front of the Arc de Triomphe.


Very wide shot of the front of the Arc de Triomphe. Very neat.


Bonus Picture: This is a picture of the single smallest hotel room I've ever stayed in. It was a "budget" hotel room in Paris that we stayed at one night. It was good for sleeping in and nothing else. Thankfully that's all we needed it for. I got the top bunk.

I wanted to include a panoramic of the front of the Louvre with this post, but I can't get photoshop to do the layering properly. If I get it working, I'll post it later.

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.

Mexican Food in Lebanon

My last destination in Lebanon was the ancient city of Byblos. This city is said to be the oldest port in the world. I heard people claiming it was around 5000 years old! I don't know the historical validity of that (you know how people tend to exaggerate about their hometown...), but whatever the age of the city it was a beautiful place and probably my favorite of the cities I visited in Lebanon. The picture above shows the a view down into the harbor from the ruins of a Crusader Castle.


There are lots of reasons why I liked this city so much, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that no matter where I was in the city I had a spectacular view of the sea. As I was first coming into the city, walking down this seemingly innocuous street, all of a sudden the sea appeared out of no where and blew me away.


I eventually made my way to the harbor and talked to some of the locals. The Lebanese dialect was a little different than the Arabic I'm accustomed to, but I managed well enough. The locals were more than pleased to tell me about their city while I sat amongst the boats on the edge of the sea.

Before I left for Byblos I had heard from a few people that there was a really good Mexican food restaurant somewhere near the harbor. I was craving Mexican food something fierce; in fact I still am, it's one of the few things I miss from home. Anyway, I made sure I found the restaurant and ordered steak enchiladas. They were wonderful.


And the view from the restaurant was just as impressive as everywhere else. The above picture is what I saw out of the window from my table at the restaurant. Mexican food and that view was pretty perfect.


I continued to wander the city and found a Crusader built church. Named after John the Baptist, it was built in 1150 but damaged by the continued fighting of the Crusades. It was incredible.


Inside the church they were preparing for a wedding that was soon to commence, but I managed to sneak a few pictures before they got mad at me.


The outer courtyard of the church was a nice place to sit and relax. The weather was absolutely perfect the day I was in Byblos, and I probably would've sat there for quite a while had that wedding not been going on.


As I said earlier, there was a Crusader fort built and partly destroyed here during the Crusades. The neat thing is that it was built amongst and around other ruins from times past. This part of the world is so full of ancient history that they practically built their ancient sites on top of each other. Above you can see the remains of some Greek ruins with the later built Crusader fort in the background.


This is a small-ish amphitheater overlooking the sea. Though it isn't big I can imagine seeing anything performed against such a backdrop would be mighty impressive.


Before I left the city I had to go back and sit along the coast. I knew this would be my last opportunity to really enjoy the Mediterranean before I left so I made sure to take my time. You can see the outer edge of the city framing the sea.

I really enjoyed my time in Lebanon. It is a beautiful country, the people are nice, and the food was great. If you're ever in the neighborhood of the Middle East, I would definitely recommend Lebanon as a place to visit.

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.