so i went hiking today

yeah, i said it. ME HIKING. a bit north of beirut, near jbeil (byblos).

i decided to try it despite not thinking it would be my thing, and i have concluded...

that i was entirely correct. i appreciate pretty things much more when i'm not concerned about a) slipping on wet, muddy rocks falling-down-stairs-style since it rained in the morning, and b) my bladder. and fine, i didn't have the right footwear and i was exhausted because daylight savings snuck up on me in a very serious way and the hike was much more difficult than most people anticipated, but my legs are twitching now and that's clearly not ok.

on a more positive note, at least i have a sense of what i would or wouldn't enjoy. and i managed to get some good pictures.

the beqaa

this needs very little explanation.

i went to the beqaa valley today. it is in western lebanon, a bit south of beirut, and known as the country's "breadbasket" because it includes 40% of its arable land.

the different areas that i passed through today alternatingly and simultaneously reminded me of costa rica, other non-desert middle eastern land, and switzerland: every road was a curva peligrosa on the edge of a cliff overlooking little villages, and snowy peaks enclosed the valley on both sides.

lebanon is roughly the size of connecticut. in an hour, i went through a city, farmland, and towns. i saw the mediterranean and a lake, mountains and the valley, 70-degree weather and enough snow to ski.

in these pictures, i tried to capture how stunning lebanon's diversity is. i've never seen anything like it before.

addendum

my friend, levi, who is male, jewish, and american spent this past weekend in damascus with two of my other american friends, zoe and brennan, neither of whom is jewish. unlike zoe and brennan, who got syrian visas while they were in the us, levi just showed up at the border hoping he wouldn't get turned away. in an attempt to prevent this, he put $50 in his passport, but the border guard merely handed it back to him. according to zoe, they hung out at the border for 4 hours, but none of them were hassled at all.

"we smiled a lot. they smiled a lot, too. the whole country smiled at us, actually. everyone was trying to guess where we were from since we obviously were't syrian, but no one guessed american since syria doesn't exactly have an abundance of american tourists. one guy asked us if we were british, and i said, 'no, american,' and he said, 'great! i'm iranian!' but the conversation didn't go much further than that because we were trying to get somewhere."

i ran into the syrian girl studying hebrew on my way to class. she was really excited to hear the story.