Andy Freeland

Wadi Rum

2012-08-07T00:00:00-04:00

Turns out I stopped updating this for even longer than I thought. Oops. We started travelling on weekends more and I started spending my computer time avoiding homework instead of blogging. Alas.

We went to Wadi Rum about three weeks ago. It’s the largest valley in Jordan, and it’s often called the Valley of the Moon. You’ve probably seen it in movies.

It’s one of the most beautiful and by far the most remote place I’ve ever been.

We did a lot of climbing. Turns out climbing up sand dunes is really hot and really hard.

After spending all that time out in the incredibly hot desert sun, I suddenly understood kuffiyehs completely.

We stayed overnight at a Bedouin camp for tourists, where they made us food and played music. Apparently a traditional Bedouin method of cooking involves sticking all of the food in a hole in the ground and burying it.

The night sky at Wadi Ram is gorgeous. You can see the milky way! There is nothing around, so no light pollution. They even turn off the power in the camp at night.

The next morning we left to go to Petra, but before we did, I rode a camel.

In other life news, the program is really really close to over. As in Thursday is the last day of classes and we all leave the country on Saturday. I’ve become somewhat disillusioned and demotivated as the program went on, but it was still definitely a worthwhile experience.

Our Jordanian dialect class, for example, was almost entirely worthless. This is a huge disappointment, because I was really looking to improve there.

Our MSA class is okay, but I feel like I’ve learned more from sheer hours spent in class than from the quality of the class, and we definitely didn’t do much work to improve our grammar or how we express our thoughts, especially in writing.

Media started okay, got really boring because our textbook was terrible, and then became much more fun when we talked the professor into abandoning the textbook. The new format became read an article, watch a video, and discuss it. Much better and much more interesting.

So that’s that. I leave Jordan Saturday for an undisclosed location and then I’m in Lebanon from the 16th to the 22nd. Wooooo!

Aqaba

2012-07-18T00:00:00-04:00

I sort of stopped updating this. Oops. Someday I might write a post about living with the Bedouins, maybe not. There are some silly pictures of me from that.

But. This past weekend some of us went to Aqaba in southern Jordan. It’s Jordan’s only coastal city, and right at the northeastern tip of the Red Sea. It’s also touristy as hell.

I attempted to go scuba diving for the first time ever, which was amazing while it lasted. Unfortunately, I couldn’t pop or repressurize my ears, so I could only make it down about 4 meters before it became unbearably painful.

We spent a lot of time relaxing on the beach, especially at sunset, which explains the pictures here. The mountains you see in the background everywhere are the Sinai in Egypt.

Look, it’s me on a beach looking happy!

On a completely unrelated note, we had our midterm exam and presentation last week, which went fine. That also means the program is half over, which is super weird.

My MSA classes have been pretty good and I feel like I’ve been making progress, but the dialect class has been disappointing. We have a wonderful professor, but the curriculum is slow, using a disorganized textbook in the Gaza dialect, and I’m learning very little new. I’m in the advanced dialect class, which means that most of us have studied some sort of dialect in the Arab world before. I’d like to think that we could be doing more than learning above, below, on, in, etc. by the fifth week. Argh.

Also, no trip would be complete without a picture of rocks.

This upcoming weekend I’m going with some people to the ruins at Petra and Wadi Ram. Expect more pictures of rocks.

Graduation in Jordan

2012-07-01T00:00:00-04:00

I survived living with the Bedouins for a weekend, but more on that later.

Living within walking distance of The Jordanian University (or University of Jordan? Not really sure..) during graduations, I’ve noticed that Jordanians celebrate graduation differently than in the US.

As far as I can tell, there’s been a different graduation almost every night the past week. After each graduation, it seems that people celebrate by driving back and forth along the University Street while sitting on/out the windows, honking and blowing air horns and making traffic even worse. All night long.

Jerash, Aljoun Castle, and Umm Qais

2012-06-27T00:00:00-04:00

Rocks! Ruins! Get excited.

As I mentioned, last Friday we went on a day trip to the ruins of Jerash, Aljoun Castle, and Umm Qais. Above, you can see some of the ruins at Jerash.

Jerash is one of the larger cities of the ancient world, and was at various points occupied by both the the Greeks and Romans. Above is the South Gate.

Here’s an overview of a small portion of the site. It’s both well preserved and restored, as much of the city was destroyed by an earthquake in the eighth century. You can even pay to see chariot races in the hippodrome, although I did not.

A street running through the ancient city of Jerash.

We next took the bus to Aljoun Castle — a massive Ayyubid fortress on Jabal Auf. The castle was built by the nephew of Saladin to protect the Jordan valley from Crusader attacks. Apparently the castle was still used by Ottoman forces until the 18th or 19th century.

I don’t typically like having my picture taken.

Just some Jordanians sitting on top of a castle.

Umm Qais is another ancient Roman city full of Roman ruins.

Like many other Roman ruins, there are lots of columns. A downside of organizing trips like this ourselves means that we have guide to actually tell us about things. :(

According to Wikipedia, this is part of the ruins of a church.

We ate dinner at a restaurant at the top of the ruins at Umm Qais. From these hills you can see Syria, Israel, and the Golan Heights. The Sea of Galilee is on the left here, and at the top of the hills on the right is the Golan. It’s a really beautiful view. If had been brighter we might have even been able to see the mountains between Israel, Lebanon, and Syria.

Tomorrow and Friday night I’ll be staying with a Bedouin family near Mafraq in Northern Jordan. That will be different, to say the least.

Salt

2012-06-24T00:00:00-04:00

Last week we visited Salt, one of the oldest cities in Jordan, and Jordan’s first capital.

Like everywhere else in Jordan, Salt is extremely hilly. We visited the Abu Jafar mansion, the ancestral home of one of Jordan’s most prominent families. It was nice, but apparently I didn’t take many pictures of it.

We wandered around Salt for a bit with some of the speaking partners. The group I was with ended up at a restaurant where I had muajanat for the first time. It’s a sort of pastry with various meats, vegetables, or cheeses. I liked it a lot.

That’s all I’ve got. Now that the program is in full swing, we get a lot of homework in our MSA class. For example, for today, I had to do four short presentations, read four short texts, one long one, and a few writing assignments. As a result, I’m really tired.

But! Last weekend we went on a terrific trip to Jerash, Aljoun Castle, and Umm Qais. I’ll blog about that soon. This weekend I have my homestay in Al-Mafraq, which should be interesting.

Also, everyone I speak Arabic with asks me if I studied in Syria or Lebanon, because apparently the dialect is distinct enough that mine can be instantly recognized as not Jordanian. Alas. I like the sounds of Lebanese better anyways. :)

Qasid

2012-06-20T00:00:00-04:00

Still in Amman and it’s still just as noisy and crowded and hot and dirty as ever, but I like it. A lot. Except for the heat, but at least there’s no humidity and not many mosquitos and I have AC at night. In other words, the weather is still better than last summer in Northfield. Alas.

Sunday was our first day of classes at Qasid, a well known institute for teaching Arabic. The environment there is very conservative — many of the men have beards and dress in an Islamic manner (I don’t actually know what Islamic dress is called…) and all of the women professors wear the Hijab. I’m taking either two or three classes depending on how you count things. I’m taking a class in Jordanian dialect, Modern Standard Arabic, and Arab Media (which is part of the MSA class). Initially, I was placed into the beginner dialect class and the intermediate MSA/media class.

Turns out the intermediate class was going to spend the first three weeks covering things I’ve already learned (and sometimes forgotten) and the Media portion of the class seemed much easier than my Media Arabic classes at Carleton.

Fortunately, I talked to the director and I’ve now switched into the Advanced MSA/Media class, which means I actually have homework that takes time now. Tonight, for example, one of my assignments was to interview three Jordanians about their opinions of the Arab revolutions and write a report on it. Needless to say, I heard some interesting things — one said Egypt was better off with Hosni Mubarak, and another said Iran is a larger problem in the region than Israel. I’ve been in this class for a day now, and it’s much better: instead of talking about how to read news articles, we read some and watched a clip of al-Jazeera. Very similar to at Carleton, but faster, and with an additional textbook.

The classes here are much faster paced than at Carleton or Lebanese American University. For example, we’re planning on covering a chapter of Al-Kitaab 2 every 5-6 days. For those of you who haven’t studied Arabic, that’s really fast. In a 10 week term at Carleton, we covered two chapters.

To do this, we have three hours of MSA/Media Arabic, an hour of Jordanian dialect, and half an hour sessions with our speaking partners every weekday plus weekly language socialization activities and probably other things to come. Plus an expected 3-4 hours of homework every night. Oh dear.

Coming soon are pictures from our trip to Salt and hopefully other activities. Unlike at LAU, we only have one scheduled excursion, and are left to our own devices to explore Jordan this summer. This weekend some of us might be going to Umm Qais in the Northwest of Jordan, at the border of Jordan, Israel, and Syria. That should be fun.

First test tomorrow, so yella bye.

Also: we’re only allowed to speak to each other in Arabic. Always.

Amman (Part 2)

2012-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

Today we actually left our neighborhood, for the very first time.

We went in groups with our speaking partners to Rainbow Street and Wasat al-Balad. There’s a fairly well-known market in Rainbow Street called Souq Jara that is pretty touristy, but other than that they are very sha’bi neighborhoods. Literally that means popular, but a better translation might be something like working-class.

These neighborhoods reminded me a lot of Tripoli in Lebanon. Crowded, dirty, and busy. I had falafel and hummus for the first time in Jordan from a comically cheap restaurant — less than $1.50 for more than enough falafel and hummus.

There was also a concert by a local Jordanian band at Souq Jara: JadaL. The most surprising thing about the concert (to me at least) was that they paused the concert in anticipation of the call to prayer. It was good though. I don’t instantly like them as much as Mashrou3 Leila or Adonis, but still a lot of fun. Also I think both Mashrou3 Leila and Adonis are going to have concerts in Jordan this summer, and I really really hope they’re while I’m here, because if so, I am going.

The concert was also the first time I really saw Amman as beautiful. It’s a great view.

This will serve as proof that I’m actually in Jordan. This is also the most frequently I have ever updated my blog. Don’t get too used to it, I can’t promise I’ll keep it up.

Amman

2012-06-14T00:00:00-04:00

We all survived the flight, despite a terrifying dip as we approached the airport and then a substantially delayed landing. Above is a view from the balcony of ACOR, but more on that later.

So, Amman. A few comparisons to Beirut:

Amman is significantly dirter.
Amman (or at least the Tlaa’ al-Ali neighborhood) is much less dense and much more spread out. We have to walk down a very steep hill to get to any shops. In Beirut, there were three convenience stores within probably 100 meters.
There are dogs barking all night, not just cats.
We can hear the call to prayer much more often and much louder than in Beirut.
No humidity!
No power outages!
People don’t seem to understand let alone speak English. This is probably a plus.

Nonetheless, I like it. I’m living in an apartment with five other people near ACOR, in the Tlaa’ al-Ali region. The apartment is sort of falling apart, in a way that will probably become endearing. For example, the ceiling light in my room is held up at a precarious angle by a single screw. We also don’t have a shower curtain, the kitchen smells, and the internet is unusably slow. Alas. At least we have air conditioning.

All of the women are living in ACOR, which is also where we’re having all of our orientation activities (and where I’m going to go for internet), including a crash course in Jordanian Arabic. It turns out Jordanian Arabic (at least the urban/Palestinian dialect) is much closer to Lebanese Arabic than the flashcards we were sent to prepare led me to believe. Hamdillah.

Also, Amman is really really really hot (and dry!) during the day, and we live on a very steep hill. I felt dehydrated and exhausted just from walking to and from the store and our apartment to buy water. Once the sun sets however, the weather is gorgeous. It’s much cooler and there’s a very pleasant breeze.

Same view (more or less) from the ACOR balcony, but after dark.

As for the program itself, so far we’ve just had orientation and met with our speaking partners for the crash course in Jordanian Arabic. The program already seems more intense than SINARC was, and it’ll likely get much more so once we start classes at Qasid. I’m excited.

To Jordan!

2012-06-11T00:00:00-04:00

Tomorrow I fly to Jordan to study Arabic even more. I’ve already been in DC for orientation — I left outrageously early the morning after graduation.

I’m going to be in Amman on the Critical Language Scholarship studying Arabic even more intensely than when I was in Lebanon. I’m going from 8–9 hours per week of classes at Carleton to 20+ hours per week plus lots more homework.

I’ll be in Jordan until 12 August, at which point I’m hoping to travel to some subset of Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, and Turkey. Probably Lebanon, Egypt, and Israel assuming I can get in.

I’m really good at relaxing after graduation. Once I get there, I’ll start writing and taking pictures of all the relaxation I’m doing. Be excited.

If you’re interested, subscribe by email, or RSS, or just come here all the time. You can also view all posts about my trip here.

Graduation!

2012-06-10T00:00:00-04:00

Yesterday I graduated from Carleton College. Some people gave speeches, I shook some hands, and it was really hot.

It turns out I also made some friends in the past four years at Carleton.

In all seriousness, Carleton was an amazing experience. I had tremendous opportunities, got to know really wonderful people, and even learned a few things.

The people and experiences I’ve known at Carleton have done a lot to shape me into who I am today, and I think that’s a good thing.

Bye-bye Carleton: it was great.

Washington, D.C.

2012-03-18T21:45:00-04:00

I’m in DC for a bit over spring break, because in the fall I’m moving out here to work at RedJack. Pretty exciting.

Christmas

2011-12-24T23:45:00-05:00

A Freeland family Christmas.

Medicine

2011-11-12T23:50:00-05:00

Is it worth $36 to relieve 0-90 minutes of the most miserable pain you’ve ever experienced? Even when it adds a few minutes of nausea?

If not, what’s it worth?

Carleton

2011-10-12T22:00:00-04:00

Carleton in the fall.

Carleton in the summer.

Redesign

2011-08-25T18:35:00-04:00

I’ve been here for almost exactly one year now, so it was about time for a redesign. I think this one looks much better, but I’m biased. I’m also much more comfortable with CSS than I was a year ago and have discovered fancy tools, like CSS frameworks.

I first used inuit.css while making a futures market webapp for one of the CS professors. I picked it over more common frameworks because it had nice pretty defaults, and looked easier to get started with. Naturally, I used it here too.

What does this mean for you, O reader?

It means that many of the hard things I don’t understand like line heights, word spacing, and resizing for different screen sizes (try this site on your phone!) are mostly taken care of for me. This is incredibly helpful, because now I don’t have gross smashed together fonts like last time. It also means most (hopefully all?) elements should have styling even if I didn’t do it myself.

This is a good thing. I actually used LESS this time, because it is incredibly awesome. Math and variables and nested rules in my stylesheets.

I also changed the fonts and made them huge, because I really like large fonts. After discovering Readability and using it to read almost everything, reading pages with small fonts sucks. One of my goals is that this looks good enough that you won’t instinctively leap for something like Readability. I won’t anymore, which is progress.

Despite using inuit.css, this design is much more a product of my work. I knew what I wanted (for the most part — I had no idea what to do about the comment links), and I like what I got.

A few other notes:

The sans serif font being used in post titles and the navigation links is Oswald.
The gorgeous font for the header is Arvo.
Pages are still written in Markdown and generated using Jekyll.
Links with the dotted underline and changing color came from cloudhead.io.
The new permalinks on the main page were inspired by Alex Payne.

That’s about it. Tested in Firefox, Google Chrome, IE 9, and the Android browser. If something is broken or weird for you, post a comment, or email me.

Let me know what you think. Note: posts with pretty pictures will return soon.

Also, I’m 21 now?

Summer

2011-07-23T23:40:00-04:00

Summer at Carleton is pretty quiet and uneventful, although we do get exciting things like miserably hot and humid weather, apocalyptic thunderstorms, and more! Like crimping steel cable.

The storms are pretty cool though. This one was a while ago and had lots of terrific lightning that I kept missing.

They also give nice sunsets.

Tomorrow I’m going to see Tally Hall for the first time in a few years. Their new album, Good & Evil is all sorts of wonderful, especially after having waited almost six years since their first album.

Hopefully these pictures are less emo. :)

Home

2011-07-08T18:40:00-04:00

Went home for a week for the 4th of July. Did the usual sort of thing: saw friends, family, played some piano, etc. Not the most exciting thing to write about, but that’s life.

Fireworks are also not the most interesting pictures I’ve realized. At least not from a good distance away and through some trees.

I think this one is pretty cool though. A bit of flare, some smoke, and a little blurriness makes it more interesting than most of the others. This is what happens when you try balancing a camera on your knee for fifteen seconds.

This one is not as cool, but it’s still nice.

Also: look, a baby squirrel! This not from home, it’s on a garbage bin at Macalaster College.

Graduation

2011-06-12T01:30:00-04:00

Class of 2011 graduated today. It was a nice ceremony, outside on the bald spot. Here’s a few pictures of some of my friends. Taken mostly by ambushing people, congratulating them, and taking their pictures.

Storms

2011-05-24T02:30:00-04:00

There was a pretty nice storm this weekend. At first, this meant climbing onto a building, but eventually we retreated to a classroom.

Two pictures of lightning. I think the first is more interesting, although I wish something were in focus other than the bottom of the windowsill.

Finals are approaching and then another summer of work, but with more interesting projects.

This is not studying.

Northfield

2011-04-03T03:20:00-04:00

2:15am Saturday. Tired, bored, and raining outside. Natural response? Go to bed. Instead, I went for a walk downtown.

I like this picture. The old Malt-O-Meal Ames Mill, the Water Street bridge, and that wooden stair/deck contraption.

This is what I actually went downtown to get. Didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. Not as many lights on in the mill as the last time I walked by, and I couldn’t capture the churning water very well (read: at all). ma3 leish.

Earth: The Pale Blue Dot

2011-03-07T21:50:00-05:00

So beautiful.

Snow!

2011-02-26T16:40:00-05:00

It was snowing pretty hard this morning when I woke up (and still is) and I was inspired to take some pictures.

Not inspired enough to actually go outside, but inspired enough to take pictures through the window like a creeper.

masr 7urra

2011-02-12T21:12:00-05:00

Beautiful picture. So full of hope. Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy.

Tyre

2010-12-08T21:15:00-05:00

After Saida and the Hizballah museum, we went to Tyre, also known as Sur. Tyre, like Saida, is one of the first Phoenician cities, and was known for its production of comically expensive purple dye. Tyre, unlike Saida, is largely Shi’a.

In Tyre, we did the same thing we always do: visit some ruins!

I believe the ruins at Tyre are of some sort of Roman theatre, and the site is known as al-Miina, which is Arabic for the port or harbor or something along those lines.

Here’s some letters. Sadly, I don’t know what language it is, or even what alphabet.

Like all Roman ruins, there are lots and lots of columns. You can even see the sea in the background! The Mediterranean is pretty neat. It was much nicer here than in Beirut, because it’s not just a road and sidewalk running along the sea. Here you could actually smell and see the sea without as many assholes honking constantly.

Finally, one last shot of the theater, with a mosque in the background:

Coming soon: my life! With pictures!

Saida

2010-12-08T20:30:00-05:00

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, so here we go. Many many weeks ago, we went on a trip to the South to Saida and Sur. And the Hizballah museum in Mleeta, but that’s for a very different post. Saida is probably more commonly known as Sidon.

It’s a very old, largely Sunni, city probably built by the Phoenicians as one of their first cities. The old city was built by the Mamluks. The picture above is a pretty standard street with lots of shops.

One of the exciting Saida landmarks is the Sidon Soap Museum, which is exactly what it sounds like. It follows the history of soap making in the region and has some old artifacts. It’s in a 17th century soap factory. It’s cooler than it sounds, but I don’t have any great pictures of it.

Much more interesting to me was the Saida Sea Castle, because I like castles. It’s an old Crusader castle from 1228 AD on a small island.

Sadly, the Mamluks destroyed most of the castle once they conquered the area, in order to prevent the Crusaders from returning to the coasts.

This is my friend sitting on the wall of the castle, overlooking the sea and the city of Saida. She doesn’t seem to be appreciating it nearly as much as I did, given that she’s on her blackberry.

I climbed up onto one of the walls to take this picture. Climbing on ancient ruins is really terrific, and is something I definitely look forward to in any potential apocalypse.

Finally, as I am apt to do, I took a picture of some cranes. It is a port city after all, and what post would be complete without a picture of cranes or boats?

Coming soon: Sur, a random trip north, and an update about my life and the things I’ve done other than expeditions. After I return to the States (this Sunday!), I’ll post stuff from the Hizballah museum.

Wine and Baalbek

2010-11-17T18:10:00-05:00

After Beiteddine, we got back on the bus and drove through some really dense fog to the Beqaa Valley.

It was very foggy.

The Beqaa is one of the most fertile regions of Lebanon, known for its wine production. It’s also the center of the countries drug production, including marijuana and opium. It was especially bad during the civil war, but there’s still a substantial amount of cannabis produced.

Anyways, that wasn’t the purpose of our trip. Instead, we stopped at the Château Ksara headquarters. Ksara wines were first produced by Jesuit monks in 1857 until the Vatican encouraged its monasteries to get rid of their commercial activities in 1972. Ksara is the oldest and largest of the Lebanese winery and I’m pretty sure it’s the only Lebanese wine I’ve had here. I actually like it, which was surprising.

The winery is built on about 2 kilometers of Roman caves which apparently make excellent conditions for storing wine. After our tour of the caves, we had a wine tasting, which I somehow have no pictures of. We were given glasses of red, white, rose, and sweet wines. I’m not very fond of the sweet or rose wines, but I really liked the white wine and the red wine has since grown on me.

We drank some more wine on the bus as we drove to Baalbek. Our first stop was the Stone of the Pregnant Woman, which is advertised as the largest stone in the world, although Wikipedia claims a second monolith in the same quarry is larger. Regardless, it’s pretty big.

The Roman temples at Baalbek were apparently some of the largest Roman temples ever built and are still some of the best preserved. Naturally, when presented with one of the wonders of the ancient world, we decided to climb all over the ruins and see how high we could climb.

The answer, in case you’re curious, is pretty high. Probably dangerously high given that there is no sort of supervision or boundaries to the temple complex because this is Lebanon. It’s pretty spectacular. Oh, and right after we got off the bus I bought a Hezbollah t-shirt. My souvenier buying is complete.

I think most of these columns are from the Temple of Jupiter. We didn’t really progress to the other ruins, because yay climbing!

These walls might be part of the Temple of Jupiter or another building in the complex, I’m not really sure. Again, we were too busy climbing to care.

I have no idea what temple the first picture is from, but the second is definitely the Temple of Bacchus, which, despite it being incredibly well preserved and probably really cool, we didn’t enter because we ran out of time.

After it got dark, we drove off to another town and ate a massive and delicious dinner at my Fusha professor’s house. The meal itself was pretty standard foods, either Fattoush or Tabbouleh salad and Zaatar and Manoosh, but the deserts and sweets were delicious. Fresh vegetables and fruits are also always amazing, but the sweets were terrific.

That’s the sunset at Baalbek. Pretty, eh? Time for some life updates:

This week we only have class Monday and Friday. We get the rest of the week off for Eid al-Adha, which commemorates the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son to God. Next week we have Monday off for Independence Day. This whole having days off for holidays thing is strange coming from a Carleton.

Oh, and tonight I’m seeing Harry Potter at 22:00. Long before anyone will see it in the US. :)

Deir al-Qamar, Walid Jumblatt, and Beiteddine

2010-11-14T15:00:00-05:00

I lied about posting quickly. Three weeks ago we made our expedition to the southeast of Lebanon, in the Chouf region and the Beqaa valley.

The Chouf is the heartland of the Druze community, but there is also a fairly large Maronite population as well.

Our first stop was Deir al-Qamar, an old village where the governors of Lebanon resided between the 16th and 18th centuries. It was also at one point the literary capital of Lebanon. We walked around the village a bit and saw Fakhreddine Mosque, the oldest Mosque in Mount Lebanon, built in 1493. Pictured above.

There was also a pretty cool Maronite church. After we finished walking around the Deir al-Qamar, we got back on the bus and drove to another village, Moukhtara.

As far as I can tell, Moukhtara is notable only for being the residence of the Jumblatt family. Part of the Jumblatt palace is pictured above.

The Jumblatt family has been one of the most prominent Druze families in Lebanon for several centuries, dating back to at least Ottoman rule. They had also traditionally been rulers or governors of much of the Chouf valley.

The Jumblatts still remain extremely prominent in Lebanese politics today. Kamal Jumblatt founded the Progressive Socialist Party in 1949, a leftist party supported primarily by the Druze.

Kamal Jumblatt and the Progressive Socialist Party were some of the main actors in the Lebanese opposition during the civil war and lead many of the Muslim forces, eventually managing to control most of Lebanon until the Syrians intervened. Naturally, after the Syrians intervened, he was assassinated.

After Kamal’s death, his son Walid became the prominent Druze politician and the head of the Progressive Socialist Party. He’s known for rapidly shifting his political allegiance and that of his party in response to changing circumstances in Lebanon. He’s been both pro- and anti-Syrian at various times depending on whether or not Syrian influence has been increasing or decreasing in Lebanon.

We met with Walid Jumblatt when we visited the palace, and asked him a few questions. The questions we asked were mostly pretty lousy, and he was extremely busy, as the palace was swarming with actual constituents to ask him question, so our meeting didn’t last long.

We did take a group picture though.

The Jumblatts have also amassed a massive collection of books and a huge library. It’s pretty neat.

After we left Moukhtara, we visited Beit ed-Dine and Beiteddine palace. The local emir used to govern Mount Lebanon from Beiteddine until the Ottoman’s exiled him in 1840.

The Ottomans and later, the French, continued to use the palace for administrative purposes, and after independence parts of it became the summer residence for the Lebanese president.

I really liked the fountain.

This is a room in the bathhouse of the palace.

Next time: the Beqaa valley portion of the trip.

Mountains

2010-10-31T15:30:00-04:00

This time, I’ll finally finish the expedition from 3 October. Hopefully over the next week I’ll catch start catching up on everything else, but going from 400 pictures to 20 pictures is hard. The picture above is one last picture of the Cedars, taken from the bus as we drove up the mountain.

The last part of the expedition was a relatively brief (two, maybe three? hour) hike up a mountain. The picture above is the view from the start of our climb. It was spectacular. The air on the mountain, while cold, is probably the best air ever/in this country. Clean, cold, and dry.

A long and winding road.

The mountain was basically a bunch of rocks. No plants except for some prickly bushes, no life except for a few bugs. Maybe all mountains are like that, who knows. I’d never been this high on one before.

You can see lots of mountains in the distance.

Look at those slopes.

Rocks rocks rocks.

Shockingly enough, mountains are tall.

I believe this is a picture of the Kadisha Valley. The Kadisha Valley contains some of the most ancient Christian monasteries in the world. And naturally, because this is Lebanon, the valley is near being removed from the list of World Heritage sites because of construction, deforestation, noise, pollution, sewage, etc. Oh Lebanon.

I don’t really understand what’s going on here to make the sky so dark. Maybe I messed up the exposure, or maybe it actually was darker. Regardless, I noticed that I seem to enjoy taking pictures of rocks.

Here you can see some of my friends and our guide walking down the other side of the mountain to get back to the bus.

This is one of the only plants we saw on the mountain. Those nasty bushes in the background will sometimes support your weight if you step on them, and will sometimes give in and hurt like hell.

These may or may not be caves on some other mountains.

This is about as good as the path got. The path is for wimps anyways. Flailing about climbing over rocks and painful bushes is way more fun.

This was a good trip for pictures taken through the bus window. I got some that I really liked, this being one of them. The north of Lebanon, especially in the Kadisha Valley, is largely Christian. We saw many many churches and crosses in our drive.

Some sheep on the side of the mountain. After we finished our hike, we ate lunch at a restaurant at the bottom. The next two pictures are various views from behind the restaurant.

The restaurant was phenomenal. I think I ate more food there than I’ve ever eaten in a single sitting before. They started us off with hummus, some salads, vegetables, and french fries. We ate enough of this under the impression that it was our meal. Not so. After some time during which we wandered around the field behind the restaurant, they brought us tons of meat, and after the meat, fruit.

A substantial amount of our food was probably produced at the restaurant. Cheese came from the donkey pictured, the fish were caught at the lake in front, and more things probably came from nearby.

After lunch, we drove to the Gibran Khalil Gibran museum in Bhsarri. They didn’t allow pictures inside the museum, so instead I have pictures of the town. The museum was pretty neat. It turns out that Khalil Gibran was a painter and artist in addition to the poems and essays that he’s better known for, and the museum consisted largely of his paintings.

His hermitage was really cool though. I’d love to live in a house built into a massive cavern/cave, as long as it’s as nice as that.

Finally, one more picture of some rocks. Next time I’ll be posting pictures from our trip to Chouf, Walid Jumblatt’s palace, Beiteddine, and Baalbak. It might take more than one entry, but I’ll try and be quicker this time.

The Cedars

2010-10-17T22:55:00-04:00

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, but I’ve been somewhat busy. And lazy. Very lazy. Anyways, continuing the expedition from two weeks ago:

After Trablus, we drove up into the mountains to visit the Cedars.

The area is mostly Christian, which can be seen through all the churches and crosses we saw while riding the bus. The two photos above are some of my favorites. Both were taken through the window of a bus hurtling up (and down) mountains on very narrow roads with no railings. The mountainous regions here are beautiful.

The forest we visited is one of the last surviving cedar groves of Lebanon, and it’s depressingly small. The Lebanese Cedars have been used by various civilizations for several millennia and are almost gone today. Carlos Slim, the Lebanese-Mexican gazillionaire is working on replanting some Cedar Groves in the mountains.

I had some trouble with the white balance in the grove. I couldn’t manage to get the trees to look naturally colored in most shots without completely blowing out the sky.

A few of the cedars are hundreds of years old, maybe even near one thousand. This may be one of the oldest, or it may not. I don’t remember where the old one fit into my pictures.

There’s also a carved tree in the forest. This particular grove is known as the Cedars of God. Some Lebanese artist carved tons of forms of Jesus into the tree from many angles.

Here’s a pretty good shot of one of the carved Jesuses.

One last shot of the cedars and a view of the hills from the edge of the forest.

Below is the view from our hotel balcony. That forest in the distance is the Cedars. It’s pretty small. Next time I’ll post some photos from the mountain hike.

Trablus

2010-10-07T23:31:00-04:00

This past weekend, we had an overnight excursion, this time to Trablus, the Cedars, climbed a mountain, ate comical amounts of food at a really nice restaurant, and visited the Gibran Khalil Gibran museum in Bsharri.

The first thing I noticed about Tripoli, before we even got off the bus, was that Tripoli is gross as hell. I took that picture through a window in the castle, and you can sort of see the “river”. It’s covered in garbage. The streets are also pretty dirty and the buildings don’t look all that great either.

The first thing we actually visited was the castle, the Citadel of Raymond de Saint-Gilles. It’s a Crusader castle from the 12th or 13th century, which was burnt down probably a few times and rebuilt, and later became an Ottoman castle. The inscription on the gate is an engraving from the Ottoman governor who ordered the restoration.

There are also a couple of nice Phoenician tombs.

And a few more pictures of the castle before moving on. There’s still an active military presence at the castle for some reason or another. Lots of soldiers and tanks.

The souks (markets) of Tripoli were pretty neat. Lots of shoes, clothes, souvenirs, and jewelry. Walking to the markets down narrow streets like the one pictured above was eerily quiet. It’s also a much more conservative city than Beirut. The girls on the trip were told to wear pants. No shorts or skirts in Tripoli. It also seemed like far more women wore the headscarf and dressed much more conservatively than Beirut.

This tower is almost definitely significant in some way, and our guide probably told us about it, but it’s been a week and I forgot.

This is my last picture of Trablus from land. It’s a dirty city.

But not my last picture of Trablus. We went on a boat ride! Some people swam in the Mediterranean during the ride. I did not, shockingly enough.

These ruins were on a small island in the sea. One of the only islands in all of Lebanon.

These might be the others.

This, as you can see, is the Trablus waterfront. It’s much prettier than the city as a whole.

This is the Tripoli seaport, or part of it anyways. Tripoli is an old commercial city with a convenient Mediterranean location, so naturally, it has a seaport. I’ll leave you with a picture of a very large ship which I thought was really cool.

Downtown Beirut

2010-09-28T23:59:00-04:00

Friday afternoon I decided to walk to downtown Beirut for the first time. I figured I ought to do it then before the country erupted in Civil War. Walking too and from and around downtown took about three hours. I ended up not seeing some of the things I wanted to see because the road was closed with a police checkpoint, and I wasn’t up for going through police checkpoints when political tensions were high.

Anyways, things I did do:

I saw the really famous clock tower in Nejmeh Square. It was built by the French I believe, and most of the buildings in the area are distinctly French-looking. The area around it is pedestrians only, which is nice. You can actually walk around without hearing cars honking at each other because driving in this country works like this: if you can fit, or can start to fit before someone else gets there, it’s okay. Consequently, scooters are popular. With a scooter, you can even drive the wrong way down a one way street against traffic, past police officers, and nobody will stop you. You can even drive as fast as you want! For like 15 seconds, until you get stuck in traffic again because any street that isn’t critically important doesn’t have stop signs or traffic lights. This is all irrelevant though, so moving on:

That’s the Mohammed Al-Amin Mosque. It’s a huge, modern mosque styled after some historic Ottoman mosque in Istanbul. It was build using Rafik Hariri’s money, and consequently, he’s buried beside it. You can also see some random Roman ruins in front of it. And in the following picture, you can see me in front of it!

This is proof that I am still alive. Be happy.

There’s also a massive and historic church of some sort across from the mosque. I’ve been trying to find out the name or if it’s Catholic or Maronite or Greek Catholic or Greek Orthodox or something else entirely, and I’ve found nothing. You can also see some Roman columns:

After the mosque, I walked to my actual destination: Martyr’s Square.

Martyr’s Square is named as such because the Ottomans hung oodles of failed Lebanese revolutionaries there after World War I. There used to be more there, but now it’s mostly the statue, which is ridden with bullet holes and missing limbs as a result of the Lebanese Civil War. It’s also the site of massive political demonstrations, including the 2005 demonstrations that helped lead to Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon.

That’s the statue with the mosque in the background, around sunset. It’s sort of beautiful.

After that, I walked home along the Corniche. And the country did not erupt into violence or commit “collective suicide” over the weekend, so yay.

Byblos

2010-09-25T01:05:00-04:00

As I mentioned last time, our first excursion was to Byblos, which is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) continuously inhabited cities in the world — it was founded around 5000 BC. Right after getting off the bus we got to see some nice ancient (probably Roman?) columns, walked through the historic markets, and went to Byblos Castle — a 12th century Crusader castle. It was cool.

While wandering around the castle grounds we met two 11-13 year old kids who hung out with us. They asked us questions about things like the meaning of various offensive English words they’d heard in movies, we asked them a few Arabic words, and they showed us around the grounds. Was great. I don’t really have much else to say about it, so I’ll just bombard you with pictures.

The next two are a result of my discovery of depth of field.

A view of the city.

Some ruins and a traditional Lebanese house.

The actual castle!

Other than the excursion, my life has been pretty uneventful for the past week. A few days ago, while leaving campus and laughing with my friends, one of the security guards at LAU stopped us and told us it was the first time he’d seen me smile. I went downtown this afternoon, which I’ll write about/post pictures of at some point.

The political situation is also increasingly tenuous. Last weekend Hezbollah and the Lebanese Forces sent armed guards to the airport to prevent security forces from arresting a general. As the STL for Lebanon comes closer to actually doing something, all of the political factions have been making various claims and threats about the process and any potential verdict. Hamra street has been decked out with flags by the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and the Lebanese Forces, and they even had a rally today while I was walking downtown. It was swarming with police and soldiers.

Other than that, things are fine. No need to worry either, the Syrians and Saudis really don’t want a Sunni-Shi’a civil war. I’ll leave you with a picture of the beach, as seen from the ruins around the Byblos Castle.

Jeita Grotto and Harissa

2010-09-22T23:45:00-04:00

This past Saturday, we had our first excursion, which involved being on campus at 7:30 in the morning and riding a bus around to awesome places.

Our first stop was the Jeita Grotto: two interconnected caves above an underground river housing things like the world’s largest stalactite. It’s also a finalist in the New 7 Wonders of the World competition. Driving there was kind of scary, as it was the first time I’ve ever ridden a bus (or any vehicle?) up a winding mountain with no guard rails. I took the picture above through the window of a moving bus, so I didn’t quite get the lighting right. Oh well.

You don’t spend much time in the lower cave — you just ride a small motor boat through it for a few minutes. The upper cave is far more accessible — there is a walkway/path that you can wander on for a good while. The Jeita Grotto is probably one of the most beautiful and coolest things I’ve ever seen. At some points in the upper cave, when you look down, it seems like you look down forever. However, they don’t let you take pictures. Which sucks, a lot. I did take a picture of The Guardian of Time though. It’s a statue outside the caves.

After the Jeita Grotto, we went up another mountain to Harissa and Our Lady of Lebanon. Our Lady of Lebanon is a 15-ton bronze statue of the Virgin Mary.

Of course, neither the statue nor the beautiful Greek Catholic Basilica of St. Paul was the highlight of Harissa. The highlight is the view overlooking the Bay of Jounieh, which is breathtaking.

We rode the Téléphérique, a ten minute long cable car ride, down to the bus. I’m not a huge fan of heights or plummeting towards my death in a flimsy looking cable car, so that was fun.

We also went to Byblos, but I have 162 more pictures to sort through before I post about that. Instead, I’ll leave you with one more picture of Harissa/Jounieh.

First Actual Week of Classes and Other Experiences

2010-09-17T23:58:00-04:00

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything — I even have emails from my parents to prove it. I’ve been busy and lazy and haven’t done much, so I never got around to writing.

They launched more fireworks for the end of the Hamra Street Festival last Sunday, so I took more pictures from the roof. I didn’t bother with my camera’s fireworks mode at all this time. Instead, I fiddled with the controls until I was getting the sort of shots I wanted.

Other things I’ve done include running along the Corniche, which was awesome, and going to a bar in Gemmayze on a Tuesday night with a Lebanese friend of ours. That was fun (and pretty expensive), but our Lebanese friend said that I had the best accent of the lot of us, so yay. He was amused by the fact that until coming to Lebanon I’ve mostly studied Arabic with an Israeli professor.

I also ate some good hummus. And had a week of classes! I still don’t really like my MSA class. It’s three hours long and pretty boring. We stick almost entirely to exercises and videos from the textbook and I studied this chapter already at Carleton. The professor talks very fast and uses lots of words I don’t know, yet we progress very slowly. I talked to some other students and confirmed that she usually says the same thing a few different ways. I’ll probably appreciate this when we move to new material, but for now, bleh.

This brightly colored building on the Corniche represents how I feel about my Lebanese Dialect class. It’s pretty ridiculous and entertaining, thanks largely to my fellow students. I’m definitely learning, ilHamdilla, and it’s kind of fun, although the Lebanese dialect is pretty weird. It replaces the qaf sound with a hamza, replaces fii with bi, eliminates as many short vowels as possible, and I’m sort of lost on negation.

My Arabic Writing Skills professor is still completely insane and adorable. He laughs at everything and rolls his r’s far longer than necessary in Arabic and English. It’s a great class. My political science professor is apparently the son of a prominent Lebanese politician and more importantly, is hella smart. I’ve only had that class once, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be interesting and awesome and cover both history and poli-sci.

I still don’t have any pictures of campus, but I’ll take some someday. Maybe soon, now that there are actually students on campus. Enjoy this picture of an inaccessible beach with parts of Beirut I’ve never been to off in the background instead.

Tomorrow morning we have our first excursion. I think we’re going to Byblos and some other places, but I’m not entirely sure. I’ll take pictures and hopefully write something interesting. That’d be nice, right?

Also, nobody ever comments, which makes me sad. I spent too much time scouring other websites’ source code to get it to display the comment count correctly for it to always be zero.

Jazz Club

2010-09-12T11:55:00-04:00

This weekend, in addition to Eid ul-Fitr, was Maraya 2010 — the Hamra Street Festival. It was neat. Hamra Street, normally packed with cars and incredibly obnoxious taxis, was instead full of tent shops and food and people and a few stages. Your typical street festival.

While wandering around the street festival, we saw a sign for a Jazz Club during its happy hour. Naturally, we went to the bar and paid a lot of money for a few drinks. We left for a while and wandered along Hamra some more until we decided to come back to hear the band play.

Good decision. The band was amazing. They didn’t really play jazz; instead, they played some apparently well-known Arabic music. Our Lebanese and Palestinian friends told us that the songs were mostly from the 70’s, during the Lebanese Civil War. The songs were largely about things like love, unity, and Lebanon. The unity part was kind of a big deal during the war.

The audience was really into the band and music, including us, although we didn’t understand any of the lyrics, because, uh, Arabic! It was a pretty expensive night, but definitely worth it because the band was absolutely phenomenal and it was oodles of fun. Easily the most fun I’ve had in Beirut so far.

Eid ul-Fitr

2010-09-11T23:00:00-04:00

Last night was Eid ul-Fitr.

We were sitting around the apartment when we heard a sound that was either: a) a car bomb or b) fireworks. I looked out the window and saw that it was fireworks, exploding right above our building. We ran up to the roof and took loads of pictures.

Turns out they were firing them off a block or so away from us and they were exploding right above us. Some embers even landed on the roof right next to us.

Also, I took some pictures from the roof the night before which I think are pretty cool.

Long Weekend

2010-09-08T18:30:00-04:00

I finished my first week of classes this afternoon, which is wonderful. One day of orientation and two days of classes. No classes at the university tomorrow or Friday because it’s Eid ul-Fitr and the end of Ramadan.

My Advanced MSA class is really intimidating. It’s taught in Arabic and most of the other students are better at speaking and listening to Arabic than I am, so it’s hard. I think it’ll get better though, once I’m used to the in Arabic aspect of it and once I pick up some more of the words used by the professor. Lebanese dialect is much less intimidating and is taught mostly in English at this point because we simply don’t know any Lebanese dialect yet. Mostly just greetings. Advanced Arabic writing skills is also taught mostly in Arabic, but is far less intimidating. The professor speaks more slowly, uses more English, and is totally insane in an endearing sort of way. Finally, the political science class, Middle East Challenges of the 21st Century, seems like it’ll be great. We have it once a week for 2.5 hours and today we discussed what topics we want to cover over the semester. It’s a really broad, but interesting list.

I’ve also been in Lebanon for a week now, which is also wonderful. I also discovered that my roof is easily accessible, so all pictures but the first are from the roof.

Corniche Beirut

2010-09-06T22:30:00-04:00

I’ve hinted at this before, but Beirut is pretty great. In the past few days, I’ve finally unpacked, gotten roommates, met other students, wandered Beirut, and had my placement test for Arabic.

The placement test was crazy hard — I probably should have reviewed more. It was also really long and took us almost two hours. Despite this, I placed into Advanced Arabic, so yay. This means I have class at nine on Tuesdays and Thursdays and at eleven on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, which is better than my schedule has ever been at Carleton, so yay again.

At the orientation meeting we also talked about exciting things like excursions, which we don’t have an actual schedule for yet. We probably will not be going to Syria, as Syria has made it extremely difficult for Americans to enter over the past year, but we might go to Jordan instead. This might be expensive: we’d have to fly, as we can’t drive through Syria.

There are currently eight SINARC students on my floor (out of between 12-20 students total I think), but we’re expecting three more to arrive late. I live with three of them in my flat, three girls (expecting a fourth) in the next flat, and one guy (expecting two more) in the third flat. Our flats are really nice.

That’s the other bedroom in my flat. Mine is pretty much the same, minus the kitchen table and a slightly smaller couch. Because of the closet, I couldn’t get a good picture of the whole room. We all eat dinner as a group in there and made some awesome chicken and onion and rice meal with a salsa-like salad. Was great.

So, the Corniche Beirut. I’ve gone there twice now: the first time I got horribly lost with my roommate and today a group of us went and wandered in the 95°+ sun. The Corniche is a looooooong boardwalk along the Mediterranean Sea and it’s super cool.

Raouche’s Pigeons Rock is also along the Corniche. It’s a famous rock formation. A really cool rock formation, but still a rock formation. Not much else to say, but I’ve got a picture:

I’ve also got a picture of a restaurant/club/beach resort across from Pigeons Rock:

That’s pretty much it. Other than getting yelled at by a soldier for taking a picture of the house of Rafic Hariri (former Prime Minister, assassinated in 2005). Apparently you’re not supposed to do that. Oops.

In the future, I’ll try to write shorter and more frequent posts. We’ll see how that goes.

Fi Beirut

2010-09-03T18:30:00-04:00

I’ve been in Beirut for about 23 hours now, most of which I’ve spent sleeping. While I was awake, I learned a few things:

Everyone in the airport and on the airplane assumed I spoke French, which was confusing as hell.
There are soldiers at the airport and that’s sort of intimidating when you’re tired and confused.
People drive insanely and honk a lot. Seriously, I hear honking constantly through my window. It’s worse than when I was in New York.
1500 Lebanese Lira = 1 USD

Lebanese American University is housing us in an apartment building a few blocks from campus and two buildings away from an actual residence hall. My building and air-conditioned apartment are pretty nice. Much nicer than anywhere I’ve lived at Carleton. I think I’m living with three other people, only two of which are here yet, and neither of whom I’ve spoken too because they’ve been asleep since I woke up this afternoon.

My building is in the Hamra district which is pretty cool. It’s extremely hot here (about 90° F), but since it isn’t humid, it feels nice.

More importantly, pictures:

My building.

LAU Dorm

250 Lebanese lira

The view from my window.

Some more from down the street:

To Lebanon!

2010-09-01T00:00:00-04:00

I may have alluded to this a few times and you probably even know this, but I’m going to Lebanon today. Awesome, right?

I’m going to be in Beirut at Lebanese American University studying lots of Arabic in the SINARC intensive Arabic program. I won’t have a host family or anything like that. Instead, I’ll be living in the dorms alongside the other students from the program and probably actual LAU students too.

I’ve never actually traveled internationally before and I’ve almost definitely packed more than I need, but it’ll be fun and terrifying and the coolest thing ever. Barring huge delays and plane explosions, I should arrive in Beirut around 7:00pm Beirut time on Thursday. And that’s where I’ll be for the next fifteen weeks until December 12th.

Once I’m there and doing exciting things, I’ll write about them! And post pictures!

If you’re interested, subscribe by email, or RSS, or just come here all the time. You can also view all posts about Lebanon here.

Hello World

2010-08-31T23:11:00-04:00

I’ve spent an embarassing amount of time the past two days making yet another blog. The idea is that I’ll actually use this one, especially while I’m in Lebanon.

This is probably the first time I’ve ever done the design myself. As a result, it’s heavily inspired by Alex Payne and Tate Johnson, people with way cooler websites than mine. I’m using a static-site generator called Jekyll so that I don’t have to pay my host’s dynamic site charge or MySQL charges. Posts are all written in Markdown and backed up on Dropbox. Even better, I can deploy it automatically with Rake.

I’ve tested this in Firefox 3.6, Firefox 4, various versions of Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer 8. It worked in all of those, so if it doesn’t work for you, let me know.

This probably didn’t interest you at all, but that’s okay. Soon I’ll be writing from Lebanon and I’ll have interesting things to say.

Also, I spent over three hours getting that search box to center correctly when there are next and previous buttons. It was quite pathetic.