Where Is the Week Going?

First of all, if I'm ever going to post more pics from my trip, I'd better do it right now. I had this whole fantasy where I'd write thoughtful posts describing my experiences on the trip accompanied with the relevant photos, but this is so obviously not going to happen, that I'd better just post pictures right now, before I never do it at all. So, here we go:

This is the statue of Our Lady of Lebanon. Underneath it there's a tiny church, and the views are beautiful, but the day that we went up there it was very cloudy in the mountains, and so I couldn't really get a decent picture of the views. Anyway, the most exciting thing about going here for me was that I was able to procure a tiny little statue of OLoL to go with my little Our Lady of Guadalupe statue that currently resides in my kitchen. Yes, apparently I'm developing a little shrine in my kitchen to the Virgin. Somehow, this makes sense to me, and seems absolutely like the thing that I should do. Hmmm.


These are the ruins at Byblos, with the thriving city of Byblos in the background. I love ruins.

Here is one of the many lunches that we enjoyed (and there actually was more food than this that they brought out after the picture).


And now here is Baalbeck.


And some graffiti on one of the walls of the Temple of Bacchus .... from like more than a hundred years ago.

And some more of Baalbeck. I really think that was my favorite thing of the whole trip, to be honest, even though everybody wanted me to be more jazzed about Jeita I think.


And this is the wild and wacky Moussa Castle. Now, the deal with this place is the guy who built it is still alive. Apparently, when he was in school, he had a dream to make some museum of Lebanon. His teacher told him he was a wacko, his girlfriend broke up with him because she thought he was crazy, etc. But Moussa soldiered on, and made this weird place, which features strange mannequins (including of himself and his family in 1970s clothes), collections of guns and jewelry, and a weird guy in the basement who serves you turkish coffee. He originally made the door tiny so that his ex-girlfriend would have to bow to him as she entered the place (this related to me by the guide who seemed to think it was awesome). My final verdict? His teacher was right and he should not have followed his dreams. Sometimes, our dreams are insane.


Also Moussa Castle. See what I mean? Cannon with a pot with some flowers above it. Huh?


And here is the outside of the shrine to St. Charbel (the saint of Lebanon, canonized in 1977, I think), which I really could have stayed in longer, for I do love relics and bloody vestments and things, but G. and his cousin weren't into it so much, and so I did a pretty quick tour of all of the gory stuff and read the tale of St. Charbel, who'd died on Christmas and then the body started bleeding and there were all these miracles and stuff. It was totally awesome.

So those are enough pics to be going on with. I do promise I'll do a full-on post about the trip soon, but for now, I've got to get on with my day and accomplish some things. See, I've got classes to plan, cat food to buy, a house to tidy, food to cook, the gym to go to (maybe?) etc. FB may or may not be returning tomorrow. We shall see.