Valentines week

This week was a shortened week, with school off Friday for Commemoration day.  This is a day in remembrance of the 2005 assassination of the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. During the week, my students stayed after on Thursday for a Skype chat with some Argo students.  It was a really great chance to see some former students and for our classes to share and ask questions to each other. I was really impressed with the number of students that stayed late, due to the time difference on the day before a day off. They were a great group of students who had a lot to share.

Friday morning we woke up to some bad news. Our pipes at our townhouse in Chicago are frozen. There has been others that have been frozen since the beginning if January and ours is just the latest in the bunch. We have a great property manager who is on the case but it's just a reminder if how terrible the weather is in Chicago compared to here. 

Friday we went up north for a trip with 8 other people. We took three cars and headed off on our weekend extravaganza  full of hiking and sight seeing. Our first stop was Baatara gorge which is a 3 waterfall gorge just recently discovered in the last few decades. It was a beautiful spot. The drive was amazing as well through tiny villages in the mountains. Next up, we stopped at the cedar reserve in Tannourine. The cedar is the national tree and there are not many left so when you get a chance to hike in them you take it. We had a nice picnic there, and walked through the reserve. During our hike the fog began rolling in. We were able to get some great views and pictures. 

After that, we went on to Becharre. We stayed in a hotel and had a fun dinner in town. The next morning we went up to a ski village, but there has hardly been any snow, so it was a ghost town. It did start snowing when we were up there, which was the first snow I've seen since last winter. It was a nice, fluffy, warm snow as well, so I'm not sure it counts. We headed to the Qadisha valley for a hike next. This was so incredibly beautiful I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. We had a nice hike until it started to hail so we headed out. Overall it was a great weekend.

Back to school

We had an incredible Winter break and we made it back, with a slight hatred for American Airlines, but a great break regardless. We arrived in Chicago after traveling through Heathrow, however Ryan's bag decided to take some time to stay in lovely England. That was quite fun, since he wore sandals on the plane, and had no other shoes to change into when we landed in cold Chicago. Oh well. We went straight to his family's Christmas party and didn't stop seeing family and friends till we left for Florida. We traveled through Miami to Milan to Beirut on the way back, and it was a great trip.

This past week of school we were right back in it. Ryan started basketball. He is coaching JV boys. This will keep him even more busy. He has a great group of guys out for the team and he is looking forward to being a coach again. I was excited to see all my students. They are an amazing bunch, and even completed so big projects they had over the break. I was so impressed with how hard they worked.

Wednesday we went to see Dirty Wars, a documentary film by Jeremy Scahill. It was quite the experience being in an auditorium in the Middle East watching a film about drone usage and more. Jeremy Scahill was there and spoke before and after the film. I recommend watching it, and reading his books.

The theatre at AUB for the movie

Jeremy Scahill talking

 The last week has been beautiful outside. The weather here when we came back was mid 60s. We have been enjoying running in tshirts, thinking of all our friends in Chicago and there negative 50 wind chill weather. We have the best views when we walk to and from school. Here are some random sunrise/sunset photos of those views.

 Saturday Ryan and I went up to the mountains to run with the cross country team and make sure the course was ready for their first meet. It is a hilly course, but it was really nice to be able to run in a quiet forest, instead of on the busy Corniche. The course is at our school's outdoor ed facility, and Ryan took a few moments to work on his New Year's resolution: to rock climb. That went well.....

On the roof doing an ab workout with the Cross Country team. Can't beat that view. 

Outdoor ed facility 

Part of the trail

Ryan attempting to climb, he cut his thumb. 

In other news, a new restaurant opened up in Hamra called Dottore, which means doctor in Italian. Ali, the owner, has a restaurant in Gemmayzeh that we had been too, so we were really excited about this place opening up. So excited we went there three times in the week....yikes. The food is amazing, and I had another chance to see how great the people are here as they gave us tiramisu, for free of course, and I couldn't finish it, but wanted to take it home. They don't do a lot of doggy bags here, not really their thing, so they don't have boxes. Instead, they just took some tin foil and wrapped up the actual plate, and just told me to take the whole thing home. Wouldn't really happen at a place in Chicago.

We have today off of school, so we are keeping the four day week streak alive. However, next week, it looks like we are going the whole week. Gasp. It is crazy that half the year has already passed.