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.