New Pictures and Updates!

I have been very busy these last couple of weeks with midterm exams and different activities. I posted some pictures of the spiritual life retreat with my club from Haigazian. We went up to the mountains to an area called Dour el Chour which you can see is really beautiful. That was two weeks ago. This past Friday I had an actvity with my extreme club. We took a bus to Sur (Tyre) and then rode our bikes back to Hamra. We rode from 11:30pm until 6:30am along the rodes and highways of Beirut along the sea. The moon was big and bright and reflecting off the sea. It sounds romantic but it was really cold and there are no streetlights so we couldn't see the road and thus, couldn't see the potholes. Let's just say there were a few unfortunate accidents but no one was badly hurt. I have been running regularly since I got here so physically the bike ride wasn't very hard on my muscles but my butt is still recovering. I will post some pictures of this trip when I get them from my friend. After riding all night I arrived back home at 6:40am, changed my clothes and then ran back to school for another trip that I was taking with a different group to the North of Lebanon at 7:30am. Oh, to be young and adventurous! We went to see some different monasteries and villages in the North and had lunch and went for a ride in a paddleboat which wasn't really fun after biking for 8 hours. This was also a really beautiful trip. My favorite site was the Kadisha valley which is in most of the pictures below with all the pretty colors in the valleys and mountains. It was the first time I have really seen fall colors since I've been here. Also, Kadish is a Syriac word meaning "holy" and I was really excited because that is the language of my mom's church so I knew the word from the church music I grew up listening to and of course I burst into song.