Eid Al Ahda

(Sorry for taking so long to get these pictures up...Last week was super busy, hopefully I will be able to write about this last week tomorrow so that I will be on track again.)

So there was no school week before last since the government declared a four day holiday for Eid Al Ahda (An Islamic holiday which commemorates the sacrifice of Abrahams son). Since there was no school we had time to get some work done for the school and also have a bit of fun :). Below are some pictures from some of the fun activities we did.

This first group of pictures was the activities of one day...they mostly took place at an old Phoenician town near Byblos (I think) until we had our bonfire which was at the beach closer to home.

A large church facing the port

Daniel the young son of Alexis's (my boss) friends who went with us

A fisherman and his nets

A little old light house (or something) on an "island" of sorts 

Alexis at the top :) I was going too, but the ladder (and the walls)
going up looked a bit suspicious so I volunteered Alexis to go instead :)

The bridge going over to the lighthouse has also seen it's better days

We took a short boat trip after discovering the how much it
would cost (around LL6,000 each for about 45 min
and we got the whole boat to ourselves :))

A run down building in the surrounding neighborhood,
we found a pomegranate tree on the roof with little pomegranates! :)

Walking down the streets I found someone had recycled ancient
building materials :) (notice the pillar on the lower right)

And finally at the end of this day we had a bonfire on the beach...was so nice
to hear the crackling of the wood mingled with the rhythm of the waves.
It was a perfect place to just sit quietly and listen.

This next group of pictures came from last Sabbath when we went looking for nature and happened upon this church on top of a hill that provided a wonderful view of the sunset.

The next day (sunday I believe) Galyna (the lady on the left in the picture below) picked me up and together with some other friends from church (including Raluca who is teaching math at the center and is the lady on the right in the picture)...we went up into the mountains and walked around a beautiful area with falling leaves and lots of space to move :). we then went to some old Phoenician ruins (I think) which was also a lot of fun. Our last activity of the day was to go to Raluca's husbands restaurant and get treated with some of the best food I have had in a very long time (as in since I last had my mom's cooking :))

Picture time!

The ruins not far from the first place we went.  

Food! This was only a portion of the food set out...The bowl on the left has hummus while the bowl on the right has babaganoush (not sure how to spell it), then there were the fresh veggies, the olives and other pickled/preserved things and those not in the picture including tabouli (REALLY, REALLY, REALLY good tabouli), another type of traditional salad, potatoes, flat bread,...and I don't remember what else there was, in short the food was really good :).