Without any further ado, here is a picture of my part of Semqaniye, my village. For those of you keeping track at home, it's just beyond Beit Eddine (home to a lovely 18th century Druze palace) and Baaqlin (the largest village in the area). Semqaniye is nestled in a valley...looking at this picture, if you go further left, you go up up up a hill that takes you to the commercial center of the area, then to Walid Jumblatt's house in Mokhtara, then to the Cedar Reserves, and then across the mountain to the Bekaa Valley and then to Syria. If you continue going right, you descend to the Mediterranean Sea and Beirut.
In this picture, you can see my school (the green striped building in the center of the picture) and my apartment (the salmon striped building to the left of the school):
You can also see a bit of the olive orchard in front of my house to the left, and the secondary school just up the hill opposite. Notice too the first blush of color the trees on the hill...this picture was taken back in December. Now, the leaves are coming back, there are daisies blanketing the fields, and the frogs in the stream are singing full force outside my window every night.
OK--other photos will have to wait, unfortunately. Getting pictures uploaded at 3.8 kbps isn't the speediest process in the world, especially when the electricity cuts out halfway through, wiping out 2 hours of work! I've been trying to do it for the better part of a week, but to no avail--we'll see how this week's fancy Beirut internet cafés do.
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It's nice to see the view from the ground, instead of from above. Nice stripes which we could not see from our GoogleEarth point of view.
ReplyDeleteI like knowing that Walid Jumblatt's house is just down the road, because I like to say his name.
I like thinking about the frogs.
Thanks from your parents . . . who are all about wanting to know what your environment looks like. (Maybe I'll get Ben to send pictures as well form State College.)