Safe in Byblos
Well as you already know I've arrived safely in
Byblos and we are staying at the campus here. It's actually a much nicer campus than the one in Beirut. Byblos is a gorgeous city. They say it's one of the oldest cities in the world. Today we visited an 11th century, french castle. The sad thing is that the castle was built out of Roman, Greek and Persian ruins. So they destroyed these ancient ruins to build this castle. We did see the stone outline of a Phoenician temple from around 2800 BCE. Obviously things are much more relaxed here. We can still here the jets at night, but there is no explosions or gunfire anywhere near us.The state department is emailing us and saying that they are working on an evacuation. I was at first considering staying, but everyday the fighting is getting worse, and I get the feeling that this will become a regional conflict. So, I think I will go with the evacuation. The bad thing is that one of my bags is still in Beirut, and all the gifts I bought for people are in Beirut. I might be going home without a lot of my clothes and other possessions. They also said in the email that there is a cost to be evacuated, and they will tell us how much in the next email. This is becming very complex, and I will be very sad to leave Beirut.
I included a lot of pictures this time there's one of a bunch of the sinarc people with hussain. He's and LAU student from Lebanon. He was pretty sad to see us leave and is kind of trapped where he is right now. A few pictures from Byblos, including a beautiful one from the balcony of my room. One of me and Pat with our concerned faces as we drove by a military base on the way to Byblos. One of the ships stuck because of naval blockade. One of Karim sticking his head out of the bus window. A few (I don't know how well it will come out) of smoke rising from the airport in Beirut. One of a building in lebanon still damaged from the civil war. One of the roads out of Beirut which is packed with overcrowded cars and trucks. Well, I have to run because other people are waiting to use the computer. Thank you to everyone for your thoughts, prayers and comments (the comments mean a lot to me, so if your not leaving them please start leaving them.)
Love
Josh
posted by Josh | 8:00 AM
4 Comments:
glad to hear that you are safe again and even able to do some sightseeing (doesn't seem quite right to call it that). jorge and i agree that it seems a good idea to evacuate when that becomes an option. whatever you need to get out there, just say the word. i'm happy to help but so sorry that you have to cut your trip and studies short, and even sorrier that the locals you have met and all the people of lebanon and israel are suffering through this conflict. i have and will continue to blog about it myself.
maybe next summer you and i should take jorge to london. things seemed pretty safe there. ;)
glad to know you're in a relatively safer place. my rationalization that i tell most people is that israel has about 1 and 1/2 friends left in the world, and that if they accidentally bombed some americans, they'd totally get deleted from Bush's Myspace page.
i'm glad the us state dept is at least getting their ass in gear. i read that france already sent a ferry from cyprus to evacuate its citizens from lebanon. always good to hear from you. we check your blog first thing every morning. hope to see you very soon.
- jv
a relief-and-a-half to hear that you are safely out of immediate danger. as Amy said - we can all set up a paypal Josh evacuation fun if you need it...or just follow Jorge's news and play French - you can make up for this lost opportunity by spending the rest of the summer in gay Pareee.
truthfully, I've been rather stressed by all of this. aside from Megan and I simply worrying for your personal safety, it's been interesting to experience how much more connected one feels to a region's frustrations and sadness by having even just one common connector-point like yourself to give us an insider view.
also, anyone would feel less bad for you as soon as you start throwing around those pictures of yourself gallivanting upon balconies overlooking paradise.
come to think of it...do you remember the turmoil that I had to go through, waiting in that long line to get Howard Zinn to sign your copy of A People's History? The least that you can do is go back into Beirut and get us all presents.
And should that plan fail, then in addition to the evacuation fund, Amy and I will start up the "Clothe Josh" fund.
peace, brother -
<3, M&P
So, now that you're safe, the real question remains:
Have you seen A Scanner Darkly yet?
Cause it's freakin' awesome!
Evacuate the hell out of there so you can come watch it with the LaSalle Family. We miss you and your songs.
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