My Visit With Mirvate Days 3 and 4

I woke up this morning and realized that my prediction had been completely right. Let's say I was not feeling my best that morning, but I knew we had a big day so I had to wake up and get ready. At least I wasn't the only one in my family feeling under the weather. My parents were taking quite a while to get ready. Luckily, as we walked out of our room, we saw Mirvate preparing breakfast, which consisted of many similar things to an American breakfast, toast, jelly, eggs, and carob spread on pita bread. It was all quite delicious. Now normally Mirvate would be headed off to work, but for our trip only she has asked her son to fill in for her.

Today we decided to go to the ruins of the Baalbeck temples. It was really a sight to see. There were remnants of amazing structures, littered all around the grounds. I took lots of pictures, one of which I will show you. And to think that I barely knew this country existed just a month ago! As if reading my thoughts, Mirvate said "There are many more sights to see in Lebanon, it truly is a hidden gem.

After a while of exploring these amazing ruins, at was already starting to be late afternoon, so we decided to go get some lunch. Our lunch was very similar to tapas, where we got many tasters of lots of different dishes. Some of my favorite dishes were the baba janoush (eggplant dish), chich taouk (a chicken dish), and the mediterranean famous baklava. Of course, the was a dud every one in a while, but as a whole the lunch was very good. We had a two hour drive back to Mirvate's house, so we had to say goodbye to the quaint little town the ruins were located in. The drive back to Mirvate's house was very quiet; I think we were all just exhausted because of the little amount of sleep my family got last night. When we got home, we had a short dinner and headed off to bed so we could bank some extra hours of sleep.

When we woke up the next morning, we were all feeling much more rested, so we decided to do a little more with our day today. We had a very short breakfast, packed up our stuff and walked out to the car. We decided to go up to the Cedars of God forest, which is one of the most notable forests in Africa. The Cedar of the Gods forest is a one of a kind forest in the world, containing cedar trees that can be up to 3,000 years old! I was very excited to get to witness these trees in their natural environment.

When we got to the forest, I was in awe. The trees looked like giants, their protruding branches looking like outstretched hands. I immediately started taking pictures like a madman, until Mirvate started laughing and told me that we should start our hike. Let me tell you right now, our hike was not easy, we had to conquer steep hills, trudge through weathers up to 95 degrees fahrenheit (35 celsius). After an amazing hike, we started to approach the parking lot. I was happy to be able to sit down, but I was sad to leave the forest, because I would never experience anything like this again. Even the drive home was beautiful, with the rolling hills of of that arid country. There were scarcely trees, and lots of dry grass. It looked like wildfire central for most of the drive home!

We were very lively that night, talking about all that we had experienced that day. Even Mirvate had never been to that particular forest, and I am led to believe that she had as much of a good time as us. We said our good nights and then headed off to bed, we needed to bank some more sleep; another big day was around the corner.