Briefly, from Lebanon

Excerpted from an e-mail from Terry:

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Lebanese are...energetic....hosts.  We drove up to Byblos - oldest continually inhabited city in the world, oldest port still standing.  Walked aroound old city, had a coffee at a cafe, walked some more, ate a huge meal at a nice restaurant overlooking the port, then drove to Harissa to climb a big Jesus statue for awesome view...at 11:00 p.m....and it was full of people....Lebanese don't live in our universe...:) [Editor's note: I can count on one hand the number of times I have been out after dark in the last 2 years]

Too tired to write a long and rambling analysis of Beirut, but just a quickie - one other meaning for the word "Holy Land".  It's not just the place where Jesus walked, etc.  It's also the place where there are literally thousands of religions all rubbing up against each other.  So a literal "Holy Land".  It was interesting to hear glimpses of lots of different flavors of Christianity that I hadn't heard of before.  Same for Islam.  

Also, I don't know why, but Lebanon seems to be just packed with ethnic groups from elsewhere - Syrians, Palestinians, Armenians, Sri Lankans (!?), etc. And people will often speak French...or Arabic...or Armenian...or Italian...or English... VERY different place from Albania.  

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Super excited to be picking Terry up from the airport tonight!!!