Leaving Lebanon

After a trip back over the mountains to Zahle then to the border with Syria and another trip through rubble and then a scary flight on one of Syrian Air's Tupolov's to Dubai I met up with friends and went to the stylish club at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel with some Lebanese friends.

Seeing destruction first hand

Somehow I convinced Jad to go with me to the site of yesterday's bombing. I have never seen such destruction! The streets were blown wide open with sewer piping strewn all along the road. When we arrived at the bombing site there was mass panic. Jad negotiated with the "security" guard to let me go into the rubble and film. I cannot and do not want to verbalize (at least not on this blog) what I saw, but it was bad….very bad. As we left I was accosted my some local guys and after much negotiation between Jad and them they only took my video tape.

Bombs getting closer!

Jad and I went to visit his college (AUB) just to see if there were any announcements about classes restarting. We then went to St. George's beach to lay in the sun and pretend like things were normal. Later in the day we went to go get gas and I went to eat while Jad waited in line when all of a sudden a HUGE bomb blast occurred that near broke the windows. Later that day Jad and I were driving to downtown when two more HUGE blasts occurred that reverberated through the car. We made a u-turn and saw that the Israeli's bombed an apartment complex just 1 mile from out hotel. Later that night we met up with a CBS correspondent and then went out to a local club to pretend like things were normal again.

My Poor City!

Today Jad and I toured around Beirut to see how the city was doing. We saw the oil slick on the beaches, the bombed lighthouse, and smoke billowing over the southern suburbs. We then had to go get gas and that took about 1 ½ hours!

Poor Beirut!

I finally convinced Jad to take me to Beirut. He was very hesitant, but I really wanted to get to Beirut to see my other friends. There were bombed out cars and busses all along the route. We made it to Beirut in about one hour to find the city a near ghost town. We basically went to the hotel and rested a bit before going to see my friends.