Beautiful—a little less hazy and we could have seen the Mediterranean from the ski slopes! We went on a trip organized by a local environmental NGO. There was a whole busload of us,

mostly Lebanese but 6 of us Americans and 5 or 6 French. We went to Faqra, one of the smaller ski areas, with two lifts and just a few runs (that we could see, anyway), less than an hour and a half from Beirut. We stopped at about 45 minutes to pick up snowshoes—one size fits all [REI fans cringe here], and 15 minutes later a snack (a saj, dough rolled thin and cooked to order on a large, domed griddle; we ordered our sprinkled with thyme and sumac mixture). Fortified, it was on to the slopes. The weather was comfortable, the trail moderate, and the views gorgeous. I was walking with a preschool teacher from Texas (Austin, Jill!) who had never seen so much snow—that was fun. [--See her You Tube video of the trip at
http://www.youtube.com/v/o7wG86LmP_Y&rel=1">]
After 5 kilometers or so we came to a fairly steep hill to descend, and proceeded by sitting down and lifting our big, snowshoe-clad feet to slide down. Ever graceful, I wobbled about along my slide and headed straight toward a rock outcropping. I reached out with my hand to help steer my unwieldy self, and emerged at the bottom of the hill with a finger that wouldn’t bend in the correct place. It didn’t hurt, just looked odd. I grabbed a handful of snow to keep it from swelling.
Later, back in Beirut we headed to the American University Hospital, just a few blocks from our apartment, to have it looked at. They wanted to X-ray but the wedding ring needs to come off, they say. Various quite painful attempts to remove it. I decide their ring cutter is one of those tools that you get here that are made in China out of some soft metal that is just not worth it: our hammer is totally pitted from efforts to pound a nail into the concrete wall; our frying pan rusts; various other metal items have bent or snapped.. Finally they say they can X-ray it with the ring on. The X-ray has a stair step look; the finger is dislocated. Later we will learn a small piece of bone chipped off as well—probably while trying to remove the dang ring, I think. They will have to anesthetize the arm to remove the ring, which requires hospital check in, and as it is after 5 pm I will have to spend the night…
Differences between hospitals in the US and here include:
• 5 men in white coats come in to my room for rounds (well, it is a teaching hospital, but there do seem to be lots more staff attending patients in general, especially the emergency room)
• Paperwork. The volume is less but the process more cumbersome—stand, or more likely,
bunch, in one “line”, get a paper passed to you, stand/bunch in another line which happens to be exactly next to the previous one, with the employee sitting arm’s length from first person, to hand same paper to them
• It is actually quiet. I am woken up only once during the night
• My room has a Mediterranean view, visible from the bed!!
• The 10th floor window actually opens, and has no screen
• Breakfast! Hard boiled egg with zatar (thyme mixture) and salt, a whole tomato, a thick slice of cheese like feta, a pat of real butter, three types of bread (square white slice, pita, and a roll), halvah (sweet sesame butter), a large sprig of fresh mint, five olives (with pit), and--ready?—a chocolate croissant. Also instant coffee, tea bag, hot water, large thing of hot milk, container of orange juice and bottle of water. And then a cart passes by with newspapers in three languages. That, and my Mediterranean view--Ahhh I could have stayed all day no problem.
Not different from US—nurses speak two or three languages
The finger doesn’t hurt, by the way, which is nice. I do have to wear a contraption on it for a couple of weeks or so. The wedding ring sure looks like toast but will be taken to a clever Lebanese jeweler to see what they can do.

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Signs seen on the way to the snow:
Happy Electro House
Happy Wall Paint
Snack Eat & Meet
Note: plenty of odd French ones, too