*SNOW*

So I get a call late Monday night, inviting me to go with some of my co-workers to this touristy place about an hour from my city on Tuesday. I didn't take long to decide, of course! I had wanted to see this ancient place. It is known from Biblical times through the Middle Ages. It has alters to Baal, A Temple of Jupiter, and the largest free standing wall of columns in the world! As soon as I got off the phone though, I realized that Tuesday was supposed to be the coolest day of the week and had an 80% chance of rain, so I was trying to decide what to wear, however, since I had never been to this place before, I did not realize that it was in the mountains! And those I was going with did not think to check the weather...can you tell where this is going?

So, Tuesday, we make it to the town with the ruins, alters, and temples, and immediately all have to buy gloves, scarves and hats! Then we head to the ruins, temple, and huge columns, and practically run through all of it, because it is raining, and you can see your breath, and everyone but I forgot their camera. So I did not get as many pics as I wanted, but hey, the sky was not the best for a background that day!

So we get back in the car and try to head farther up the mountain to see this National Forest Reserve. And that is when we start to notice that the cars heading the opposite direction have snow on their cars. Eventually the road gets bad and we realize that the higher we go, the slushier the roads will be, or worse, so we had to turn around, but at this point, the roads continue to get worse as we leave the mountains. Eventually, we even had to pull over and the guys put chains on the tires! This Oklahoma girl has never had to put chains on her tires before, how ironic is it that the first time is in the Middle East?! We took some fun snow pictures, while the guys worked on the chains. I know everyone talks about how crazy people drive in foreign countries, and this one is not exception. We were driving on curvy mountain roads without lines, and people were still passing going fast in the snow...until the cars started having trouble going up the mountain. Thankfully, we were headed down from the mountains at that point, very prayerfully. Lhumdilla (thank God) we had bought the extra gloves, scarves, and hats when the weather was warmer earlier in the day, cause the guys really needed them when they were putting the chains on. We made it back to the city safe and sound!

In the city it rained and stormed that night. I think we went from a 20 degree change in weather patterns that day, in less than an hour and 45minutes drive max. Another Lhumdilla (thank God) we got our generator hooked up last week, cause the electric went out that evening for several hours at our apartment, but we still had limited power with the generator!

What an adventure! I will post pictures soon!