Set and rise

The sun rises over the Mediterranean coast of Syria.

I'm back in Dubai, and next week this website will be up and running again every day as elktown enters the home stretch.

Update, August 16

This picture has more resonance than I realized at first. Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and parts of Turkey -- in other words, the eastern coast of the Mediterranean -- are known as the Levant. Levant is the French word for "rising," so called because from the western European perspective, this is the land of the rising Mediterranean sun.

I'm re-reading "From Beirut to Jerusalem" by Tom Friedman, in my last free hours before law school, and he describes the beautiful Levantine culture of pre-civil war Beirut. It dovetails with my impression of my Lebanese students, who tended to be a bit more stylish, open and flirtatious than my students from the Gulf region. Though all Arabs, the Lebs were Levantine.

Back to Dubai

My U.S. trip is over, and it was everything I hoped for.

To have such people in my life, I am very, very blessed.