Getting stuck in a snowstorm in lovely Lebanon

In January 2017, I visited Lebanon as part of Project Anqa, an initiative to preserve threatened heritage in the Middle East. You can read more about the work with UNESCO here. I had a few days at the end of my trip to travel around Lebanon and decided to visit a friend and her family in the Bekaa province, near the border with Syria. Although we had planned to just get lunch together, a freak snowstorm closed all the roads back to Beirut. The same day Donald Trump signed his refugee ban blocking immigrants from Syria and six other nations from entering the United States, my friend and her Syrian husband came and rescued me from the side of the road and graciously hosted me for two days while the roads were cleared.