A morning of hiking

This weekend, I went hiking. It was so fun. I loved it, and I loved the company. These are just a few of the pictures for the morning trip.

This morning of hiking was probably one of my favorite things that I've done here so far. I spend a lot of time inside, and I do not go a lot of places. I don't even run outside or anything, so getting the chance to be active and in nature was awesome. 

 

I was surprised to see cows on our hike. We would struggle to get up some parts of the rocks, and when we got to the top, we'd often see cows just chilling and staring at us with this look of "what took you guys so long?" Well, that's just wonderful, I thought. How on earth did these cows get up here? We figured out that there was a probably an easier way, because this kept happening the higher we got. Cows ... just chilling. Too funny. Instead of getting frustrated with them, I went into photographer mode, and tried to get as close as I could. :-) 

Here's one photo I took before I chickened out:

Yep, just me and my friend Betsy (or Bob?) here.

 Yes,  and this was as close as I was getting for this picture. (Guys, the cow was huge. What can I say?).

 I ended up taking a lot of pictures of the scenery on this trip, and because of this, I was often falling behind. Here's to being that photographer -haha. Classic. Here are some of my favorite pics:

There are only a few green leaves on this mountain.

Just a glimpse of the view.

Everything seemed pretty dry on the mountain.

This is probably my favorite. I'm pretty sure I took a similar picture on a mountain in Korea.

This was the view from the top. It was a beautiful.

When we got to the top of the mountain, we sat down, and talked for a while. I loved just relaxing and looking out into the distance, but then I realized that we would have to leave soon. My one question was: how are we getting down? We had climbed some pretty steep areas, and I was a bit scared. We made it down okay, though, and I even kept stopping along the way to take more pictures (even on some of the steepest parts <--probably not the best decision (I know, mom), but I got some awesome photos!). 

On the way down the mountain, I came across something that really made me think about the history of this country and its people. Check out this picture below. Do you know what it is?

This is a bullet.

On the mountain, I found a bullet. I was hiking with three other girls, and there is nothing about us that appeared intimidating.

Hmmm …

So yea, I tried to forget that I saw this, but I had so many questions starting with "is this normal?" and "are we going to make it down this mountain?"

One of the girls said it could have been from people celebrating the recent elections in town. They often shoot their rifles up in the air during celebrations. Oh okay, I said calmly, hoping that no celebrations would be happening during the next 40 minutes or so. Then, she pointed to some other mountains in the distance. My friend said that there were caves over there where people used to hide out. 

Hide out? These mountains felt so bare with all the greenery appearing so dried up. I thought it would be easy for anyone to spot you. 

 

She continued and explained that there were not many places for people to go, and when Saddam was oppressing the people in this city through attacks, they fled to the mountains to hide in the caves. This made me really begin to think about some of the scary things this country has faced. 

This was not that long ago in history. People my age lived through this, and they remember some of these times very clearly. Someone on my team, who is around my age, put it this way:

“When we were playing outside and just learning to ride a bike, [Iraqi] kids our age were running for their lives with their families.”

Some of them can even clearly remember some of the hardships, which is really sad. This put more into perspective for me. There is so much history—history that is recent—in this region, and it directly effects the way people view one another today.