Friends and family, it's not that I don't have time to update my blog, as my mother said, it's the fact that the government has blocked this site (in addition to facebook, real player, using my credit card..) so, it's difficult to communicate sometimes. The internet is also spotty, so I can't always keep an internet connection either.

Life is settling down here, I'm making good friends and starting to get some workouts back in.

The latest:
Ramadan is over which means no more 3 am drummer coming around to wake everyone up so they can eat before sunrise.

It also means that I won't be having Iftar dinner with the guards at sunset. We had many diners which consisted of pita-type bread and some combination of salad, hommus, soup, Tamerhendi, and Jel-ab. Tamer Hendi and Jelab are only available during Ramadan-similar to eggnog being available at Christmas.

They always teach me new phrases like, Give me the key, "Ah-teeny mif-tah" and my latest one is "Ma-bHeb Sar-soor" which means "I don't like cockroaches." It is easier to ask what things are and learn nouns because you can point to objects and ask what is it. My verb vocab is smaller because it's more difficult to ask what they are. How do you ask someone, "I want to put the bottle on the table"? I've also been trying to learn to write Arabic. I can write my name.

I teach 4 classes: 3 music exploratories, and one music appreciation. My exploratory classes are for middle schoolers as an introduction to the different aspects of music. My class sizes are 6, 10, and 13. The Entire school is pre K to 12. There are about 350 students.

Last weekend I went with a group of 14 teachers to a beach in Lattakia. It was a bumpy, four-hour bus ride. After checking into the hotel, we made our way to our room. It was a nice hotel, but I wouldn't have considered it 5 star, but Syrians did. Anyway, Lauren, Mariah and I roomed together. We spent the afternoon on the beach, and then we went to dinner at "Beauty Restaurant" and it was beautiful. It was amazingly spectacular looking out over the Mediterranean.

The next day, we were back at the beach and playing in the water. While we were swimming, there was only one other person there who looked like an offiical swimmer. He had on a silicon swim cap with speedo goggles, so I decided if I was going to make any swimmer friends, he'd be my best bet. I motioned him over and asked him if he wanted to swim the perimeter with me. He, of course, did not speak any English, and I can only say simple things in arabic but it didn't extend to any swimming vocabulary. Thankfully, Maggie was there and so she translated for me.

We started swimming the perimeter which was about 500 meters, and everyonce in a while, I would pop my head up to make sure he was still there, and everytime I did, he would say, "Schwaye, Schwaye" which means slower. Well, it didn' treally look like he needed me to go slower because each time I looked for him, he was doing breast stroke next to me and not breathing hard or anythng. So I didn't slow down.

All fresh fruit and vegetables have to be washed in a bleach or disinfectant type solution before eating, and then after I soak them for 15 minutes, I have to scrub them...or is it scrub before? Anwyway, I haven't bought vegetables or fruits for myself because I'm not interested in the long process of jus tpreparing them to eat them fresh.

The first day I rode my bike, I started going up Jabon Qassioon. It was physically difficult, but a great workout. When I decided I needed to go home before it got too dark, I turned around and began going down. The mountain is super steep and it would've been ok if it had been just me on the road, but Damascus has this thing about not having stop signs or lines on the road, so cars were just everywhere, and i wasn't sure where they were going to come from, if they were going to see me, and I was pretty sure that they weren't going to stop at a merge area for a biker with a helmet on.

All over the mountain, the streets and city, guards are everywhere. I had been braking so much going down hill, I needed to stop the bike and give my rims a little while to cool down because they were very hot and I didn't want my tires to blow.

I stopped on a sidewalk which had a fence to the right and inside the fence was pretty thick trees and brush. I'd been stopped for about 5 seconds when I heard leaves rustling. I look over and I can barely make out the face of a soldier and an M16 in the fading light. He made some sort of motion which I understood as, "Why are you stopping here?" I made the motion of me coming down the hill with one hand and then I acted out braking, and then I pointed to my rims and said, "Shobe" which means hot. The soldier then put his hand over his heart, meaning it's ok.


If any of you want to see the mall in Damascus, or you think Syria is behind the times....
http://www.chamcitycenter.com/ you can get google to translate the page
Well, in some respects the country is, and others it's not.


Life is settling down here, I'm making good friends and starting to get some workouts back in.