November 2010
Monday, 1 November
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Saturday, February 12, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
October 2010
October 2010
Friday, 1 October
8am: Run on Mountain Kassioun
To get to the place on the mountain, there’s a road leading up it, and it’s not a particularly high mountain, but it would’ve been my workout to climb it. I’ve only ever attended this run 2 or 3 times.
I could take a taxi up there, but I try to catch a ride with someone who to passes through Sahade Umayeen (Umayeen circle) to take me up in a car. The first time, I rode with Logann, we got to the top of the mountain and met up with another runner, Susan Lester and a guy called Khalil. We were debating on going or waiting to see if anyone else was coming. Khalil said on his way up, he saw someone jogging up the hill and he didn’t know if it was someone coming to join us or just someone else. We decided to wait. About 5 minutes later, Mimi, showed up. She had run from home, up the mountain road and all its steep glory.
In general, for women, it’s a good idea not to be alone when we run because sometimes men will come to harass beyond the simple cat-call.
The run itself was hot. The sun was out and it was baking us slowly. About a half mile into the run, there’s a steep climb, and it’s about 200 meters (or is my mind inflating it, I don’t know) and it is tough. Around the back side of the mountain, there are rolling graduations and declines. The whole route is just over 5K, but it is a tough run! It definitely was a challenge for me because I had not been running or exercising regularly for a while.
The second time I went, I got a ride with Josh and invited my friend Mahmoud up there or I may have ridden with mahmoud one time, I don’t remember, but it’s not important.
9:30 Coffee and Simpsons with Josh
After this particular run on 1 October, I went to get REAL brewed coffee with Josh after the run and veg on the couch for a while. We went to Moka and more to get this wonderful coffee and it was liquid gold. Then we retired to the couches in my living room and chilled out in the air conditioning and relaxed after our hot run. The Simpsons were on, but we did a lot of talking.
We must’ve sat there for 3 hours or so, but the Simpsons just kept coming on! It must’ve been a Simpson’s marathon or something. The Simpsons are one of those shows that you just can’t tear yourself away from. As soon as one episode ends, it’s already showing the title page for the next one to start, so it catches you in a loop and you can’t turn it off!
3:00pm Trip to "Target"
In September, I had seen an advertisement for a Target here in Damascus; a real Target, with the bull’s-eye symbol and everything. I had seen it several times too while driving past the shopping center. It became one of my goals to go to this place to check it out. Josh was in favor of accompanying me on this adventure, and so we took his car that afternoon.
As we pulled in to the shopping center (after having to drive another 2 miles to the end of the median, take an exit ramp, take an entrance ramp, and drive another 2 miles to get to where we could turn into the place) and parked in this open area we just assumed was for parking, I could see the name of the store more clearly. The whole shopping center was called 9-1-1 and underneath the numbers are the words “nine-eleven.” This sign was not trying to be political, but just catchy. However, was interesting because of the political-ness that “nine-eleven” now conjures up in the typical American’s mind when Arabs are mentioned. I don’t think too much of it, but enjoy the twisted-ness of their intended catchiness and the humor that I get from seeing this place innocently named this emotionally, grandiose title.
Anyway, so we get in there, and no lights are on. This does not necessarily mean a store is closed, it could simply mean that the power is off, or they have turned off the lights to keep it cool inside. As we go in further, we do see lights upstairs, so we go to explore. As we approach the escalator, it turns on and we ascend. One of the great energy-saving devices used outside of the U.S. I have found are motion-sensors. Lights, escalators, fans, heat, air, turn on when there is movement, and save power when there is none. Upstairs, there is a grocery store, we pick up a few things, then in the deli area (here is always Arabically difficult because it’s not Englicized) I try to find this cheese: Gouda. I say the name to the guy, and he says, no, we don’t have it. Ok, fine. We look through the selections to see what else there is that I could get instead. Josh can read Arabic because he has been taking private tutor lessons. So, he finds a cheese called Koota (Arabic letter-roman letter translation) and so we point out this is the one we want. So 200g of this and done.
We pay and as we go to leave, we try to take our bags out of the shopping cart and the workers show us how to put the shopping cart on the cart’s escalator. (See below)
7:00pm Cranium Party at Anthony's Place
we had a "Cranium" party at Anthony's house. We played a the board game which was a combination of acting and puppeteering your partner, humming songs for recognition. It was fun.
Friday, 1 October
8am: Run on Mountain Kassioun
To get to the place on the mountain, there’s a road leading up it, and it’s not a particularly high mountain, but it would’ve been my workout to climb it. I’ve only ever attended this run 2 or 3 times.
I could take a taxi up there, but I try to catch a ride with someone who to passes through Sahade Umayeen (Umayeen circle) to take me up in a car. The first time, I rode with Logann, we got to the top of the mountain and met up with another runner, Susan Lester and a guy called Khalil. We were debating on going or waiting to see if anyone else was coming. Khalil said on his way up, he saw someone jogging up the hill and he didn’t know if it was someone coming to join us or just someone else. We decided to wait. About 5 minutes later, Mimi, showed up. She had run from home, up the mountain road and all its steep glory.
In general, for women, it’s a good idea not to be alone when we run because sometimes men will come to harass beyond the simple cat-call.
The run itself was hot. The sun was out and it was baking us slowly. About a half mile into the run, there’s a steep climb, and it’s about 200 meters (or is my mind inflating it, I don’t know) and it is tough. Around the back side of the mountain, there are rolling graduations and declines. The whole route is just over 5K, but it is a tough run! It definitely was a challenge for me because I had not been running or exercising regularly for a while.
The second time I went, I got a ride with Josh and invited my friend Mahmoud up there or I may have ridden with mahmoud one time, I don’t remember, but it’s not important.
9:30 Coffee and Simpsons with Josh
After this particular run on 1 October, I went to get REAL brewed coffee with Josh after the run and veg on the couch for a while. We went to Moka and more to get this wonderful coffee and it was liquid gold. Then we retired to the couches in my living room and chilled out in the air conditioning and relaxed after our hot run. The Simpsons were on, but we did a lot of talking.
We must’ve sat there for 3 hours or so, but the Simpsons just kept coming on! It must’ve been a Simpson’s marathon or something. The Simpsons are one of those shows that you just can’t tear yourself away from. As soon as one episode ends, it’s already showing the title page for the next one to start, so it catches you in a loop and you can’t turn it off!
3:00pm Trip to "Target"
In September, I had seen an advertisement for a Target here in Damascus; a real Target, with the bull’s-eye symbol and everything. I had seen it several times too while driving past the shopping center. It became one of my goals to go to this place to check it out. Josh was in favor of accompanying me on this adventure, and so we took his car that afternoon.
As we pulled in to the shopping center (after having to drive another 2 miles to the end of the median, take an exit ramp, take an entrance ramp, and drive another 2 miles to get to where we could turn into the place) and parked in this open area we just assumed was for parking, I could see the name of the store more clearly. The whole shopping center was called 9-1-1 and underneath the numbers are the words “nine-eleven.” This sign was not trying to be political, but just catchy. However, was interesting because of the political-ness that “nine-eleven” now conjures up in the typical American’s mind when Arabs are mentioned. I don’t think too much of it, but enjoy the twisted-ness of their intended catchiness and the humor that I get from seeing this place innocently named this emotionally, grandiose title.
Anyway, so we get in there, and no lights are on. This does not necessarily mean a store is closed, it could simply mean that the power is off, or they have turned off the lights to keep it cool inside. As we go in further, we do see lights upstairs, so we go to explore. As we approach the escalator, it turns on and we ascend. One of the great energy-saving devices used outside of the U.S. I have found are motion-sensors. Lights, escalators, fans, heat, air, turn on when there is movement, and save power when there is none. Upstairs, there is a grocery store, we pick up a few things, then in the deli area (here is always Arabically difficult because it’s not Englicized) I try to find this cheese: Gouda. I say the name to the guy, and he says, no, we don’t have it. Ok, fine. We look through the selections to see what else there is that I could get instead. Josh can read Arabic because he has been taking private tutor lessons. So, he finds a cheese called Koota (Arabic letter-roman letter translation) and so we point out this is the one we want. So 200g of this and done.
We pay and as we go to leave, we try to take our bags out of the shopping cart and the workers show us how to put the shopping cart on the cart’s escalator. (See below)
7:00pm Cranium Party at Anthony's Place
we had a "Cranium" party at Anthony's house. We played a the board game which was a combination of acting and puppeteering your partner, humming songs for recognition. It was fun.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Lattakia Trip early September
Lattakia, the beach
Ugarit Ruins, the place of the first alphabet, or the first of some alphabet.
A restaurant on the way back from Latakkia.
Damascus Community School
Damascus Community School is an official American school wihch means we follow the US curriculum.
The courtyard in the center of the MS/HS building block
The staircase I come up everyday to get to my classroom.
On the right the ground floor is where the administration offices are: Counsellor, Finance, Student Enrollment, Main office, Principals' offices. The 1st floor is the math and science labs. on The left is the elementary building.
Our library...
See, there is technology in Syria. It's not like living in a hut.
The courtyard in the center of the MS/HS building block
The staircase I come up everyday to get to my classroom.
On the right the ground floor is where the administration offices are: Counsellor, Finance, Student Enrollment, Main office, Principals' offices. The 1st floor is the math and science labs. on The left is the elementary building.
Inside my classroom. I've since changed the set-up, but no matter, other stuff looks the same.
Our library...
See, there is technology in Syria. It's not like living in a hut.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Health Clinic Tour Day
Our first stop on the tour was the "Contagious Diseases" Clinic to get our HIV test. We pulled up in our tour bus. Nurse Julie got us numbers so we were in cue.
When we got inside, they put us in a holding cell until they were ready for us. It was hot and stuffy. The screens in the back were listing numbers for clients to go up and get done whatever it was they needed to have done.
Then we saw a tour of the streets of Damascus Midday.....with all the taxis (notice that people drive anywhere and that there are NO markings on the road).
Here is Nurse Julie in the polka dot.
It was a looooong wait. We stayed almost 2.5 hours in this room! We didn't have enough seats for everyone, so some of us like Kat and Andrea sat on some steps. Andrea's body language pretty much sums up how we all felt; bored and trying not to whine.
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