Damascus con queso

Rockwoods in Peru

2008-06-17T22:29:00.000-07:00

Goodbye Damascus, we (I) loved ya', we have now moved to Peru at: http://rockwoodsinperu.blogspot.com

Goodbye Damascus

2008-05-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

It's down to my last week in Damascus and I'm starting to miss it already. I've been up in the mountains climbing a lot, and I went this last week with my classmates up to north-western Syria up near the Turkish border and saw a lot of sights that reminded me of back home. I went swimming in lakes surrounded by pine-trees and frolicked on the best beach Syria has to offer (which is about as nice as the Great Salt Lake). All of our teachers came with us and it was fun to finally be able, after a year of toil, to switch seamlessly between English and Arabic, depending on the audience, without even thinking about it. We visited the late presidents tomb, guarded by men in black leather jackets, and the mountain castle of Salah Ad-diin, and Ugarit, the place the first alphabet was discovered.

Now I've had all of my farewell parties and it's just a few more days until my plane leaves and I see Vanessa and Alexa in DC, then it's on to Peru. I can't wait to see them, it's been over four months. At the same time I will really miss Damascus. Of course there are many things I won't miss, like the pollution, the non-variety in food (I can't even look at shwarma, kebab, shish tawuuk, or falafel for at least a year), the zionist conspiracy theories (which now incluces Facebook), close mindedness when it comes to change ("but that's how we do it here..."), fashion that's stuck in the 80's, being followed and monitored by secret police, blocked websites, annoying Arab men, etc. But there are many things that I will miss, like the safety, how there is literally almost no crime or violence at all in Syrian society, the markets and shopping, eating in the old city, bootleg DVD's, the innocence and naivete of Syrians, the archeological sites, the good friends I've made, etc. Most of all I'll miss the absence of a monotonous job and the same routine every day. Above is the lake called the "7 seas" that we stopped at for lunch, and while others were admiring the view I snuck down and did a little swimming.

I'm glad I got to witness a change in Syrian society as it is now coming out of it's post-soviet era bubble and has started to open up to the world and experience the joys of things like a class divide, with the appearance of expensive coffee-shops and restaurants and shops that suddenly only a small, exclusive section of society can enjoy. And I'm exited to return sometime in the future and see how much more it will have changed. All in all it was quite an experience, and although I wish my family had been here the whole time, the six months with them was memorable and I learned a lot. It sure went by quickly. That's my graduating class above, minus 3 that already left, and our 3 teachers.

I highly recommend Syria to all, and thanks to those REAL friends who did visit me. Keep posted for rockwoodsinperu.blogspot.com.

Spring Climbing

2008-05-07T02:49:00.000-07:00

I wish I had found the Damascus climbing group sooner, it would have been the perfect diversion from schoolwork. I just didn't think that climbing was very developed in the Middle East in general, but it appears I was wrong. There is an active community, plenty of bolted routes, a Syrian climbing guidebook, and multi-pitch climbs that go back decades. The pioneers of Syrian climbing were Austrian and Swiss UN soldiers, but now the group includes an international crowd (even a few Syrians). I spent a beautiful day up in Wadi Manshuura near Bloudan, high up in some crags that overlooked Hizbulla (the Bekaa) valley in Lebanon. It's right on a common arms smuggling route from Lebanon and we saw a few shifty looking people with dubious cargo on thier tractors. It was wonderful to get out of the city and on some mountains though.

I'm actually really glad I'm not going to have to go straight back to the US, but am heading to Peru instead. I'm a little intimidated by the US right now. I mean over here, in a third-world country I'm really a somebody. Just by being foreign I'm automatically thrust into the upper echelon of society and am considered an "expert" on just about everything because I'm from the US. I could have my pick of jobs here just because everybody wants a "foreigner", there's the impression that they work harder, know computers, speak good English, serve as a status symbol to the company, etc. Whereas in the US I'm just another schmuck trying to make a dollar, climbing up the anthill with other people that have the same qualifications as I do. I can see how being an ex-pat in these types of countries could be addicting. We'll see what Peru has to offer.

In other news, they've doubled the cost of transportation in Damascus because of rising gas prices. Now the 5 pound minibus ride is 10, and taxi's are no longer that cheap. I guess it's happening all over the world, rising prices, but if they don't stop here in Syria soon I think you're going to see riots. Everything from vegetables to bread has doubled in price in the one year I've been here and people are starting to complain publicly.

Some things are improving though, they've been working wonders in the old city, to the left are the latest Roman and Greek statues and columns that they've been dragging up as they tear up the asphalt roads to make cobblestone streets. They've also promised to make the old city "car-free" by 2011 (which probably means 2020), and each new section they re-cobble they close-off to traffic. They are going to install underground parking lots at each end of the city and make the entire thing for pedestrians only. That means that the once busy, crazy, main straight street (medhat basha, below right) has already become a pretty, quaint, quiet little pedestrian walk with trees and flower beds, and bab sharki has wide pedestrian squares and is enveloped in relative silence (I have no pics of these yet, stay posted). It has a lot of potential and I think that in a few years the old city in Damascus is going to be one of the prettiest, authentic Mid Eastern old cities around.

Alexa goes to nursery for a few hours a day and likes it once she gets there but cries when she has to leave Vanessa. She also loves the beach and her two new parakeets. I really really miss Vanessa and Alexa and can't wait to see them again.

Can't get you out of my head

2008-04-30T02:12:00.000-07:00

Took another trip through central Syria with some of my classmates, all places I had been to two or three times, but I'm running out of things to see and this trip was financed by the school. I'd rather hang out with fun people and eat good food and sleep in nice hotels than travel another weekend budget style and end up looking like death on Sunday morning. We saw the more prominent cities of the dead, saw the sights in Aleppo, Hama, Homs, some castles, and a few random tell-style ruins like Ebla. I learned that there are over 3,000 prominent archaeological sites in Syria and less than 1000 have been even partially excavated over the last century. There is such a potential for tourism here it is incredible, but there is absolutely no current infrastructure. Dirt roads with no signs mark most of the major sites (enormous ruins that would be the main attraction in any other country), nobody speaks English or even knows where the site is to direct you, entrance fees are a dollar or so per person (if there is one), there are kids climbing all over the ruins breaking things and families eating picnics and throwing their trash all over, beduin scavengers digging in broad daylight looking for coins and other trinkets to sell to the few buses of European tourists that come through, etc. To the right are some of my colleagues at the Qasr al-Azem in Hama.

We have a funny list going around us students entitled "you know you're studying Arabic in Syria if", a few of the good ones are:

-You still have scars on your body from bedbugs and various other ailments suffered during your "homestay" in Bab Touma
-Even though a ton of Syrians got paid to hang out with you you still couldn't make any friends
-You're still waiting for your residency, 11 months later
-The theme songs of the year were: Acon's "Smack dat," George Michael's "Careless Whisper" and, of course, anything Fairuz.
-You've seen more of Syria than 95% of Syrians
-The veiled women wore tighter clothes and more make-up than you did
-The phrase in shah Allah now means "it ain't gonna happen"
-You've begun to attribute all physical ailments, no matter how unrelated to one another, to a mysterious phenomenon called "greeb."
-You've forgotten what it's like to talk to friends/family from home with even the slightest degree of privacy.
-50 percent of your daily activities are governed by whether or not you have appropriate change in Syrian lira.
-That being said: you will tell bald-faced lies to store owners and even friends, claiming that all you have is a 1000 lira note, in order to hang on to your small bills.
-You speak English with "dangling modifiers" ie. "The town which I traveled to it"
-You sweat in places you once thought impossible
-You feel like a slut wearing a short sleeve shirt
-You've smoked more (second-hand) than the Marlboro Man
-You go to Turkey and think its Amsterdam.
-Your internship teaches you to become an expert on tea and turkish coffee
-Fake eyebrows and leopard print start to look like normal fashion statements
-You don't need the menu's at restaurants any more, (there are the same 5 dishes in all 2000+ restaurants)
-You look over your shoulder before logging onto Facebook
-Your home stay family is still calling for money
-You've learned how to hack blocked websites.
-You have time to cook dinner and watch a boot-leg dvd in the time it takes to load one web-page.
-The sound of dial-up doesn't seem that strange any more.
-You have contracted strange uncommon diseases and rashes that were eradicated in the west decades ago
-Personal dress now includes pointy shoes
-you've acquired at least one disease that no doctor can diagnose
-the more popular you are, the more gel you have in your hair
-there is no such thing as a line or "I got here first"
-you got frostbite in your apartment
-Depending on the day, Syrians will either tell you that you speak better Arabic than they do or that you should really consider taking beginning classes
-"Wallahi ma b'arif" (I don't know) is the national motto
-Everything was first invented/discovered in Syria, including the pyramids and the Japanese language
-Correct English is now your second language

Qamishli

2008-04-14T02:42:00.000-07:00

I had a low key birthday, I made some vanilla cake and watched "death-defying acts" with Zeta Jones while knitting a sweater for Alexa. This weekend I went up to the northern Kurdish region of Syria for a three day weekend and saw some amazing sights. This area is called "the island" as it is bounded on all sides by major rivers, the Tigris, Euphrates, and Khabur. To the left is the Tigris. It is part of the fertile crescent that extends up from Iraq and is very green and flat and consists of Qamishli, Hassaka, and Deir Az-zour. That is until you reach the Turkish border at the Tigris where huge mountains jut up out of nowhere. Below are some kids playing in the Tigris with Turkey just a stone's throw away, no guards or border agents, I could have just swam across. There are remains of an old Roman bridge there that I paid some Kurdish guys to take me out to, and then they got in trouble by the secret police because they hadn't registered me at the main police station. Of course they didn't know they were supposed to, but after a few cups of tea and small bribes we were on our way again.

The most unique part of the landscape is the utter flatness of green mud/dirt fields broken only by intermittent tells that rise out of the ground marking where an ancient city once stood. I visited tell Barak, where TE Lawrence and Agatha Christie met when she was writing "Murder on the Orient Express". Archaeologically there isn't much there, as their building materials were made of only mud bricks mixed with straw (see below). Mud mud mud everywhere. What a place. The modern houses are still made of mud bricks and have a unique slightly domed mud roof that I haven't seen in any other part of Syria. You see a lot of oil rigs across the landscape, but the locals don't see any of thier profit, as it is probably the poorest part of Syria. There were very few pictures of Al-Assad and most of the people I talked to seem to wish they were part of Turkey instead of Syria. They were a really friendly people though, and I even learned a few Kurdish phrases "chawai"!

I made my way down to Hassaka, a predominantly Christian city by small minibuses and to my dismay most of it is of the newer, ugly Syrian-Soviet style construction excepting a bunch of sparkling new Churches. Many Syrian Christians have relatives in the US or Canada that send over loads of money to finance the building of fancy new churches and country homes. Then I went down to Deir Ez-zour which is right on the Euphrates and saw some of the ruins around there. Mari and Dar Europus were the highlights, two really important cities back in the day, but all that's left are crumbling mounds of clay bricks and broken pottery. I was scouring the ground continually for relics and found a few cool partial glass vases. It's my new hobby. To the left is a castle built by nur ed-din, destroyed by the mongols. Below is the Euphrates river at Dar Europos, a place founded by Alexander the Great, the place they found the only Jewish synogogue ever with frescos.

My favorite comment of the trip was from one guy I was talking to from Ad-deir who told me in his thick, thick beduin accent that the dialect of the people from up in Qamashli was "tageela chiteer" (very heavy), which is like a Scotsman saying an Irish accent is thick.

Now I'm back back in the groove in Damascus, hanging out with friends and studying less and less. I've gotten into a romance-movie kick, probably because I miss my family. I'm slowly picking up all the things I want to buy before I leave, some traditional artistic ceramic tiles, some decorative elaborate wooden cookie molds, about 8 pairs of Syrian shoes (they are cheap and awesome), some calligraphy art, textiles, tableclothes, lung cancer, etc. If anybody wants me to bring them anything, now is the time to tell me, including lung cancer.

Below is the monthly Alexa shot - these are her modeling pics. She was "discovered" by an agency the other day in a park in Lima. I don't like the pics very much personally, but fair, blue eyed babies are apparently a rarity in Peru and can fetch quite a price.

A very low Summit

2008-03-31T13:04:00.001-07:00

This last week was the Arab Summit. That's right, if you're not into the Middle East then you probably didn't hear about it, but around here it was a once in a century event. It's the first time the Arab League has met in Damascus and they really put on a show. In fact they even closed the airport and all the borders for five days, so even if I didn't want to be here for it I had no choice. Most of the roads were closed and there were police everywhere, but the summit ended without incident besides a wave of freezing winter weather after a short heat wave. Most people here outright made fun of the summit and think it is a complete waste of time. But I did hear one person say that in the last few years they have been trying to address the issue of the broken education system, which is a step in the right direction. One of the highlights was watching Qadaffi pour out contempt on all the other Arab leaders as he sometimes does.

There was a brief resurgence of Arab nationalism for the last few weeks, with a few signs around town touting the "Shared heritage and language" of the Arabs, but in general Syria really doesn't have that much in common with any other Arab countries, it's closest allies are Iran and Russia for grace sake. I would make an argument however, that the Syrian people are some of the best candidates in the Middle East to be friends with the US. For one, Syria is the most religiously diverse Arab country with about 6 different Muslim sects, 5 different Christian sects, and throw in a few Yezidis and Jews and a surprisingly large number of Athiests. It is also the most linguistically and racially diverse, with about 11 languages and 15 or so significant ethnic groups. This melting pot effect has made most Syrians by necessity more open minded and permissive than the surrounding countries. When I go out with friends they are a religious mix of Druze, Protestant, Sunni, Alawi, Armenian Orthodox, agnostic, etc. (including two Athiest girls that wear the veil - for social / family reasons), and an ethnic mix of Arab, Kurdish, Circassian, Armenian, Turkish, Tajik, and Russian, etc. This in addition to 50 years of a socialist secular government has made Syrians' attitudes closer to American attitudes than any other ME country I've ever visited. Of course there are a number of extremist types around, and some say they are growing, but they are still a huge minority, no more than I've met around DC or Salt Lake City for that matter. Too bad the politicians can't just work it out, cause even after Iraq the people still love Americans and America.

On a family note Alexa is having fun in Peru and just started nursery. The picture to the right is her "glare" that she gives to people she doesn't know or is upset at. It's so evil and scary it's cute. It looks like I'll be moving to Peru after I finish up here. Vanessa came to Syria for me, so the least I can do is repay the favor and move there for a year. She is trying to find a job and I'll mainly take care of Alexa and try to find a part-time job or something. I keep thinking I need to find a job and a career and stuff like that, but it appears I can continue frolicking around the world for a while longer. Who'd of thought.

The Generous One

2008-03-24T01:30:00.000-07:00

The family came for a ten day Easter vacation and we had a really good time. We hit all the major sites in Syria and went shopping crazy. We rented out a minibus right from the street and went up to the Seydnaya and Maalula monasteries and the tekla gorge, spent 2 days in Damascus seeing sights and shopping, Dad kept saying he was done shopping every day, but the next would bring new antiques or beduin trinkets that he had to have, Tyler liked the baths so we went to the baths three days in a row. We ate great food in the old city restaurants every night, everyone's favorite was Haretna right next to our hotel.

We took off early one morning for Palmyra which was the highlight of the trip for most of the family. We were wandering among the ruins the first day and my Dad looked down and picked up an ancient coin. After that we all went crazy and wandered over the ruins all that day and the next morning from 6 AM and we all found coins and ancient glass bottle pieces copper trinkets, carved bone pieces, etc just lying all over the ground among the 50 acres of ruins. We all love that kind of thing and with the ruins all around and Ayyubid castle overlooking us it was magical. We had dinner in a beduin tent and then went back to Damascus to get our rented car and take off north.

We hiked up to the Mar Mousa monastery and spent the night there and next morning hiking around the area. The monastery is always a cool, serene place, and you meet a lot of Europeans there just hanging out for a few months. Then we went on to the Crac du Chevalier castle, which everybody loved and I almost lost the car when I left it in drive after I parked it and started to walk away. That evening we made it to Apamea, the largest ruin in Syria, 90% still underground, and walked along the main thoroughfare with green grass covering the whole countryside. Dad got suckered into buying some questionable old coins from the illegal vendors that would hang around on the edges of the ruins and call out at us.

We spent one evening in Aleppo in Jdede, the christian quarter that has all the good restaurants and hotels, and then the next day spent a full day exploring the old city, markets, and the citadel. Although they are the most extensive covered old markets in the whole middle east, most of the stuff is for local shoppers, and I still think Damascus has better stuff. We visited the St. Simeon monastery which was fun, and stopped at the Hama waterwheels.

Ty and Dad left the next morning, and Ash, Bryan and Clay stayed for two more days. We went down to Bosra and the amphitheater and I found the perfect carpet for sale among the ruins. I'd had my eye out for a few months and this one was the perfect color and price. Then we did last minute shopping around the old city and handicraft bazaar and bought mostly old trinkets, pearl and silver inlay boxes, and one dollar bootleg movies.

It was a blast to finally have visitors to show off the fascinating place I live in, and luckily my family is adventurous, and we saw a lot of things and places that most tourists don't. There was also a lot of laughter and bonding and I don't think any of us will ever forget the experience. A special thanks to the -Generous One- who made it all possible.

Exotic Dogs

2008-03-02T11:32:00.000-08:00

I went this weekend to the Damascus Zoo. It was a bit depressing to see all of these animals in small dirty cement cell blocks, but one of the most entertaining things was that about 1/3 of the animals in the zoo are dogs. They think of them as exotic animals from Europe, so you have all these cages with poodles and spaniels and german shepards and people pointing at them and taking pictures. People don't have pet dogs here, I haven't even seen one in the time I've been here. When I told a guy at the zoo that we had these animals as pets in the US he said it only confirmed what he thought about the US, that we're barbarians, and how keeping a wild animal in the house is unsanitary. I told him that many of the kitchens and bathrooms I'd seen in Syria were more unsanitary than any dog kennel. That's what happens when you spend a lot of time abroad, you become kind of direct and rude. I don't mean to, it just happens.

On the whole though, the zoo here was cleaner than the Cairo zoo, where if you come early in the morning you can catch a pickup truck driving through the zoo piling the dead animals of the day in the back, legs sticking out rigimortis style. The government keeps buying new ones though, as it entertains about 10,000 Cairenes a DAY. One time I saw a baboon eating a cat.

I was noticing the other day on my way to school as I walk through this really poor area, how every mud-brick falling-apart house had a satellite dish on it. Everyone gets free satellite here, all the satellites use illegal unscramblers, so they can watch any satellite channel from anywhere in the world (including showtime, hbo, trillions of european porn channels, etc.) On the bright side, everyone has access to news from around the world and is no longer limited to what the Syrian government let's through, but on the other side, I am sick and tired of my limited choices. Out of my 264 channels, about 100 are Arabic music video channels, 50 are news channels, 20 show constant Arabic soap operas, and the rest are an assortment of sports or religious shows. There's nothing interesting to watch besides the three basic choices of Arabic pop music videos, news, or soaps. There are a few English language channels that show movies, and I can even watch good morning America every morning - but I didn't come here to listen to English, so I stick with the painfully tedious Arabic stations.

That's why last month when MTV Arabia started broadcasting I got exited. They film all of thier popular reality shows and music shows in the middle east, in Arabic. There's never been anything like it in Arab TV before (MBC has made a few lame attempts...), it's amazing. It is producing home-grown Arabic stars with shows like "hip hop-na", "baq a biq", "made", "cribs", "punked", etc, all filmed in the ME for an Arab audience. There is this explosion of creative talent and Arab youth expressing themselves with music and film - and MTV is the only outlet right now catering to them. It's addicting to watch as well as a good way to get exposure to a bunch of Arabic dialects.

On the right is the countryside with the suburbs of Damascus in the distance. Looks pretty when you can't smell the scent of burning plastic and garbage.

Alexa is still loving Peru, loves the food, and doesn't like the sand at the beach.

The Hawran

2008-02-25T01:02:00.001-08:00

I took a long weekend trip with some classmates down to the mountainous area south of Damascus known to the world as Jebel Druze, but known to Syria as Jebel Al-Arab (the name was changed in the sixties to promote Arab unity, even though 95% of the population is Druze). The Druze who live there now came from Lebanon about 200 years ago as a result of a bloody conflict with Christian Maronites. What they found was a mountainous region full of Roman and Christian cities that had been abandoned in the 7th century after the Arab conquest spread out of Arabiad. So all of the villages today are built among the ruins of ancient houses, temples, baths, and theaters. Some years ago they cleared the residents from around the biggest ruins and you can visit some pretty impressive structures all made out of the characteristic black volcanic stone that covers the whole area. For some reason I was expecting some real mountains, an was kind of disappointed at the hilly nature of the region. There was some snow in the higher areas around Salkhad, but it's mostly just black volcanic rocky hills with a volcanic cone or two sticking up on the horizon. The tops of all of the mountains are Druze holy sites with little temples where they light candles. We stopped on our way back at Bosra even though I'd already been there during the summer, but it is a different place when it's not 120 degrees and you can actually wander around and enjoy it.

Of course from the minute we arrived we were followed around by the secret service to make sure we weren't doing anything fishy, although I don't know what anyone would do in this remote mountain wasteland. After being followed around all morning, I finally just I went up to one of them and asked him if he'd drive us around himself as it would be easier for all of us. He had no objection, so we got a free ride and a free guide for the rest of the trip! The only drawback was that we weren't allowed to take many pictures of anything, we weren't told why, just that it was "forbidden". But we successfully teamed up and distracted them to get a few.

Many (usually older) Druze dress in a traditional outfit that consists of some really baggy pants called Sirwal (said to be designed to catch the next Messiah safely in it's folds when it is born to a man), belted at the waist with a white cummerbund, white cap, and huge, HUGE mustache. We met one guy who used hair spray or gel or something till it was at least two feet from tip to tip. It was a really interesting trip though and well worth the trouble.

Alexa and Vanessa are in Peru and loving the food and the warm weather, and the relatives are all loving meeting Alexa for the first time. She is starting to speak, but only knows Spanish for now, I guess that's what you get when your father is absent for 6 months of the first year of your life.

Lesson of the week: if your shower is above a hole-in-the ground squatter arab toilet and you drop your soap - it's gone.

Goodbye Hiz Bully

2008-02-16T11:34:00.000-08:00

I wonder how much market research Coca Cola did when it decided to start this campaign of female Arab singers dressed like American housewives from the 50's. Probably not much.

We all heard the big explosion echo around the city last week at around 11:00 pm, but the local news reported a gas truck had blown up and nobody was hurt. It continued with that story until evening the next day when every Arab newspaper in the world reported that a Hizb leader was martyred in Damascus and their denial was starting to look ridiculous. In 2004 another Hizb guy got blown up in a car bomb as well, but people don't get concerned here, they know that when this type of thing happens the target is some high profile leader and the goal isn't general destruction of human life like in Iraq or even in America (latest University massacre, for ex). At first it Israel's fault, then the CIA, but now, experts on the Arab news channels agree that it could have been pretty much anybody, and one guy on Al-Arabiya even told off all of the Arab media for jumping to the same conclusion (zionist-American conspiracy) every time something happens.

The picture to the right is the latest mess in the old-city reconstruction project, they hit some water pipes while digging and have had to dig deeper and deeper and now there's this gaping hole about 100 ft. deep in the middle of one of the main roads with broken electric and water pipes sticking out, and some of the nearby shops are starting to lose thier floors and foundations as they cave in. They've dug down so far they've uncovered an old roman temple, and there are columns sticking out of the dirt all over the bottom, but the tractors have destroyed most of them, and the rest they're just going to cover right back up once they're done fixing the water. You really can't turn over a stone in this part of the world without exposing something ancient, but nobody has the money, time, or even interest in excavating it.

I finished filming this video for a new Syrian Arabic book after three 18 hour days in a row. It was mind-numbingly cold and tedious, but I got to meet a lot of famous people and make a lot of new friends. Below is a picture of us filming in one of the big famous Arabic houses in the Souk Sarouja area where they film the majority of the Syrian soap operas.

I also went to the huge Shia graveyard just south of the old city where there are a bunch of the Shia leader Hussein's daughters buried as well as a number of important Turkish sufis. It was filled with highly emotional Iranian tourists as well as a large number of Mongolian Muslims, who I thought were supposed to be Sunni?? I'm not sure they really knew where they were, but not to be left out they cried and wailed at the tombs along with the rest of them.

Here's a good article on Damascus from the Washington Post, as well as some great 360 views of a bunch of sites from 360 views of Syria. My family visiting in March will not be able to see these famous sights, as I've planned a much more interesting week-long tour of the botany of the Syrian countryside, which I'm sure they'll enjoy much more. Check out the new Alexa video in the video column - Alexa in Syria.

Wandering the Streets

2008-02-03T12:39:00.000-08:00

So I've been wandering around town alot the past few weeks, taking some crappy pictures and whatnot. With the departure of my family, there's nothing to do at 2 am anymore so I've been trying to catch up with all of the oscar nominations (each DVD has the warning across the bottom "this copy is for academy screening purposes only"), my pick this year is Juno, it put me in a good mood for about a week. I'm also starring in a lame video production of an Arabic language series with some of my co-students, so I am also busy after school memorizing scripts, and don't have that much time to sit and miss Alexa (and..., oh yeah, Vanessa).
I'll also be moving into a new apartment this next week closer to the University, which is in a poorer and thus cheaper area where I'll probably have more interaction with 'normal' Syrians, as opposed to the wannabe cool kids that hang out in my area in front of the expensive coffe shops and eye me warily when I pass by. I actually found a gypsy camp in Damascus down by the river behind the Sheikh Saad area and was considering renting a room from one of them in thier mud hut for $40 a month, but it had no washing machine or fridge or hot water or kitchen, etc. and I didn't want to go to the bathroom in a hole three feet from where I laid my head for 4 months, even though the gypsies would probably be good for my Arabic.

So tomorrow I have to devote an entire day to getting my new apartment contract approved by the Syrian gov. It goes something like this:
1. go to the ministry of housing and pay a guy to get some forms,
2. go the the US embassy to get one of the forms notarized and stamped,
3. go to the Syrian ministry of foreign affairs to get that paper stamped again,
4. return to the ministry of housing and present the stamped papers which they then stamp again,
5. go to the ministry of finance to pay the taxes on the contract (need stamps from 7 different offices),
6. return a third and final time to the ministry of housing and get my rent contract approved (stamps from four different offices)! and I used to complain about the DMV...

Axexa is doing fine at her grandparents house in Maryland and is apparently a child prodigy, reading Balzac and composing symphonies, they are off to Peru in two weeks and will stay there for almost three months. My mom is going out to DC see her before they leave, sure wish I could be there, or they could be here... or we could all be somewhere else.

I'm sure glad to be away from the hype of the primaries, nobody here really understands what is going on in the US or seems to care. The only thing that anyone has said to me is that if Clinton wins they'll be convinced that the US is a dynasty like Saudi Arabia. First Bush and son, and now Clinton and wife. He said this standing right under a big sign of Assad. Like Saudi? I said. But he didn't seem to get it.

Winter Wonderland

2008-01-23T10:49:00.000-08:00

Everyone woke up this morning to a white snowy Damascus. I was hoping work would be canceled, but it wasn't. It hasn't snowed here since 2004, so everybody was out playing and throwing snowballs, even the old men and women. You can just see at the top of the mountain in the picture a bunch of restaurants that overlook the city. It also got below zero and windy and frigidly cold so the already cold house is now an icebox. I have an electric heater in the bedroom so if I close the door it warms up in about an hour, but the shower room never really heats up and that's the one that really matters on a cold morning.

It started snowing just a few hours after I dropped Vanessa and Alexa at the airport. Vanessa was sad to leave me and to separate Alexa and I, but she was sure exited to get out of Damascus - she had said her goodbye's and been packed for almost a week. I think she almost had a heart attack though when she called me from the airport because they wouldn't let her through the gate without her exit form that she had left at the house. Can you imagine a country forcing a foreign citizen to remain in the country because they didn't have the correct form? That system wouldn't work in the US, every foreigner would purposely forget the form and stay in the US for good. But after pleading with him for a while of course they let her through. She's back in the US now and is planning on going to Peru in 2 weeks to stay with her Dad after his kidney transplant. She called and said she is in loving the luxuries such as a dishwasher, microwave, bathtub, and cigarette smoke-free air.

It's pretty depressing to come back to an empty house after school and work now, I even sniffed one of Alexa's dirty diapers in the garbage and it put a smile on my face. It's only for 4 months though, and I can get back to my nomadic lifestyle of exploring Syria after school and on the weekends. That's us on the left being sad at the airport when it was time for them to leave.

In other exiting news - we had been lazily using a handful of baby sign language signs with Alexa for the past few months and all of a sudden a few weeks ago she actually just started using them! I had just read a book to her and she all of a sudden used the sign for "more", then later that night she used the sign for "more" + "milk" with Vanessa, I didn't think all that crap was real, but now she is using all of these signs like a total deaf baby.

I'm still just going to classes and working at a PR firm every other day where we organize events for Syria's rich and famous. I realized that there are a lot of really big Syrian fish in a really small pool, or at least they all seem to think they are. This year Damascus was designated by the Arab League as the "Capitol of Arab Culture" (last year it was somewhere in Algeria) and they kicked off the celebrations last week with a huge party in one of the main squares - it was pretty impressive, but cold, see pics below:

Guntra

2008-01-01T14:50:00.000-08:00

While Vanessa was spending the day at the Shell Oil country club in Damascus with a new group of mothers that she's met (the other big groups in town are the UN mothers and the Embassy mothers) I took the opportunity to visit the Golan Heights and the ghost town of Quneitra (pronounced "Guntra" in the Golan) that the Israeli's occupied for some time after the '67 war and then gave back to Syria after the '73 war. When they pulled out of it they bombed and bulldozed everything standing and plowed all the fields with mines as a kind of a finger in the eye, and then Syria used the opportunity to preserve the entire village as a kind of open-air museum to Israeli aggression. It lies in a beautiful green valley full of fruit trees and olive trees with a river running through the center of town and is surrounded by mountains on three sides. At the top of them you can see Israeli antennae and military outposts and giant wind turbines. All the buildings are pretty much flattened except for a part of an orthodox church, two mosques, and the old hospital. The area is now administered by the UN and you need to get special permission to go there, and once there a Syrian "guide" walks around with you through the city. By chance I got a ride home from a family that had fled there in '67 and was now living in Damascus and got to hear all of the old Zionist conspiracy theories for the thousandth time. I tried to point out the ridiculousness of most of them but I don't think I convinced anybody.

For New Years eve we were invited to dinner at the house of an embassy family who has a daughter Alexa's age and had a great big American-style dinner. They do all of their food shopping online and a weekly diplomatic plane brings it from the US right to their door. Actual New Years was sort of anti-climactic as we couldn't find anything on TV that told us what time it was, and all of our cell phone clocks were different, so we just kind of picked a time and said happy new year then went home to bed.

We were also able to visit an Armenian member of the church that lives on the outskirts of Damascus with the missionary couple and were made painfully aware of the cultural differences in house visits - trying to ingest the never ending plates of strange sweets and drinks, the uncomfortable silences as the visit stretches on for hours upon hours, relatives and friends arriving and sitting for an hour or so then leaving, etc - in the Arab world a house visit is an all evening (and sometimes night) event, and usually doesn't include dinner, so we were all starving and trying to leave without offending anybody.

Last but not least it was Alexa's birthday on the 27th and Vanessa made her a cat cake and we let her destroy it. The only problem was that she wouldn't destroy it, she just daintily poked at it with a pretzel until it had a few holes in the frosting. But she really enjoyed poking it. The candle that we found for the birthday cake shot flames. We're planning to have a party once all of her friends get back into town from Christmas vacation.

After that it's only three weeks until Vanessa and Alexa are going to give up Syria for Peru where they will spend the last few months with her father who will be recovering from an operation in Lima.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-24T07:19:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas to all. We were unsuccessful in finding a cheap christmas tree and I didn't want to spend over $20 for the pitiful chinese plastic trees offered everywhere so I finally decorated our aloe vera plant (in the center of the picture) with the one ornament we have. It's a pretty low key Christmas. Vanessa is taking the picture and agreed to have santa sit in her place. There's not much else going on, and it doesn't feel very much like Christmas besides in the Bab Touma Christian quarter where there are a lot of christmas lights up, but we don't live there. We'll just hang out Christmas eve and day around home and sleep and make figgy pudding. We bought Alexa five dollars worth of toys at a dollar store in Lebanon, and one of her new toys is a snoopy phone that plays "boom boom boom I want you in my room" over and over. While in the house in Lebanon she was attacked two nights in a row by mosquitos and has 15 mosquito bites on her face and some of them have infected and she really looks like she has the plague. On the bright side though, when going around town everybody recoils from her in horror when they come up to kiss her, so Vanessa is planning on painting them on after they heal to keep all the strangers at bay.

Flat and Proud

2007-12-22T16:09:00.000-08:00

Only in Lebanon will you see an ad like this, compared to most Arab countries where this ad would probably cause riots of burning TV's and protests, it goes to show you how different Lebanon is from the rest of the Arab world. Just got back from a wonderful trip there where we stayed with the family of a friend of Vanessa's that she met while working in south africa this summer and they turned out to be a wonderful Druze family that live on Jebel Lebnan in a house that is still all shot up from the civil war (their particular house was shot up by a US destroyer off the coast). Besides having no heat, being full of some strain of mosquito that can thrive in freezing temperatures, and being without power 4-6 hours a day, it was great. From what I experienced, Lebanon almost doesn't belong in the Middle East it feels so European, and parts of Beirut in particular feel like a modern european city (minus the old buildings here and there that are full of bullet holes), except that people speak Arabic. Or barely Arabic, their dialect is so chock full of english and french. It's like there are degrees of coolness, and each Arab country I go to I think they are the really cool Arabs, then I go to another one and the people I used to think were really cool seem really low-class. I started in Egypt, then went to Syria, then Jordan, then Lebanon, like rungs of a ladder the stereotypes are already setting in my head.

We rented a car and for 8 days set out early in the morning and toured around a certain area and then came back to the home base in the evening for dinner. I think we saw just about every major site there was to see considering you can drive from the northern to southern border in about 4 hours. We went south into Hezbullah country, Sidon* (star indicates very nice), Tyre, North to Byblos*, Tripoli, East to Qadisha valley (becharre*),And Bekaa valley (Baalbek*), West to Druze mountains (Deir al-Qamar, Beit al-din*, the cedars), straight up on the telefreaky gondola ride up to the top of Jouneh-Harissa*, and straight down into the Jeita grotto caves* (best caves I've ever seen in my life, part of them you take a boat into), making side-trips and whatnot. And of course one has to spend a few days getting to know Beirut. The restaurants, malls, new buildings, people with money, war-scars, eclectic shops, all make it fascinating just to walk around in. We got and insiders tour and saw places and things that made me feel like I was at times in New York or Rome or Paris, but never in the middle east.

Despite being somewhat eletist and full of themselves, I was really impressed with how open minded and educated most Lebanese were, but also couldn't help but notice thier amazing good looks - they've somehow hit the genetic jackpock with thier mix of phonecian/ greek/ french/ arab/ turkish/ whatever, because I've never seen so many good looking people in my life. There are also an incredible amount of foreigners there, I mean who knew until the war last year when Australia had to suddenly evacuate over 5 thousand Australians, and canada 10 thousand, and France 20 thousand, etc, etc, that there were that many foreigners there?

Of course most people thought we were crazy for going to lebanon right now because of the assassinations/ explosions that take place every few months, but beirut is so big, and the assasinations so targeted, that it is really just as safe as anywhere else if you ask me. Considering the crime rate is just a small fraction here than that of any large US city, you are more likely to get killed in DC or LA than in Lebanon. It's so funny to me how people here hear about the crime rate in the US and are afraid to travel there, and Americans hear about some explosions "somewhere" in the ME and are afraid to travel there. Probably just as well for both of them.

Prices for everything were so high we weren't able to buy a lot, although we did manage to buy a 200$ maclaren stroller for Alexa because the new one we bought her in Syria fell apart. She also learned to walk while in Lebanon - hooray. Now back to Christmas in Syria... :(

more pics at: http://picasaweb.google.com/trent.rockwood/Lebanon

2007-12-05T15:51:00.000-08:00

The picture to the left is sunset at the citadel in the old city. That's where we actually live, inside the ancient walls of a castle, in a tent, on top of a camel. In case you were interested.

So I was blowing barbucas yesterday with Alexa (half spanish-half english word for bubbles) when three bubbles floating in the air suddenly all floated together and became one bubble. It blew my mind for the rest of the day. Otherwise it's just been studying and reading the required 50 pgs a day of Arabic novels. Vanessa has been hanging out with a new circle of friends from Spain and Alexa loves playing with the other kids. There is also a neonatal conference hosted at the University sponsored by the LDS church and I've been helping out touring the doctors around town. I find it's always more fun showing people where you live than actually living there. Everyone in Syria was holding their breath for about a week when the Lebanese elections fell through, but things look like they are going to hold and so we'll probably spend at least part of the christmas holiday in Lebannon. Below is thanksgiving with the Morgans.

We went to an art show the other day in Mezze and it was really pathetic, only about two small rooms with some really mediocre paintings. It is the best of the three or four galleries in town which are perpetually deserted. It brought to mind how lacking the cultural scene is in Syria (and the Middle east in general). People just don't care about anything outside of money, sex, and food. I guess that could be said for most of the world, but.... I really like Syria, but there is a dearth of cultural life here, there is nowhere to dress up and go out to - the few plays in town are usually really amateur Egyptian or Iraqi plays and poorly attended (we went to one on opening night and there were about 30 people in a huge empty auditorium), nobody you ask can name an artist or even tell you what the last book they read was, there is almost no live music, art shows, plays, exhibits, book signings, etc, and the few events that do come to town are usually attended by mostly foreigners and a few rich Syrians who have lived abroad. Cairo is a bit more happening than Damascus, but for a city of 10-15 million it still has less cultural life than a small city of 10-15 thousand out in midwest America. Why is that?

Kabas

2007-11-21T23:23:00.000-08:00

I had heard about Kabas for a while - it is the Syrian equivalent to the Friday market in Cairo, where the poor people go to buy anything and everything they could ever want. People set up their wares on both sides of a highway and the junk market stretches on for about two kilometers.

I love looking in these markets for hidden treasures, antiques or things you just can't find anywhere else. Vanessa thinks I'm crazy for going to markets like this, even most Syrians think I'm crazy or don't even know it exists. My favorite part of course was the Animal market where there were jars of snakes, squirrels, turtles, all kinds of birds and fish, cats, dogs, gerbils, etc.

Otherwise I have been making regular visits to the dentist because of all the sweets that I've been eating over here. Almost everything you eat here has massive amounts of sugar in it, and people eat sweets like mad. One doctor told us that almost 80% of Syrians over the age of 40 have diabetes, so pretty much diabetes is just expected. You can't believe how much sugar is in everything from the "fresh" juices and tea to the sugary syrupy desserts. Anyways, I had two cavities and went to one of the best dentists in town and it cost me $30. His office was cleaner and more modern than my dentist in the US. I love the health care here.

For Thanksgiving we ate a big meal at the missionary couples house last night complete with stuffing one of their kids sent from the states. Tonight we're going to a thanksgiving potluck dinner that all of the flagship students are having, and we're all going in on an imported turkey that will cost us about $60. Can't wait.

In their latest series of blocking dangerous websites, the Syrian authorities have blocked facebook, Vanessa's sole social outlet, so both her and I apologize for not being able to reply to any recent comments.

Hanging out in the only public garden in Damascus, called the botanical garden inside the old city. In the background you can see the Damascus citadel, a huge fortress that has been closed to the public for restoration ever since the mid nineties. If you look closely in the middle of the picture you can see Vanessa sitting on the stroller nursing Alexa.

Going shopping in the old city just outside the spice market

Alexa doing her hair.

There are a few more pics of the Kabas market here, if interested: http://picasaweb.google.com/trent.rockwood/Kabas

Gypsy

2007-11-15T12:09:00.000-08:00

This is us getting exited about winter clothing. Vanessa and I at least. We pulled our suitcases down from the little storage room everyone has above their bathroom and packed up our summer clothes until next year. It is really refreshing to own so little.

Today when Vanessa was making her daily visit to the park by our house it was invaded by some Gypsy kids who terrorized the entire playgound and fought and tossed bottles and kids around until some men got together and threw them out. Vanessa was traumatized by one kid who had been hit by a car at some point and was mangled and kept wanting to come up and bother Alexa. Gypsies are a problem here as in all eastern countries as they aren't allowed to go to government schools and so can never pull themselves out of the poverty/begging cycle. They just kind of roam the streets begging and wreaking havoc. In addition to that a guy asked her if she was Russian, which is another way of asking if she was a prostitute.

I need to post some pictures of us as relatives are starting to complain. To the right is Alexa getting ready for her nightly shower from the faucet above the toilet (see below). She is saying a few words now and almost walking without help from the wall and goes crazy over other babies, cats, and telephone ringtones. To the horror of Vanessa, her favorite music to dance to is Bluegrass Hillbilly music and doesn't really like latin.

We've been going a little crazy with the perfume shops in town, where they will mix with their magical syringes any cologne, perfume or scent on the market, and it smells exactly the same as the real thing. We found these mini pottery jugs that you can fill with the scents and it slowly seeps through like an air freshener, so we have hung them about our apartment and it smells of sweet, sweet lavender. Like I'm coming home to a fresh field.

We just got back from dinner in the old city and saw that they had torn up the entire main street (straight street) and are re-doing it in cute cobblestone with nice lighting and are doing an entire face lift to the whole bab sharki section of town (in time for the Arab summit no doubt). I hadn't been to that part of the old town in over a month and I saw about five new restaurants, the place is really becoming something worth seeing. So you should come and see.

Chilly Willy

2007-11-01T04:58:00.000-07:00

This halloween we are being party poopers and not going out. There is a party at the Marine house, but where would one find a costume I don't know, unless we wanted to dress in some crazy Syrian leapord print, but then nobody would know we were dressing up. We're probably going to pick a movie out of our growing pile of 50 cent bootleg movies I pick up under the presidents bridge on my way home from school. That's one great thing about having no copyright laws - that you can buy the latest dvds, cds, or computer software for under a buck.

We visited the shia mosque of saida zeinab the other day, and got to see people weeping and wailing around the tomb of one of the prophet's (SAS) grand daughters. It's a shia mosque built by Iranian funds and has walls that are covered with tons of really tiny mirrors. I also bought some little bricks of mud from mecca that shias touch their heads to when they pray. They make good conversation peices on our coffee table. I bought some childrens books for Alexa since she is bored of hers, but once I read through them at home I found they were full of english spelling and grammar errors, not so good for learning to read. We went to the big semi-new mall in Kafr Sousa with the missionary couple and looked around all of the overpriced clothing stores a bit then went shopping in the supermarket in the basement which is a little nicer than the supermarkets where we live, as in they have three kinds of cereal instead of two. There is also a real donught shop and the jordanian fast food chain Chili's where you can get chili cheese fries.

Speaking of chilly, the weather is getting colder, and the women that wear overcoats all year long are finally smiling (a little). Alexa wears long pants and cleans our dirty floors with her constant crawling and rolling around. No matter how often you clean, every day there is a new layer of fine black dust all over everything. Even with the windows closed it gets in. I guess that's what you get in the city with the second worse air quality in the Middle east - right behind Cairo.

Welcome to China

2007-10-16T02:04:00.001-07:00

The Chinese have invaded the Middle East. What started me thinking about Chinese goods wasn't the abundance of chinese crap spewing out of every store, nor was it the rows of chinese street sellers that now line upper Hamra street every night, but it was the man who said proudly "but this was made in china!" when explaining why the Arabic wall hanging was more expensive than its Syrian made rival. People actually think Chinese goods are top quality! There are a bunch of new stores in town called "The Chinese Expo" that showcase shelves upon shelves of cheap Chinese jewelry, electronics, clothes, even food, and people consider it upscale merchandise. I don't know who started this rumor or how long it will last. The chinese-made "Chery" car is also becoming one of the most popular cars (according to the internet, the name of the car was supposed to be translated as "Cheery", but after printing thier spelling mistake on all of thier cars the Chinese company stuck with the new name. You'd think one would check.) alongside the Syrian-made "Sham", and the Iranian "Saba".

In other news, the heat is finally starting to subside and we are weaning ourselves off of 24 hour air conditioning. Ramadan and Eid are now also over, and we have to adjust our night schedule to a daylight one, rather than going out to eat at 11 or 12 and walking around with the crowds of people shopping until 1 or 2.

For those of you with no kids, stop reading now.
Alexa just learned how to clap her hands and can walk along furniture and walls and says "baby" although I'm not sure if she knows what she's saying. She learned how to wave goodbye but always waits until the person has turned around, then we can't get her to stop, she goes crazy for cats and yells whenever she sees other little kids. So cute!

Things she won't remember

2007-10-14T09:43:00.001-07:00

We just got back from a great trip down to Jordan, and it really made me realize just how dirty and isolated Syria really is. I hadn't been to Jordan for over ten years and it has really blossomed into the Switzerland of the Levant. Wide, clean streets, beautiful new and modern buildings, American and European shops and restaurants everywhere, one could really isolate oneself in an American environment there if one so desired. Good thing I don't.

We spent our first few days in Amman doing the shopping that one can't do in Damascus, there is a Carfour (the French Wallmart), and malls that have pretty much all the same shops one would find in Tysons Corner, VA. We somehow forgot our stroller on the taxi out of Damascus, but luckily there was an extra one at church in Amman where we went to watch conference. When we went to rent our car we realized that we had forgotten both our driving licesces in Damascus, so we had to do the rest of the trip by bus - which can be an adventure in and of itself with the loud music, tons of smoke, crazy conversations, people passing the baby up and down the bus, each foul mouth kissing her, unscheduled stops, etc.

This was my third time to Petra but every time it is as impressive as the first. A lot has changed in ten years, for example the canyon leading into the ruins (the Siq) is now paved, and you can't ride horses down it, in addition to paying $30 to enter instead of $2. This time we dodged the tourists on donkeys up the long trek to the Deir al-Mousa, a temple carved into the rock up at the top of a mountain which was inspiring, then we rode camels back out to the entrance of the park.

The next day we caught a bus down to the red sea at Aqaba and made the mistake of staying at a cheap backpacker hotel the first night and leaving that same night because of worms in the bathroom and the general disgusting condition of the room. So we jumped in a taxi that took us down a few hundred yards from the Saudi Border at the Coral Bay resort on South Beach and spent the rest of the time snorkeling and swimming at the pool. We ended up meeting a couple of foreign couples also living in Damascus and hopefully they will widen Vanessa's circle of (bored) foreign wives with kids living in Damascus.

After two days we returned to Amman and caught another bus down to the dead sea where we spent a restful day at the Marriott resort floating in the dead sea and swimming and eating as much as we could of our last night of Jordanian food.

Despite Vanessa wanting to stay in Amman for the rest of the year, I for one am glad to be back. There is something about Syria's backwardness that is charming, a last bastion of an un-westernized middle eastern city that has a flavor and excitement that you just don't find anywhere else, and at the rate things are changing here, may not last very much longer.

More photos can be found @ http://picasaweb.google.com/trent.rockwood/Jordan

Life in Shaalaan

2007-09-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

That is where we live, it is basically an upscale clothes shopping district. To the left is the street we actually live on (not so upscale), tucked quietly away from all the noise. We stopped at a baby store the other day and the outfit Vanessa picked out cost $160. Needless to say we looked elsewhere. The good thing is that everything you could want or need is available within a one-block radius, the bad thing is that it is mostly imported stuff from Europe or the U.S. and therefore ridiculously expensive (a small container of haagen daaz is $12). So we have to go farther afield to find reasonable prices. For some reason, leopard print is all the rage in Damascus right now, and you see women in full leopard print veils and robes and even matching nails. Vanessa thinks it's hilarious and always points out the leopard print people, in addition to clothes with lots of buttons, zippers, bright colored things hanging off them, in general it's like people are dressed for mardi gras all the time - just covered in it from head to foot (very few women dress they way the models do in the stores). There are some great deals though, like the fresh juice and vegetables, I guess if you ate simple and healthy it would be really cheap to live here, but if you want to eat a ton of fatty food American style it gets expensive - the opposite of the food system in the US.

Ramadan is going on for the next month and it's great, every evening when people are ending thier fast and eating the whole city becomes a ghost town and I take Alexa out on a walk in her stroller in the city and just walk right down the center of usually busy streets or circles that are empty and quiet. The only bad thing is that all the shops in the whole city close at four or five and it's hard to find food, but otherwise the lack of traffic, cars, noise, and exhaust make the whole atmosphere pleasant.

I went to KFC the other day, most people here think it is an American-Israeli conspiracy sent here to damage Syria in some way, although no-one can explain exactly how. One person told me KFC stood for "Kenesset Fried Chicken" and Colonel Sanders was a settler. The funny thing about it is that the KFC kiddie meal actually comes with a plastic machine gun - no kidding, KFC is actually giving out plastic machine guns to kids with their kiddie meals in Syria. It was so clean and bright inside it surprised me, I remembered what a clean and efficient fast-food place is like, with nobody squeeging the floor as I was trying to get in, it wasn't filled with smoke, the same person took my order, gave it to me, and took my money (as opposed to 3 different people), nobody tried to throw pickles in everything I ordered, etc. It's the little things you start to notice.

Below is a recent picture of Alexa. She's doing well besides staying up every night until 1 or 2 for no good reason. She just likes the night life I guess. She also likes being the center of attention wherever we go. People stop to take her picture, ask us if they can hold her, or just randomly grab her and kiss her, pet her, pinch her cheek, etc.

Horse Crac Castle

2007-08-27T00:56:00.000-07:00

You definitely start noticing some recurring themes as you travel through the dozens upon dozens of Syrian villages and cities - and that is garbage and dirt. Syria has a lot of amazing ancient ruins to see, but nothing very impressive has been built in the last few centuries. I think it's safe to say that anything built or lived in since about the 11th century you can pass on.
We started our trip on the coast up along the "cote d'litter" and visited a dozen or so castles, Roman ruins, and trash strewn beaches. Our favorite castle was the Crac du Chevalier, or horse crack castle that reminded me of something out of Lord of the Rings. Since we couldn't find a babysitter for Bastawisi, my turtle, we ended up taking him along with us and of course couldn't leave him in the baking car while we toured sites, so we walked around with a baby, stroller, diaper bag, turtle in a cage, and Vanessa insisted on bringing her laptop everywhere so it wouldn't get stolen. It was like a walking circus.
Once we got to our destination of Latakia, we stayed for only one day and had to leave because the bugs were so bad and the muddy beaches that smelled like sewage just weren't worth it. The fully veiled women and kids seemed to be enjoying themselves, it kind of reminded me of Ocean City or the Jersey coast, a vacation spot for those of sunburned necks.
Next we went to Aleppo, stopping on the way at another string of castles, and staying just outside the old city for two days. Aleppo was wonderful, the food was excellent, and the old city charming. The people tended to stare a bit more than in Damascus, but were very nice, and we really got into the different types of olive oil and laurel soap they make there, the most expensive being aged over a process taking 3 years!
I soon realized that the days of cheap backpacker hotels are over now I have a baby, when we'd go to the hotel of my choice Vanessa would just give me a look and look at the baby, and I knew we were not staying there. Alexa loved the trip however, as long as she got her naps. The way it worked out though, we'd always be out and about in the middle of the heat of the day and we'd just keep her doused with water and she'd sleep while we were carrying her around. It was over 100 degrees every day, but luckily we had AC in our car and hotel.
After Aleppo, we went down to Hama, stopping along the way at a bunch of cities of the dead, huge Christian cities (over 800 of them) that were all abandoned almost a thousand years ago when trading routes changed. They are beautiful, and are full of huge stone churches, villas, bath houses, etc. My two favorites were St. Simeon's in the north, and Serjilla and Bara in the south. In this picture I'm sitting on the pillar that St. Simeon sat on for 37 years.
Then we stayed for two days in Hama, visiting the surrounding regions. Apamea was particularly cool, an old roman city that has a 2km long colonnaded street still standing. In Hama there were originally 200 of these waterwheels in the Orontes river that provided water and irrigation to the city, but now only 11 are still functioning. They make this really eerie squeaking sound like an angry whale that you can hear from a distance.
Then we went back home to Damascus and had dinner up on the top of the mountain overlooking the city, overall it was a great ending to a great week.

Check out the web album for more shots: http://picasaweb.google.com/trent.rockwood/2007826

I think she remembers me

2007-08-18T08:55:00.001-07:00

My wife I mean. I'm pretty sure Alexa had forgotten all about me. In any case she's happy to have me now - Vanessa and Alexa arrived last week and we've been having a good time seeing Damascus, eating, walking, sleeping, eating, walking, sleeping, etc. Alexa has changed a lot, she does a lot more tricks, and is crawling around spilling and tearing things and starting to stand up without any help from people or couches.

We took a small day field trip to Bosra (thus the small picture), a pretty old Roman ruin made out of black basalt rock, with supposedly the best preserved Roman amphitheater in the world, along with the third mosque ever built and the third Christian church ever built - but I think I mentioned previously how Syria mysteriously lays claim to the top five of everything that happened in the world. The thing that makes the amphitheater so interesting is that is is surrounded by an Ayyubid castle.

We found a pretty good house in Shaalaan for more than it's worth, but everything is nearby. This next week we are renting a car and traveling within Syria for a bit, Vanessa also got a good contract job with the World Bank that she'll be able to do from here, so we'll take our time and I'll tend Alexa while she works.

Mar Mousa

2007-08-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

I spent this weekend in a hermits cave up at one of the most spectacular monasteries I've ever been to. It's only about a hour and a half out of Damascus, set up in a rocky outcrop of high mountains in the middle of a huge desert plain. After finding someone who will drive you to the foot of the mountain from the nearest city, nabak, you have to hike your way up a long, steep rocky trail towards what looks like a medevil castle built right into the face of the rocks above. The monastery was discovered by an italian monk abandoned since the 13th century, who found donors to restore it to it's former glory, and it is now a fully functioning monastery. The only difficulty for the monks is that it has become a destination for spiritual hippie europeans who make a sort of pilgrimage to the site and stay for weeks at a time meditating and living a sort of communal existance. Everyone helps prepare the food, everyone cleans up, there are 'silent hours' where nobody can talk for hours at a time, and most people sit in the restored chapel that has amazingly vivid frescoes from the 11th century and read scripture or look very reverent. There are rooms available to visitors at no charge, however when they fill up, the only other option is to sleep in one of the dozens of caves that surround the monastery, complete with mattresses and heaters (for the winter).

We decided we wanted to get home for cheap, and so hiked back through the mountains to the nearest village, about 8km away and ended up getting lost, asking some bedouin shepards for directions, finding a cement factory and hitching a ride back with a cement truck.

Iraqi Refu-g

2007-08-07T13:12:00.001-07:00

I thought I could escape the Iraq war by coming to Syria, ok, not really, but I didn't think it would have such an impact on my wallet. I've been unsuccessfully looking for aparments this last week and can't believe the prices! The 2 million extra Iraqis have driven up the prices for everything from rent to potatoes. Last night I waited 1 hour for a taxi, which these days is a luxury, I would even have welcomed a microbus with an empty seat, but it's no use, everything is so crowded there are 50 people on the same corner as me all trying to get a ride. The apartments I've seen - which aren't necessarily in the nicest areas, are way beyond my price range, and are small, dingy, and dirty. The cheapest I have been able to find so far is $700 for a one bedroom on the roof of a 6 story apartment building with no elevator, and that's in Arnoos! Don't get me started with Sha'alaan, Mezze or Abu Romana. It looks like I might be staying in the old city after all, but even there the cheapest I've been able to find for a seperate apartment is $400. Most of the two bedroom apartments downtown are just as expensive as an apartment in DC! Power in all of Syria is also shut off for 2 to 3 hours a day due to the demand. It is pretty miserable in 115 degree weather with no fan or a/c. I feel especially bad for the ice cream sellers that have to try to sell tubs of melted goo.

Palmyra

2007-08-07T03:38:00.000-07:00

If you thought Palmyra was just a place famous in Mormon history in upstate New York, you are not only uninformed, you're also uncultured. I went on a weekend trip to Tadmur this last week and was able to see one of the largest standing ancient cities in the world. It was mentioned in the old testament as having been built by King Solomon, and successively passed from Greeks to Persians to Romans as a major city on the silk road from China. When Queen Zenobia of Palmyra decided to create an idependant state and sent armies as far away as Palestine and Egypt rome decided they had had enough and captured her, whereupon the city rebelled, and was consequently razed to the ground by the Roman Army. If what is standing today is only the remnants of what used to be there it must have been quite an impressive city. There are hundreds of columns still standing over a huge area, hundreds of arches, you can't kick the dirt without unearthing a column, peice of a statue, or pottery shards, and intricately carved column heads lie around the city fields and sides of the road like so much rubbish. It didn't take me more than a few minutes and the right questions in the Tadmur (Arabic name of the city) market before merchants started taking out their hidden caches of "illegal" artifacts that they apparently go out and dig up at night. Of course their concept of their worth is inflated past the bounds of reality, although I bargained a small glass "tear catcher" bottle from $600 to $30, my meager stipend still doesn't allow me those kinds of extras. One of the other impressive sites in Tadmur are the above and below-ground tombs that keep being discovered by the dozen every year (a few years ago they were putting in another natural gas line and happened upon 30 new tombs). They are large and ornate and most of them haven't been touched for 4k years. We got special permission to visit one of the tombs that is off the tourist track that had a fully stone door that we pushed open and creaked and let out a bunch of dust and really made us feel like indy's.

Assad and I

2007-07-22T08:43:00.000-07:00

Coming to Syria means getting aquainted with the president - Bashar al-Assad. You see his picture everywhere, in shops, on the streets, in people's homes, etc, and you think 'do people really like him that much? Or are they just scared not to like him?' And after being here for a month I can say that this picture thing is really quite an effective policy. I really feel some sort of afinity for him and feel like he's my friend or relative or something. He has done some amazing things for Syria since his father left which has endeared him to most Syrians, the most visible being allowing foreign banks to enter the country. Now the average person can get loans to buy cars, build houses, restaurants, stores, etc. So in a country that was once known for it's old cars, three out of every five cars are now brand new european or japanese imports, new hotels are growing up around town like weeds (although I can't imagine who is staying in them, since I only see a few straggling european and asian tourists around town), and there are new restaurants with flat-screen tv's, water misters, and remote control roofs all over, and they are full of young people with disposable income!

I went today to the suq al haramiyya - the theifs bazaar, there are two of them in Damascus, one near abasiyya and another near the old city. They're not as exiting as the grand one one in Cairo, but you can find some stolen goods, some broken electronics, bikes, your basic animals, home improvement supplies, etc. I also went with some friends to the tekiyye sulimaniyye market where there are some more traditional handicrafts for sale. I't so hot right now in Damascus that it's not that much fun to go out and do anything, so mostly I lay in my hot bedroom and sweat the days away.

Vanessa is in Seattle visiting friends, and then goes down to Peru with her Parents next week, and I'll get to see them in about three weeks! Can't wait.

Below is the tekke sulimaniyya - the handicrafts bazaar, a quaint place with some different products and better prices than some of the other main bazaars.

I falafel

2007-07-13T03:27:00.000-07:00

What was once a quite enjoyable experience - eating, has become a chore I don't always look forward to. The once great food, when eaten everyday for three meals without variation starts to become bland, and I find myself craving such delicacies as cereal and frozen dinners. Of course there is quite a bit of variation in the restaurants, but the fast food available on the street that everybody eats when they are out and about is only of four sorts, shwarma, falafel, saaj, and fatayeer. First, shwarma, (chicken and lamb) - how long has the meat been on it's spindle is anyone's guess. It is eaten slathered with mayonaise and pickles and dipped in a puddle of chicken grease. I just get it with plain meat and bread.

Second, falafel, with it's distinctive Syrian donut shape. The part I like is when they smoosh the falafel into the bread with their fingers they just finished smoothing their hair back with. It comes with tahina and cabbage and some yogurt.

Third and fourth, saaj, fatayeer and it various bread-like brothers and sisters, is usually a pancake like bread with cheese and murtadela (the spam of the east), or fatayeer is a small pizza like bread with either cheese on it, spices, or ground meat. I don't have pictures of it to do it justice, but believe me, I have these four foods coming out my ears.

Whenever I have time to go to restaurants in between studying and sleeping it is a treat, and I get kebabs and hummus and rice and other great things that make me happy. But since I am so tired of eating the other food, I often just don't eat during the day, and have one meal at night. In between I eat slushes, fruit juice and ice cream.

This last weekend we went on a trip to Bloudan, a beautiful mountain resort of the rich and famous in the middle east and swam at a French hotel that has been 5 stars since 1950. We also went to the source of the river Barada that runs through damascus, and ate lunch in a cave in a mountain that has a restaurant in its caverns, and boat rides through the pools that fill it. Someday I'll post pictures of it. Stay tuned.

anriki

2007-07-05T11:32:00.000-07:00

I went to see enrique iglesias in concert the other night and it was priceless. He is the first big western pop star to come to syria in over 30 years. There was a turn out of about 10k people, even though the tickets started at $80 and went up to $200. I guess it shows you the size of the emerging middle class here. Anyways, I bought tickets on the street in front of the show for $4, and that might account for a portion of the crowd.

Once I entered the concert venue however, there was no organization and my friends and I just walked right up to the $200 section.While he was singing all of these scantily clad women, along with the conservative veiled women were all going crazy yelling and screaming and crying and fainting, etc. I had no idea he was so popular here. Then they started rushing the stage and climbing all over him when he was singing and trying to kiss and hug him while the security guards just stood back and watched. Finally some order was established, but throught the concert guys and girls kept rushing the stage to try to touch him and the bouncers had to keep throwing them down. It was hilarious. Then for one song he picked a girl from the audience and brought her onstage and sang to her, and at the end of the song totally kissed her on the mouth, which, while most people were cheering and clapping, there was almost an audible gasp, and she was obviously pretty uncomfortable. That's just not something you do in a Muslim country, and my friends and I were joking that nobody's going to want to marry her now, which, sadly, is probably true.

The below picture is of Bakdash, a famous Syrian ice-cream institution. It's always packed, day and night until it closes at midnight, and they 'supposedly' were the first people to ever make ice cream. The more I talk to people here it seems like everything that happened in the world somehow happened first in Syria. Anyways, the ice cream is full of gum mastic and pistachios, and is almost a mix between taffy and ice cream, and has a unique flavor from pounding it with cedar clubs when they make it.

Vanessa is having fun in South Africa and comes home this weekend. She is at a biological reserve of some sort and has been on safaris and seen a ton of wild, nasty animals. Alexa is supposedly making a larger variety of noises and using her hands as real hands instead of just something to suck on.

old city damascus

2007-06-30T07:11:00.001-07:00

I just had a really neat experience in the old city last night. There was this music festival put on by the French cultural center where there was live music by different kinds of musicians in about ten different arab houses around the old walled city. You were givent a map and could walk around to all of these immaculate old arab houses with the courtyards and the fountains and listen to all kinds of traditional Arab and modern syrian rock bands. Not only was it cool to walk through the alleys of the old city, replete with hanging balconies and arched doorways, but also to see the real home-grown artsy damascus scene.

There were a lot of local Syrian youth with long hair and black clothes who belonged to the bands or were artists - it really felt like an emerging scene, like something you'd experience in Paris in the 30's or Berlin in the 60's. It's something I haven't ever seen in the middle east outside of a few small groups in the American university in Cairo.

The old city has a real magic to it and is going through a major revival. You can't turn a corner without seeing a house under renovation, and every third doorway is now a sheeshy little restaurant with an open courtyard and a remote control roof that rolls back in the evening to let the breeze in. I would even consider staying in the old city for the rest of the year if I could find a place with AC, a western toilet, and a real kitchen (not a cement block with a portable burner beside a leaky marble basin).

I also went to the international flower show at a local park, which was pretty depressing, not even as impressive as the plant section at any local home depot. Most of the plants were plastic, and besides the few potted plants for sell, there were a stalls selling honey as a natural cure for everything from arthritis to impotence. My favorite was a stall selling some creams for breast enlargement and other ones for breast reduction.

Maalula

2007-06-26T04:59:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately - the Syrian government just blocked the blogspot.com internet address, so I can't even see my blog once it's published. Lucky for me, the address where you publish from is different, so hopefully I can continue the blog.

This weekend we went on a trip to Maalula, one of the few villages in Syria where they 'supposedly' still speak Aramaic, the language of the bible and Jesus, etc. However I paid close attention to all of the old people we passed and I only heard Arabic, so I'm going to throw some ash in the soup and call the story only plausible.

It is an ancient christian village that houses a ton of old churches dating back to bible times, and a handful of saints that performed various wonderful miracles, one of which was the splitting of a nearby mountain to effect the escape of a nun. It is the maalula gorge where you can walk down a narrow canyon not unlike zion canyon in utah, and exit into a wide, round opening with a lot of old graves cut out of the rock. There are caves everywhere full of roman and byzantine carvings and habitations of ascetic monks, some of whom still live there.

We also saw a bunch of modern monestaries built on older roman or greek temples and that incorporate the ancient temples into their modern structures. They are mostly syriac orthodox, greek orthodox, or greek catholic monasteries, each with thier own unique style of worship.

The northwestern mountains of Syria are full of mostly christian villages that rich Syrians are now building houses in to escape the summer heat of damascus.

The heat is becoming quite hot, not as bad as DC, but especially for all of us living in the old city without any air conditioning. The highlight of the night is when you move out of the wet sweat spot in your bed for a minute and then roll back into it when it's cold. Quite refreshing.

fumigated turkey sandwich

2007-06-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

The menu's really should be collected in Syria and the Middle East in general and be made into a book, every meal includes ten minutes of laughing at the english mistakes on the menu. One of my recent favorites was a "fumigated turkey sandwich", "rough beef", and "salted cock".

Other than attending classes studying late into the night I haven't been up to that much recently. Of course I am the type of person who always has to be doing something if I think there is something out there worth doing. So at the expense of my sleep I grab an hour or two whenever I can and explore the city from end to end and try to visit everything listed in every one of the three existing guidebooks to Syria. I've pretty much worn out every street of the old city and have cataloged every restaurant with a rooftop patio, cool mosque or church, traditional arab house, bath house, or interesting shop that I want to come back to. Speaking of bath houses, I think a visit to a bath house is a cultural experience worth describing.

I just got back from a trip to the traditional syrian bath house and am feeling fresh as a lime. First you enter the main courtyard that has a bubbling fountain in the center, and is surrounded by benches along the wall for people to rest on after their bath. You put all of your valuables in a lock box, and are given a towel to put on while you change out of your clothes - all of your clothes. Then you traditionally get a shave, if needed, or go straight back into the main steam room, with a long slab of heated marble in the middle, and steam coming out of small pipes all around the room.

You can sit on the marble slab if you are brave and look up at the large domed ceiling covered with small glass lightholes that stream in sunlight and give an unearthly feel to the room. There are marble tubs around the room that have faucets running cold water, and you are provided with a little plastic bucket to occasionally throw over yourself to cool down. Once all of your pores have opened and you are ready to die of heat exhaustion, you go out into an antechamber and call for the guy to help you, usually his name is Abdu. He sits you on the floor and takes out a glove that is a mixture of course wool and some sort of rough sticks that he proceeds to rub you down with, which at first feels quite pleasant, but then turns excruciatingly painful as he ruthlessly tears away at your skin. Tears were in my eyes, but I dared not cry in front of the Arab. He rubs down your whole body - yes, the whole body, and then washes you down with soap that stings your skin as it enters the abrasions. When he turned me over, he showed me piles of my dead grey skin, rolled into little worm-like strands littered on the floor. Then he calls another guy, usually named Ali, who lays you down on a big stone slap and proceeds to give you a full body massage. Once he is done, you are shown back into the main entry courtyard and are wrapped with towels head to foot and sit down like jelly and are served a cold drink. Once you are done, you leave the bath house feeling like a new man.

Vanessa is in South Africa and I have not heard if she is alive or not, but hopefully all is well. I was also able to attend church this friday and increase attendance at the service by 50%. I also found out that the park I was hanging out in on Fridays to speak to people and improve my conversation skills is a park primarily frequented by gay Syrians - no wonder they were so friendly!

Dimishiq at last

2007-06-15T11:04:00.000-07:00

For some reason I am not able to access my rockwoodsindc address from Syria and so will have to maintain this as our main blog for the time being.

In any case -

It is so great to finally be here! The lure of the east - strong in me it is. After my luggage was lost in Frankfurt by Luftansa for almost a week, I had to wear same clothes everyday and every night wash my underclothes and hang them up to dry in my hotel room. Most people at school didn't know I didn't get my bags and assumed I only brought one shirt to Syria. The food really amazing, the stuff in the restaurants anyways where you are brought about 8 plates of food - two or three kinds of salad, babaganoush, hummus, more eggplant stuff, bread, yogurt, a plate of mayonaise with garlic (which I don't touch), and about 4 different kinds of meat - all for only about 4-5 dollars aperson. Below are also some of the sweets available off the street.

I am surprised at how much more moderately dressed people are here compared to Egypt - girls with veils walk down the street with thier friends who are wearing skimpy skirts and skin-tight tank-tops, and the majority of Syrian guys don't even cat-call and ogle at every female walking past, something almost incomprehensible from my experiences in other nearby countries.

I'm living with a Syrian family in the old walled city of Damascus for the summer, together with about 200 other foreigners that rent rooms from the christian quarter of the old city. I hear just about as much German and Italian as I do Arabic walking around my neighborhood.

The most amazing thing about the old city is how a crumbling, dirty, wall will have a small door with a sign above it to a restaurant, and once you go in the door to the other side, you are met by a beautiful courtyard flowing with mosiacs and flowers, and flat-screen tv's on the walls playing Arabic MTV and hip Damascenes eating lunch. One I went to the other day had these little hoses strung over your head, and everyfew minutes they would spray mist into the air to cool you off.

Today I went to what's called the 'palace of bones' built by the ottomans, gorgeous tile and woodwork and colors, and they had these manequins set up doing different things, but all of the manequins were male, and so all of the female characters looked like men in drag. Here is a picture of the place:http://www.flickr.com/photos/spdl_n1/119875972/.

I miss Vanessa and Alexa like crazy and can't wait until they join me in August. And until I get our digital camera from Vanessa there will be few pictures. She will be in South Africa next week and I'll be sure to post her news from there.