Winter Wonderland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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