Snow in Europe you say?! Well it's been deserts and beaches and sunshine here!

So apparently there’s just a bit of snow in Europe right now. Unless BBC news, photos on facebook and people sending me news from home are all collaborating in an elaborate plan to make me regret my decision not to come home for Christmas and enjoy a proper winter wonderland.  First few days of December in Syria and the temperature was still reaching 25 degrees Celsius and we could sit and sunbathe on the front steps of the university during our breaks! Not bad. It is definitely cold at night now though, the blankets are out, portable heaters are on and people are even wearing coats out in the evening! I woke up this morning to the first proper rain we’ve had since I’ve been here! It rained for about 15 minutes one day back in October but that’s been all. It didn’t last long this morning either, less than an hour, but it was overcast and windy the rest of the day. Apparently winter just arrived in Syria. Fingers crossed that it will go back to being sunny and warm during the day time though. So, enough about the weather, wow, I really am British.

I’m still living in the same house and decided against moving at all in the end.  I did view some apartments outside the old city with my Norwegian housemate Maria but she is applying for a job in Lebanon so would move there in January if she’s successful and once we persuaded our landlord to put a roof over our central courtyard/lounge and provide us with lots of heaters our house has become fairly snug.  The location is actually really good here too and although living in the old city leads to high levels of tourist hatred and an amazing ability to weave in between irritatingly slow crowds of people it’s not worth the hassle of moving for my last month and a half here.

During our last week’s holiday in November three other Durham students and I did decide to go to Jordan in the end.  For the first few days there we based ourselves in Amman.  Although Amman is definitely the hilliest city I have ever been to it boasts very little in the way of exciting attractions and is a fairly boring place to be for more than a couple of days.  It is a good base to travel to the Dead Sea and Jerash from and these were both definitely worth a visit. The weather in Jordan was definitely hotter than in Syria and going to the Dead Sea felt like being at a luxury beach resort for the day! The Dead Sea lies on Jordan’s western border so the bank on the other side is Israel/Palestine.  If you want to swim in the Dead Sea you have to pay to enter a private beach where there’s also a swimming pool, restaurant, lots of palm trees etc etc.

Although it was odd to be in such a touristy place it was actually really nice to be able to swim and sunbathe in a bikini and this not be seen as completely scandalous or “haram”.  After “swimming” in the Dead Sea (you really can’t swim you have to float, if you try and swim your feet go up in the air your face plunges into the water and you get a face full of horribly salty water that burns your eyes! And if you have any cuts…unlucky!) and plastering ourselves in mud from the shallows (which you can buy for a ridiculous price from the gift shop and is supposed to do wonders for the skin) we spent the rest of the day lazing around the pool. 

The next day we visited Jerash where there are pretty extensive remains of a Roman City – column lined roads, temple, amphitheatre, and a chariot racing arena.

  The amphitheatre isn’t as impressive as the one in Bosra and having not visited Palmyra yet I can’t compare it to that but it’s Jordan’s third tourist attraction after Petra and Wadi Rum. Next we traveled to the very south of Jordan to Aqaba.  I liked Aqaba, it’s right on the coast by the Red Sea, there’s lots of diving and snorkeling , the weather is fantastic, it’s very open with broad palm tree lined streets and beaches and the fish and sea food there is amazing! It was particularly busy when we were there because it was Eid Al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice, and also Hajj so there were many Muslims passing through on their way from Egypt to Saudi.  On the afternoon we arrived we thought we’d go down to the beach for a swim thinking it would be fairly touristy here like at the Dead Sea.  However, we found ourselves to be the only foreigners on the beach even though it was packed with people camping out and having bbq’s for Eid. Every female there was fully covered and in hijab, even those swimming in the sea, so we decided it was safer just to paddle.  To the astonishment and hilarity of everyone in our vicinity though, Jen and David decided that actually they did want to go swimming and due to Jen’s lack of appropriate swimming attire she just went in fully clothed.  This was all fine until they came out and clingy, slightly see through clothes meant that they were attracting quite a large amount of attention and we had to make a quick exit back to the hotel! Nice sunset though.

                             The last two days of our trip were spent in Wadi Rum and this was definitely the highlight for me.  We got a jeep tour with some other travelers so arrived early in the morning, had a day driving around the desert and then camped with Bedouins for the night before returning to Aqaba the next day. Wadi Rum has some seriously impressive scenery…it’s not just sand. There are huge rocky cliffs that rear up overhead and carve chunks out of the sky. Some are close together so form narrow little gorges and if you clamber up you find natural springs tucked away or ancient carvings on the stone. The sand plains seem to stretch on forever and are dotted with scruffy, stunted little trees and the scribble lines of many criss-crossing jeep tracks.

  Our Bedouin jeep drivers (who can’t have been much older than 15 and had to hot wire the jeep every time they wanted to start the engine but nevertheless had some serious skill at driving in soft sand) would stop at places of interest for us to have a wander round or go for a climb for a fantastic view over the desert. We also stopped at the remains of Lawrence of Arabia’s house and I have a new found respect for him and his army surviving out there for so long on such fugal rations.

We reached camp just in time for sunset and were served very sweet hot tea (the best I’ve had so far in the Middle East) as we sat and watched the sun sink behind the distant mountain range on the horizon. The warm orange blaze give way to a peaceful world bathed in bright moonlight from a cloudless, star scattered sky. It was stunning.

  Everyone gathered for dinner in the large main tent and sat on cushions around a blazing fire drinking yet more tea.  The food was fantastic; chicken, lamb meatballs, rice, potatoes, lentils, salads, yogurt… it probably doesn’t sound that great but it was so tasty! Then there was music and some singing and everyone round sat around the fire chatting.  The Bedouins were so friendly and hospitable and have a great sense of humour! They were constantly playing practical jokes and during the musical entertainment I’m pretty sure a group of them just made up a completely random song that some of the other travelers were lapping up as ancient, traditional Bedouin music! It caused quite a lot of hilarity amongst them anyway. Honestly I was so unbelievably tempted to forget about uni in Damascus and just stay with the Bedouins, help out and learn Arabic by living with them. Maybe one day I’ll go back and stay for longer.

We journeyed all the way from Wadi Rum to Damascus the following day which took about 10 hours but other than having a completely crazy taxi driver from Amman to Damascus went very smoothly.  He seemed to enjoy the fact that we spoke Arabic and told every single checkpoint/border guard that we were students from Damascus who spoke better Arabic than him! After we crossed the border into Syria he turned the music up loud and invited us to sing along. After we told him David was a very famous dancer in Britain (it was funny at the time) the party really got going and he cracked out a pack of Heineken! We each took the can he offered us not so much because we wanted to drink it but because we didn’t want him to drink so many! We still had about an hour and a half’s drive to reach Damascus and if you’ve ever seen what the traffic is like in the Middle East…well.  By the time we arrived in Damascus (thankfully in one piece) he’d consumed three cans and was definitely somewhat merry!

So back to Damascus news. The last two and a half weeks of uni have been ok, everything’s winding down a bit because we finish term for Christmas on Thursday and we had a few days which definitely involved more break time than actual teaching! I appear to be managing to fill my new found free time no problem (or perhaps just frittering it away because I don’t feel like I’m doing as much as before).  I’ve got two girls I meet up with for conversation practice. Both are Syrian students but they’re very different. Enas is from Suweida, outside of Damascus and is Druze but she is studying translation at the same university as me. She lives with other Syrian students in an old, slightly run down house not far from me which I love hanging out in. Their lounge area is basically an art studio full of old sculptures and drawings and the walls are covered in scribbles.  They’re all very arty and liberal and very different to anyone else I’ve met here.  It’s really interesting to chat to them but they appear to have a lot of problems getting work and the girls are discriminated against quite a bit. The other girl Diala is from a fairly wealthy, strict Muslim family here in Damascus and studies English literature, again at the same uni as me. She lives at home with her family. It’s just coincidence that they are both at the same uni as me, I didn’t meet them there. Enas I met in Mar Musa and Diala I met on top of Jebel Kasioun one evening when we went up there. I love how easy it is to just chat to and make friends with strangers here! Unfortunately both of them seem to prefer talking English to letting me talk Arabic but I’m going to insist on speaking more Arabic.

I don’t do salsa anymore, my course finished and I decided not to do the next one because I’m going traveling for a bit again before Christmas and then have visitors over Christmas and New Year so would have to miss a lot of classes. It’s strange to think that England will be extremely Christmassy now. The Christian quarter of the old city will apparently get decked out for Christmas and some of the shops there now have some tacky decorations in.  I managed to find fairy lights and an advent calendar for my room! But it would be very easy to forget here that Christmas is just around the corner.

A few days ago we decided to cook a traditional Christmas dinner for the Syrian family that some of the girls I know from my course live with. They live just round the corner from me and I’m there so often I’ve become an honourary member of the house.  The immediate family ended up inviting their extended family and friends so I think there were at least 25 people there in the end! We had roast chicken, roast potatoes, mashed potato and carrot, roasted pupkin an oninons, stuffing, gravy, warm and spiced apple juice, apple pie and custard, cookies, decorated ginger bread biscuits – including a Christmas tree and snow scene – chocolate brownies and chocolate money! It was an absolute mission to prepare but was really fun and I think the family enjoyed it. There are a lot more leaving/Christmas dinners and parties happening this weekend amongst the students when term finishes and most people go home for Christmas but I shall miss most of these because I’m leaving for Northern Iraq on Thursday night after uni for a few days.  There’s a small group of us staying here during the holiday though and my dad and brother are coming to visit late on the 21^st so lots of Christmassy things will be in order then I think.

Well I think that’s definitely enough of a blog entry for one day. Can you tell I’m supposed to be revising for my exam on Thursday?! Oh and Happy New Year! It’s a national holiday today because it’s the Islamic New Year. Congrats if you got to the end…serves all of you who were pestering me for a blog update right! Oh and Happy (belated) 21^st Birthday to Josie Mill – I promised you a shout out and here it is!

Oh and just incase I don’t get round to another entry before Christmas (very likely if I’m honest) then Merry Christmas to everyone!  

Thank goodness for holidays!

So i started writing this post about a month ago but have been a bit busy since! I'll try and summarise the last month without rambling on and on and on...not that i'm prone to that or anything. The week after i wrote my last post we had a weeks holiday from uni and on the 11th of November i'm due another week off.
Originally when they told us we'd have a week off after every 4 weeks of uni i thought this sounded pretty generous, perhaps even excessive seeing as we finish at 1pm every day but now, since doing my extra course, i am so so grateful! The weeks holiday in October was supposedly a chance to catch up on work and chill out a bit after a hectic few weeks but i have never passed up a chance to go traveling and i don't intend to start now! We toyed with the idea of going to Lebanon but i decided against it in the end because i already spent a month there last year and wanted to explore more of Syria before the weather cools off.

I should probably say first though that we did not encounter any dodgy taxi drivers on the way to Malula after my last post, all went annoyingly smoothly, and i was not required to assure the driver that i was merely human. Malula is a funny little place in the desert with a couple of fairly touristy monasteries but we heard some aramaic and once we'd climed up the hill over looking the town the view was pretty cool.

So at the beginning of our weeks holiday in October i travelled to Mar Musa, a fairly famous ecumenical monastary in the middle of nowhere surrounded by desert. My friend Ashley and i wanted to escape Damascus for a while and quite spontaneously decided to go and stay there for a few days. It was amazing! It's hard to capture the atmosphere there just writing about it i'll try.

After getting a taxi from the nearby town of Nebek along an almost deserted stretch of road that leads nowhere except to the monastary we then climbed a few hundred steps (for some reason doing exercise in Syria feels more painful than back home!) and arrived at our destination. It's fairly informal there and travellers drop by and stay for a few days/weeks/months or maybe even years. It's got a great community feel and in exchange for a bed and food people muck in with the cooking or cleaning or farm work or just bring some food or make a donation. The actual monastary is a network of little tiny doors, underground rooms, the stone chapel littered with cushions, tea lights, incense, what would have been lavishly painted walls in their time and the coolest library ever with the most ecclectic collection of books i've ever seen! The mixture of people there was very interesting too, many different nationalities with many different stories. There are nine permanent residents six of which are eurpoean and three are syrians - father paolo who founded Mar Musa is italian my languages got quite a work out while i was there as it cetainly wasn't just arabic being spoken. We spent a morning exploring the mountains behind the monstary, admiring the peace and quiet, the veiws and generally enjoying the fact that our lungs didnt burn from the smog/pollution like they do if you do anything more strenuous than walk in Damascus! Ok so it's not that bad but it certainly isn't fresh somerset countryside air here! I'd like to go back and visit again but it really will be freezing there at night now and a lot of it is open to the elements so we'll see.

Yeah so i said i wouldn't ramble but evidently i lied. The rest of the holiday i mainly stayed in Damascus. We went for a day trip to Quneitra, a town on the edge of the Golan Heights down on the border with Israel. Now a completely deserted ghost town since the Israeli bulldozers destroyed most of it and it's become a sort of memorial to the events of 1973.

It's now UN controlled and you need a permit to go there but it's just an hours drive or so from Damascus.
It was also Ashleys 21st birthday during this week and the definite highlight of that was going to the Four Seasons hotel (the extremely posh hotel in Damascus) for brunch. (Although calling it "brunch" in no way does it justice!) There were whole rooms of food and after paying your 1000 SYP (about 14 quid) it was all you can eat and there was EVERYTHING!!! Not only was there plenty of really high quality arabic food but there was sushi, seafoods, roast beef and lamb, a pasta bar, selection of homemade breads and cheeses, (particularly exciting when all you've had for two months is flat bread and rubber cheese), arabic sweets like bacalava and kanafa, and huge array of pudding and mounds of fresh fruit. We were there for four hours! I dont think i ate the next day. Amazing.

Anyway so since then it's been back to classes and a more hectic schedule. I have now finished my colloquial course though and the thought of having actual free time during the week is a little disconcerting! I met a girl in Mar Musa who wants to meet up for language conversation exchange so i think i'm going to start meeting her every week. The only really exciting things to report from the last few weeks are that we had Top Gear and Hugo Chaves visit Damascus in the same week...Jeremy Clarkson casually strolled past my house! Oh and i've stated Salsa classes!! A couple of syrian friends invited Ashley and I along so i now have salsa lessons monday and wednesday nights. Not exactly fitting with the culture here perhaps but we are the only foreigners in the class and salsa actually appears to be very popular among more "upper class" syrians.

Starting to make travel plans for our next weeks holiday starting on the 11th November...possibilites are Jordan or northern Iraq but going to have to follow the news and play it by ear a little over the next few weeks i think due to current circumstances.
Congratulations if you made it this far!! There is so much more i could talk about - I'm moving house soon...it's pretty chilly at night now (although still gets to 26 degrees and is always sunny during the day! :) ) - but i think that's enough for one post and i may get kicked out of this cafe soon. I finished my drink ages ago and i'm still using the wifi.
Keep the news from back home coming...i know i'm poor at replying but it's always good to hear!

Friday is the new Sunday and am i or am i not a sheep?!

Wow, when did October creep up on me?! It's still hot and sunny here in Damascus however so i'm not complaining.  Apparently though the weather will cool off in the next two weeks. A few days ago there were storms further east which blew sand over to Syria that hung in the air like smog for a few days and carpeted everything in a layer of dust...well more dust than usual anyway.  Uni continues as i outlined before and i've now done a week of the colloquial course so i have that 4.30 till 7.30 every evening, plus an hour or two speaking practice a week, plus homework.  In other words this combined with uni work = busy busy busy!! So the whole "year abroad is a total doss" thing...not so much.  I am determined to come home actually able to speak arabic however and not barely able to hold a simple conversation (which is how i felt when i arrived) so it will be worth it 'in sha allah'. 

It's not all work out here though! Last weekend i went up Jebel Kasioun the mountain overlooking Damascus to watch the sunset. The view was fantastic, the whole of Damascus was sprawled out at our feet surrounded by desert hills on the horizon.  It's huge!! Much bigger than i had thought.

  Once the sun set the city lights twinkled their various neon colours (especially the neon green minarets of the many mosques)  and the cars moving along the highway made the roads look like moving molton lava.  It's really nice as many Damascans drive up there in the evening to picnic or smoke shisha so the edges of the road that winds up the mountain are lined with people chilling out.  We met a lovely syrian family while we were up there with four daughters who are learning english and they were keen to swap numbers and meet up again.  We also took a day trip to Bosra, about 2 hours south of Damascus, near Jordan, to see the extremely old, impressive amphitheatre there and had a wander round the town and a peek in some extremely old mosques.

One if the most bizarre things out here has been getting used to the new week.  Sunday, in my mind, is a lazy day where i eat too much roast dinner then lounge around all afternoon...not have 7 hours of study!  The muslim religious day is friday so this is when things slow down during the day and many shops don't open until the late afternoon.  It also means the Christians here have their church services on a friday or saturday.  Today i went to an english speaking anglican church which was an interesting experience.  The minister and his wife are Australian and the congregation is an interesting mixture of people.  Several ex-pats, mainly american or british, syrians, africans and lots of people from south east asia.  Everyone was very lovely and it was interesting to hear what they were all doing here - unsurprisingly a lot were english teachers.  It was good to see another part of Damascus too and i'm contemplating doing some english teaching later on so it could be useful to know some people already teaching at the British Council etc.  This is when im not spending 7 hours a day in class mind!
Or having impromptu italian lessons which the italians i've been living with took it upon themselves to do.  They are lovely but seem to have a common goal of converting everyone they meet into italians! Rosanna actually left yesterday and is now back in italy so i think the main italian influence in the house has gone, although i am now charged with the responsibility of looking after Bola the goldfish and according to her he only understands italian so i must keep talking to him in italian!

Tomorrow i am hoping to go to Malula, the last remaining town where they speak aramaic and apparently a pretty and tranquil little place.  I quite hope we encounter a dodgy taxi driver or 'serveece' driver on our way so i can use some of the colloquial phrases i have learnt in my colloquial course for shouting at taxi drivers when they try to rip you off!  The most amusing and apparently effective of which being "i am not a sheep!" meaning i am not a rich, naive tourist.  It is an in joke in Damascus to call the rich saudi tourists who come here sheep due to their white clothes they traditionally wear so rich tourists are all "sheep"!  Whether i am taken for a sheep or not tomorrow i will let you know!

Multiple names, camel and fines for speaking english!

The day i wrote my last blog entry i actually ended up moving house so i'm now in the north east of the city near the Umayyad Mosque.  This house is a better location as i'm now just round the corner from some other Durham students and a few other British students i've met so i dont have to walk home on my own at night etc. Here are a few photos of the house:

  I now live with two girls, Rosanna and Maria, one italian and one norweigan, both studying at the uni and an italian/belgian guy who teaches french and spanish here.  His name's Jackomo!! We also have a pet goldfish called Bola which means bubble in Italian! (Fabs you can verify this if you're reading it).

  The only problem is my housemates and all their italian friends who keep coming over think i'm called sarah.  Hattie isn't a name that really works in the middle east because in colloquial arabic it means "give me"!  So i've been using sarah which is my middle name as it's much easier than harriet.  Thing is i'm harriet at the uni here because that was on all my forms and many of my english friends still call me hattie...all in all a little confusing. 
First week of uni has been ok...there doesn't appear to be a particular structure to the course we just jump around between grammar, listening then get photocopied sheets to translate or to read and talk about but EVERYTHING is in arabic and supposedly we get fined for speaking english and can't even use an arabic to english dictionary - it should be arabic to arabic!  I'm managing to follow what is going on most of the time but explaining vocab can be interesting! Luckily our teacher has a sense of humour and often we end up virtually playing pictionary or sharades as he tries to explain arabic vocab to us using other words we don't understand!  Atleast it should improve my arabic! We have lectures sunday till thursday from 9am till 1pm, although we have 3 breaks during this time!  I may be doing an intensive colloquial course for a month for 3 hours every evening starting next week as well so what with that and homework i think i may be quite busy!
Friday and saturday are the weekend here so hopefully i'll be able to do some travelling and explore more of syria on those days.  Last thursday myself and a few other students from the uni went for a bbq at Ahmed's friend's house in the countryside.  It was nice to get outside the city for a bit and the food was amazing!!

  I have never exactly shown vegetarian tendencies so unsurprisingly the large amounts of chicken, beef and even camel were right up my street! Camel is actually quite nice and similar to beef but a little lighter.  We stayed at the house chatting and learning a few rather amusing syrian card games afterwards and didnt get back to the city until around 5am.  This place doesn't seem to sleep ever though and there were still a fair amount of people around as we walked through the old city and many lights were still shining both in mosques and houses.
Ok so my time in this cafe is up so i shall leave it there.

Arrival in Damascus

So i have arrived and after just two days am feeling more settled than i thought i would.  The old city is still a bit of a tangled maze of hot, narrow passageways with wafts of spices, perfumes, and sometimes more unpleasant smells, beautiful hanging vines and at night neon lights, dark corners and crowds of people; but i'm exploring it and finding my bearings gradually.

  It really is beautiful and has a definite oriental feel, especially the old damascene houses with their central courtyards and fountains.

  I'm living in the south of the old city in a fairly nice house with a little central courtyard and roof terrace with 5 other girls. One is Syrian, one from Manchester university who is half Lebanese and three girls from SOAS.  I was lucky enough to meet a guy called Ahmed the night i arrived from the airport who some of the other students from Durham have been living with and he knows most of the landlords in the area and showed me to this house. I was then whisked off to a restuarant in the heart of the old city with live music and to my surprise young children dancing on the tables!! Since then i have been for the necessary aids test the university requires for registration (the quickest blood test i have ever had!), had a three hour arabic placement test which was horrendous but everyone finds it ridiculous, got myself sorted with a syrian phone and i start lectures at 9am tomorrow!  So far there seems to be lots of students from exeter and soas, some from edinburgh and a very small durham contingent. The first day was actually today but seeing as everyone else has been here for atleast two weeks starting one day late is pretty good i feel. My arabic is coming back to me slowly after a whole summer forgetting it but my colloquial or amiya amuses some of the shop keepers still! We had a nice chat with one of the taxi drivers today in arabic though and got a free taxi ride for the privilege so that was nice! Time is running out so i will post again when something exciting happens!    

I really do hate packing...

So to put off the inevitable packing a little longer i've created this blog.  Facebook is supposedly banned in Syria and this is a lot easier than sending multiple emails to all those who want to know what i'm doing or forgetting someone in a group email.  My entries may be a bit sporadic but at least you'll know i'm alive.  I'm flying out on sunday so will post again at some point when i have settled down and got myself to an internet cafe. Don't forget to update me on goings on back home/uni/wherever you are!