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!
