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!