reflections

Despite having a ridiculously hard midterm this morning, today has been a beautiful day. After eating a falafel sandwich, taking a shower, hand-washing some clothes and hanging them outside to dry, I left my house and took a service bus to the old city. I can't believe I only have two weeks left here. Time has run down so quickly. Today I realized how many things I'm really going to miss:

- Walking down a street lined with baskets of dates, vegetables, and fruits, with men yelling out different prices.
- Walking through Souq Al-Hamidiyyah and falling behind a tour group of Iranian pilgrimers heading to the Ommayad Mosque.
- الله هو أكبر... God, He is the greatest... the opening to each call to prayer. I love hearing the call to prayer echo throughout the city.
- Men in small trucks slowly driving down my street, yelling their goods through a loudspeaker (selling vegetables from the back of their truck).
- food! falafel, hummus, fatoush, fooul, kibeh, labneh, tabouleh, tea, arabic coffee...
- My Syrian family.
- Running late to class and finding a horse right outside my house, in the middle of the city.
- dare I say, I'll miss the crazy driving. and service buses. They're amazing.
- Getting lost in a foreign language, and feeling accomplished when able to carry on a conversation.
- Fresh mango or orange or lemon with mint or strawberry juice.
- Narrow alleyways and old windows/doors.
- Elissa blasting out of car windows (don't worry, I have her latest CD now...)
- The ease of traveling between countries.
- عنده بيت!! He has a house!! (with a woman in a wedding dress dragging a man along) This billboard is the perfect encapsulation of a growing societal problem... men must have a house before they get married. With the influx of Iraqi refugees (and Iraqis with money), the housing market has gone up quite a bit, and many young men can't afford to buy homes, which is damaging their marriage prospects.

In the old city, I sat inside the Ommayad Mosque for awhile. Just me and my sketchbook and pen. It was really nice. I then met Astrid, and together we shopped for gifts and different things to bring home (which included many scarves, a mate cup and straw, and a hand-held mini vacuum cleaner-like thing).

Tomorrow will be another beautiful day, in shah Allah.