A home by any other name

After 10 nights in a hotel, we found and moved into our new apartment close to Bab Mussalla Square ( 33°29'55.5"N,36°18'01.6"E). It is in a great location and we would never have been able to find it without the help of our language teacher, Ghazwan.

 

It is customary here to pay 3 months rent upfront and provide all the necessary paperwork and passport pictures, again (3^rd time since arriving).  The three-bedroom apartment actually belongs to the school but because it is the slow season, we have the whole place to ourselves for only $240.  Eventually we should have some roommates, maybe even some of the Iraqi staff who work for the school.

 

This is our living room and Rasa with our house-hose.  We could not wait to squeegee down the whole house.

 

This is our kitchen area with Rasa empting our R2-D2 washing machine, which likes to eat my shirts.  Our drinking water comes from the separate tap next to the standard ones for the sink.  The Government Water, as they call it, runs from 6 am to noon and supposedly comes from a very deep aquifer.  There is no place to buy large quantities of bottled water.  You can also see our bottle of olive oil next to the sink; we just bring a bottle to the oil souq for a fill-up when we need it, $2 per liter.

 

This is our shower area and floor squeegee.  This is the best room in the house because compared to other apartments it is huge.  The big bomb looking device is the water heater, which takes an hour to warm up and can burn you by touching it.

 

We still have the Turkish Toilet though but as one of my Filipino friends said, "Going to the bathroom military position is not that bad."  It is not the squatting I mind but having to throw my TP into a wastebasket that makes me cringe because I am the one who has to throw the trash out.

 

This is our cooking area with yet another floor drain.  It is a good thing we brought our egg pan from Honduras because the frying pans here do not have any handles (see on the right hand side of the stove).  We love our budget version of the George Forman sandwich press though, only $2.

 

This is our bedroom with our very own Ottoman style carpet.  Note the purple laundry basket.  We have bought some version of this in every country we have lived and they have all been made in China.

 

This is the view from our balcony, also where we hang our laundry to dry.  There are more satellite dishes here than terrestrial antennas.  Just goes to show how interested people are in the government's choice of programming but at least your clothes do not take 3 days to dry, as in the tropics.

 

Robert J Kent Jr- robjkentjr@gmail.com
Wat/San Development Consultant
RobRasa.com/hisblog
Cell: +963 949-525-799
Voice Mail: +1 (631) 458-1119

Business or Pleasure?

This first week in Damascus was a bit of bumpy start.  On the third day, we found ourselves questioning if living here was even worth the hassle.

 

We were trying to contact our school for two days with no luck and at our lowest point, we were sitting on a broken chair, lost in some alleyway waiting for 90 minutes to see if our mobile phone would even show up. Our biggest frustration was not being able to communicate and understand what the problem was. Turns out, before our phone could even be delivered we had to give our passport and personal details, which I guess was for a security check. It was not until we met Ali the grocer who gave us tea and free laundry soap that our day brightened a bit. It has been the hospitality of the people here who gotten us through these first dark days.

 

After that, torch roasted lamb head seemed like a great treat to celebrate finally getting a phone. So if anyone would like to call us now the number can always be found at the bottom of my emails or dial: +963 949-525-799

 

We settled on some olives instead. At least I did because Rasa has not yet developed a taste for them.

 

This is Ghazwan, our teacher for the next 6 months at the To Learn Arabic School . Once we got our phone it was no problem to contact him. What a relief because we were tired of asking random shops through pantomime if we could use their phones.

 

The next big hurdle we have is finding a home at a reasonable price. The 1.7 million Iraqi refuges who fled to Damascus have raised the rent prices to about $300 for a room. We also found out there is no chance of us living with a host family because I can not stay in an Islamic house with uncovered women, Islam says that only direct male family may see a women uncovered. At least this house picture above has a regular toilet but as you can see, the room is a bit short for me. This would not be so bad except that the bathroom also doubles as the shower area. Wouldn't leave me much room to maneuver.

 

We did find an orthodontist. (Thank you Peter!) And the moral of this story is that you get what you pay for; this doctor pretty much laughed when he saw the charts, molds and x-rays from my last orthodontist. To finish these last six months will cost me double what it did for a year in Honduras. At least he said I would have my braces off before the wedding.

 

Did you ever want to just take a hose and spray everything down in your house? Here you can. Every morning, the maid takes the hose and wets down the tables, walls, windows and chairs, then soaps it up and squeegees it all down the drain. If there is not enough water, she just dips the pitcher into the fountain and throws it on the floor.

 

The three brothers who own the Ghazal Hotel have been great. This is Ahmid and he describing to us why he thinks women use more water than men. I think the Johnny Walker had more to do with this conversation than any true beliefs. Ahmid has gone out of his way to help us find a place to live. He also made us breakfast one morning, I think mostly because he did not like the foul (bean salad) we were eating and said his was better.

Robert Kent Jr- robjkentjr@gmail.com
Wat/San/Health Consultant
www.RobRasa.com/hisblog/
Cell: +963 949-525-799
Voice Mail: +1 (631) 458-1119

All roads lead to Damascus

It took us 23 hours to get from Göreme to Damascus, most of it spent waiting around in bus stations during the four layovers we had.  It was a scenic journey and the people on the bus took great care of us, making sure we found all of our connections and didn't go hungry.

 

That morning I had woken up at 4:30 am to photograph the sunrise.  Later, while waiting for the bus I fell asleep- again -with the pension tour guide, Spotty.  It was 6°C (43°F) when Rasa took this picture and snow was expected later in the week.

 

We figured it was going to be a great trip because our first bus to Kayseri was on Kent Bus lines.

 

The buses stopped every three hours to use the bathroom and get some snacks.  We couldn't help to indulge in the local baklava, it only cost $1.70 for 4 pieces.  This picture is for all our Peace Corps friends in Honduras who know how hard it is to make this stuff.

 

This was our third bus, which took us to the Syrian border.  We had to wait around for about 90 minutes while they processed our passports but it was painless. We admired the portraits of President Bashar Al-Asad while we waited.

 

The outskirts of Aleppo are very fertile; there are olive, fruit and nut trees everywhere.  Pistachios cost us $4.50 a pound.  I feel like that was a good price for them?

 

There are also many ruins just abandoned along the roadside.

 

This was one of our friends during the trip.  He made sure we were well stocked with cookies and tea at every rest stop.

 

Did you ever want to know how to write Coca-Cola in Arabic?

 

The next day we started out in Damascus on our errands.  We realized that when living someplace it seems to be so much more frustrating getting business done than just being a sightseer. It has also been near impossible to find an internet cafe to hook my laptop up to.  I will get to email as soon as I can find one by our house.

Robert Kent Jr- robjkentjr@gmail.com
Wat/San/Health Consultant
www.RobRasa.com/hisblog/
Cell: +963 949-525-799
Voice Mail: +1 (631) 458-1119

Göreme: The magic gnome village

In Göreme by 10am and exhausted by two nights in a moving seat, we slept in the most comfortable bed until 3pm.  Home for two nights was the Köse Pension before leaving for Damascus, Syria.

 

Here is a view of the village at sunrise.  Built in a valley of soft volcanic tuft, you will notice many of the houses carved right into the hillsides.  With a population of 2,000, we loved the small hometown feel here but because the dollar is so weak, EVERYTHING in Turkey has been beyond our budget.  It is a shame we did not have more time to relax here because it really is a village of magical gnome homes.

 

This is some of the scenery from a hike up SiviValley ( 38°38'19.7"N, 34°49'58.1"E).

 

They call these the Pencil Chimneys.  They kind of look like pencils, don't they?

 

This is a gnome church.

 

In the far wall, you can see some of the carved gnome houses. Gnomes lived in them until the late 1960's when there was a cave-in and caused a mass exodus of homeless gnomes. They are believed to be living somewhere in Romania now.

 

Paintings of an 11th century Byzantine church which was dug out of the cliffs in the above picture by persecuted catholic gnomes.

 

These are some of the local ceramics, all made by the seven brothers in the cellar of their shop.  Rasa and I spent an hour in this shop just looking and drinking tea.

 

This was where we would eat lunch everyday because the baklava was so cheap.  The locals liked it too.

 

At the end of our third day, we left for Damascus, which is where we are now.  There were absolutely no problems crossing the border and the people have been the highlight of this trip so far but I will talk more about this in my next entry.

Robert Kent Jr- robjkentjr@gmail.com
Wat/San/Health Consultant
www.RobRasa.com/hisblog/
Cell: +963 949-525-799
Voice Mail: +1 (631) 458-1119