Today I woke up later than usual and walked to the University of Damascus to visit with friends at the CASA office. I met with them, but they had to meet with their professor for about an hour so I decided to go and get my AIDS test result. So I took a taxi to the clinic. See, to get the test done you go through the main door and they have this little box where you have three options: Syrian, Syrian student, and Non-Syrian student. You hit the appropriate button (non-Syrian student for me obviously) and you get a number and just wait until you’re called. They want a copy of your passport, two photos, and the fee waiver if you’re from the university, and then you get a little slip of paper that has your name on it and a number of some sort and then you present that little piece of paper when you want to get your results.
To get your results, however, you go to the side of the building where they have this large window which they open only after 12 I think so I was lucky when I got there otherwise I’d have had to wait for an hour. But anyways, they open that window, there’s a huge rush to get your little piece of paper to them, and then you just wait for a while. The guy behind the window comes out with a load of papers, and then starts calling out names, and you go get your results when you hear your name. My name here has suddenly become Fatima Zulfikar, because people have trouble pronouncing Yekta here too. Anyways, so I went up and got my results when I heard my name be called—first half of the title of this post explained thus. :) To put it more clearly, the result was negative. I do not have AIDS. Elhamdulillah. Couldn't have been any other way, but I guess it's always good to know.
After getting the results, I walked around Zablatani for a little bit and found a shop that sold water and junk food type stuff and bought some of that so I could get, once again, change, to pay for the trip pay to the university with the taxi. The guy at the shop was really funny, and the taxi driver I had this time was also really nice, I paid him a little bit over the meter but I couldn’t give him as much as he would’ve liked, so I apologized for that and he was nice.
I went to the office for my program (Standard Arabic Regular Courses—SARC) and turned in the AIDS test result. The lady there smiled at me for the first time, which made me happy too. So after turning in the results, I went upstairs to the CASA office and sat waiting for the friends to get done with their business. They’d been here for a year and were planning their trips home so it was hard for them to say goodbye to their teacher and friends, so it took a while but it was also nice to see that goodbyes are really similar no matter where you go in the world.
Once we had left the university, they took me to a juice stand called Abu Shakir (ابو شاكر) which they said made the best smoothies ever, and boy, were they right. The drinks were absolutely amazing, I got a strawberry-banana mix thing and it was soooooo delicious and great and refreshing too, because it was cold. So we just hung out there for a while, drinking our smoothies and then we went our separate ways, them to pack and me to the house to eat some food because I was getting hungry.
I got back home, dropped off stuff, made a sandwich, ate, hung out for a while with my housemates, and then went to the internet café. After the internet café I just walked around for a while and then came back home, sat with the roomies again, and then went to bed.
I feel like I haven’t actually talked about Damascus itself or even my house, so I’ll do that in the next post! Signing off today, Thursday, May 20, 2010.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Things pretty much on a roll now
So I had my placement test today! It went pretty well, I’d been scared of the exam because my roommates had all taken it and said that it was really hard, but none of them had the same classes I’d had and they’d also been away from Arabic for a while whereas I had the advantage of only having been away from Arabic for about two to three weeks, so the exam wasn’t completely horrible. There were five parts to the exam—listening first, then writing, then reading, then grammar, and then a speaking part. By the time of the grammar part of the exam, I was getting a little loopy and so I just started guessing on some of the questions, and really, there’s only so much Arabic grammar that I can remember in the half hour they allowed us to have to answer all the questions. I was able to answer all of the questions in the time given though so I think that’s good.
After the placement test, I went to Souq Sarouja, to the bank, to get money to pay for the classes so I could register for class. Having gotten the money, I went back to the university to pay the money, and learned then that I’d got into Level 6 of the program! Which made me really happy, because level 6 happens to be the highest level in the cheaper set of classes, so, yay. So I paid the money, gave the application and the letter that I’d gotten from the embassy, and thus only had the AIDS test left, which technically I was supposed to get today but the lady said I could just turn it in tomorrow so I’m going to do that insha’allah.
Having turned in almost everything, I ran back to the house because I was going to meet with the landlady for my house at 2 pm. She didn’t come, so I just took nap for a while and then went shopping again for some necessities and also for fruit and vegetables. I also figured out where to get bread, and the old man who works there and I have hit it off so it’s good.
I walked back to the house afterwards, dropped off the stuff, and then went to the internet café to talk to my parents and also to check email. I’m meeting with some friends from the past tomorrow insha’allah, so more adventures to come tomorrow!
I had to take taxis today, again, and that just annoyed me, as per usual. The first taxi I took didn’t even turn on its meter, but I knew how much it would be so I just gave the guy 50 lira, and what does he do? Turns around and asks for more, at which point I just said “Look, I’m sorry, I don’t have any more money, I’m going to the bank right now to get money” and then he had to say okay fine. After getting money from the bank, I walked to the hotel because I didn’t have any change, and that is just annoying when banks don’t give you anything smaller than 500 lira and taxi drivers don’t give you your change either so it doesn’t make sense to hand them a 500 lira. So I complained about this to the lady at the reception, and she agreed sort of but she’s Syrian so she doesn’t exactly suffer from the same constraints placed on foreigners. However, the second taxi driver I had was an absolutely wonderfully pleasant surprise. I was taking this taxi from Souq Sarouja to the university again, and when we got to the university, the meter read 23 lira, so I just gave the guy 50 lira because that’s what you do. What happened next made my jaw drop. He told me to wait, put his hand in the money box, and GAVE ME CHANGE. I was bowled over. Completely surprised. And absolutely happy to have been proven wrong with regards to Syrian taxi drivers.
Hokay. A little bit of an unorganized post, but that’s it for today, May 19, 2010. See you all soon!
After the placement test, I went to Souq Sarouja, to the bank, to get money to pay for the classes so I could register for class. Having gotten the money, I went back to the university to pay the money, and learned then that I’d got into Level 6 of the program! Which made me really happy, because level 6 happens to be the highest level in the cheaper set of classes, so, yay. So I paid the money, gave the application and the letter that I’d gotten from the embassy, and thus only had the AIDS test left, which technically I was supposed to get today but the lady said I could just turn it in tomorrow so I’m going to do that insha’allah.
Having turned in almost everything, I ran back to the house because I was going to meet with the landlady for my house at 2 pm. She didn’t come, so I just took nap for a while and then went shopping again for some necessities and also for fruit and vegetables. I also figured out where to get bread, and the old man who works there and I have hit it off so it’s good.
I walked back to the house afterwards, dropped off the stuff, and then went to the internet café to talk to my parents and also to check email. I’m meeting with some friends from the past tomorrow insha’allah, so more adventures to come tomorrow!
I had to take taxis today, again, and that just annoyed me, as per usual. The first taxi I took didn’t even turn on its meter, but I knew how much it would be so I just gave the guy 50 lira, and what does he do? Turns around and asks for more, at which point I just said “Look, I’m sorry, I don’t have any more money, I’m going to the bank right now to get money” and then he had to say okay fine. After getting money from the bank, I walked to the hotel because I didn’t have any change, and that is just annoying when banks don’t give you anything smaller than 500 lira and taxi drivers don’t give you your change either so it doesn’t make sense to hand them a 500 lira. So I complained about this to the lady at the reception, and she agreed sort of but she’s Syrian so she doesn’t exactly suffer from the same constraints placed on foreigners. However, the second taxi driver I had was an absolutely wonderfully pleasant surprise. I was taking this taxi from Souq Sarouja to the university again, and when we got to the university, the meter read 23 lira, so I just gave the guy 50 lira because that’s what you do. What happened next made my jaw drop. He told me to wait, put his hand in the money box, and GAVE ME CHANGE. I was bowled over. Completely surprised. And absolutely happy to have been proven wrong with regards to Syrian taxi drivers.
Hokay. A little bit of an unorganized post, but that’s it for today, May 19, 2010. See you all soon!
Getting things accomplished
So today has gone much better with respect to getting things done. I had originally planned on going to the Turkish Embassy first, then the university, then the AIDS clinic, but I decided to switch up the order, and went to the University first, where I got my AIDS test fee waiver (oh, about the AIDS test—its required of everyone, but especially of foreigners, and usually it costs money but since I have to do it for the university they give a little document thing that allows me to get the test without having to pay) and the application for the program. As a part of my “be nice to your nose” program, I’d taken a taxi to the university, which got me to the gate of the university that I needed to go to, which was good. There’s a large road between the university and where the taxi dropped me off, but there’s an underground tunnel where they sell stationery and books and notebooks and whatnot, so you just walk through that and you get to the main gate of the university. Piece of cake, when you have a better idea of where you need to go. I also scheduled to take the placement exam the next day at 10 am, which you have to pay 500 lira for.
After getting the application and the fee waiver and scheduling the placement test, I went to the AIDS clinic, and they took some blood and then told me to come back the next day for the results. After that being done, I went to the Turkish Embassy, again with a taxi, and gave them my passport and told them I needed this letter for the university. They told me to come back at 3 pm to pick up the letter and my passport, so I decided that instead of going back to where I live, I would just hang out in the area. So I was just walking around, and I ran across a mall, so I just went in and walked around and found a café and sat down and hung out there for about an hour where I ate and drank coffee. It was fun. I left there and walked around some more and saw a park, so I just sat there until it was time to go to the embassy to pick up the letter and the passport and read my book (which is again, Elif Shafak’s Forty Rules of Love—definitely recommend it). I picked up the letter and whatnot, and then I walked back to my place and dropped off my stuff and went shopping.
I came back and put away the stuff I’d bought in the fridge, and then went to the internet café where I talked with my mom and dad over Skype.
My phone came back, by the way, so that’s been solved as well. The reason for it not working hasn’t been solved still but at least its back, elhamdulillah.
So I used a total of three taxis today, which began to piss me off somewhat because they just ask you for so much money. The first two taxis I used were really nice, to their credit, and they used the meter so I just paid them a little bit over the amount in the meter as that’s what you’re expected to do, and I’m pretty sure due to inflation and whatnot it works out fine since they don’t adjust the meter to fit, so I’m okay with that. But the third taxi driver? We went quite a way from Zablatani (زبلطاني) to where the Turkish embassy is located, and the meter said 72.50 lira, so I gave the guy 75 lira, and he got pissed off at me and said that in Syria they always give 100 lira when it’s at that amount, which isn’t actually true. So I just said okay fine and gave him the money, but it was just really annoying for him to get mad at me. Taught me my lesson though, I’ll obviously always be overpaying no matter what. And I'm going to try and use the taxis as little as is possible, insha'allah. Everybody has to make a living, which I get, but I have a budget too yo.
That was it pretty much for this day, May 18, 2010. Tomorrow it’s my placement exam, so we’ll see how that goes. Insha’allah kheir!
After getting the application and the fee waiver and scheduling the placement test, I went to the AIDS clinic, and they took some blood and then told me to come back the next day for the results. After that being done, I went to the Turkish Embassy, again with a taxi, and gave them my passport and told them I needed this letter for the university. They told me to come back at 3 pm to pick up the letter and my passport, so I decided that instead of going back to where I live, I would just hang out in the area. So I was just walking around, and I ran across a mall, so I just went in and walked around and found a café and sat down and hung out there for about an hour where I ate and drank coffee. It was fun. I left there and walked around some more and saw a park, so I just sat there until it was time to go to the embassy to pick up the letter and the passport and read my book (which is again, Elif Shafak’s Forty Rules of Love—definitely recommend it). I picked up the letter and whatnot, and then I walked back to my place and dropped off my stuff and went shopping.
I came back and put away the stuff I’d bought in the fridge, and then went to the internet café where I talked with my mom and dad over Skype.
My phone came back, by the way, so that’s been solved as well. The reason for it not working hasn’t been solved still but at least its back, elhamdulillah.
So I used a total of three taxis today, which began to piss me off somewhat because they just ask you for so much money. The first two taxis I used were really nice, to their credit, and they used the meter so I just paid them a little bit over the amount in the meter as that’s what you’re expected to do, and I’m pretty sure due to inflation and whatnot it works out fine since they don’t adjust the meter to fit, so I’m okay with that. But the third taxi driver? We went quite a way from Zablatani (زبلطاني) to where the Turkish embassy is located, and the meter said 72.50 lira, so I gave the guy 75 lira, and he got pissed off at me and said that in Syria they always give 100 lira when it’s at that amount, which isn’t actually true. So I just said okay fine and gave him the money, but it was just really annoying for him to get mad at me. Taught me my lesson though, I’ll obviously always be overpaying no matter what. And I'm going to try and use the taxis as little as is possible, insha'allah. Everybody has to make a living, which I get, but I have a budget too yo.
That was it pretty much for this day, May 18, 2010. Tomorrow it’s my placement exam, so we’ll see how that goes. Insha’allah kheir!
Monday, May 17, 2010
First day and a half in Damascus
It was pretty amazing, but I actually managed to get more done during the half day then I did during the full day, but hey, things just happen that way sometimes.
So I got into Damascus at around 16:30 (yay for 24-hour systems, they make so much more sense), and went to my hotel, Al-Haramain. I’d actually had my first experience with Arabic in the airport when I called them to ask to reserve a room, which turned out to be a really good idea because they only had one room left, which I took. Immediately when I walked into the hotel the guy at the reception asked me if I would like to see a room and I said “sure!” so once I put my stuff down in my room, the guy and his friend took me to the house with the room and I just looked around. It’s pretty close to the university in an area called Souq Sarouja, and is pretty quiet except for when there’s construction. They’re putting in actual roads (insha’allah) so they have construction going on Sunday-Thursday (note on the weekend here: its Friday and Saturday, not Saturday and Sunday. This also makes more sense to me but I haven’t yet figured out why I like it), but only from sometime in the morning until about 2 or 3 pm, which isn’t that bad since during most of that time I won’t even be in the house due to classes.
Anyways, so I saw the room, went back to the hotel, and asked if I could be shown the way to a bank. Turned out the woman at the reception desk also needed to go, and the guy that had helped me out in the beginning with the room also came so that I wouldn’t get lost and could make it back to the hotel safe. So we set off together. I got money from the bank, then went with the guy to a shop dealing with SIM cards and phone issues in general and bought a SIM card, so I now have a phone that works here. There was some trouble with it at the end of the full day, but elhamdulillah that got fixed so now it’s back in operation. After the phone business was taken care of, I went to an internet café, which I’m pretty sure is going to become my permanent internet café, although it may be too early to decide, where I spoke with my mom and dad through Skype. What a wonderful invention that Skype.
After that I went back to the hotel, put down some of the stuff I’d been carrying and just decided to walk around, and was going towards some random destination through a small park with what I’m still assuming is the ruins of a hammam in the middle of it (yes, I still haven’t been able to figure it out, mostly because it just seems really awkward to walk around the place half a dozen times with all the people in the park looking at you. And I already have this big sign on my forehead that just blares “FOREIGNER” so I’m trying to keep on the down-low; why the blaze you might ask well its due to my white skin that you don't see too often down here unless it is a tourist. or foreign student) when I once again came across the guy who had helped me out in the afternoon. We walked towards the Souq al-Hamidiyya, which I was really pleasantly surprised to find that it was close as my grandmother, who visited Damascus and other important places in Syria like Palmyra and Homs and Hama, had said that I should definitely go walk through it. Amazingly enough, it was exactly like walking through the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, except this one was actually wider and I didn’t get hassled as much by the sellers; they weren’t yelling out in twenty different languages trying to catch my attention.
We walked through the Souq al-Hamidiyya, and when we walked out of the end of the souq, I saw the Umayyad Mosque, which I didn’t go into, but I walked by it. I’m really excited about going to visit the Mosque, not only because it’s just such a beautiful place, but also because Salah ad-Din’s tomb is in a corner of the mosque. A random sidenote: for those of you who haven’t watched Kingdom of Heaven, I highly recommend it. If you don’t like war movies don’t watch it, but I really liked it, especially the last scene where it shows Salah ad-Din picking up a fallen cross and placing it on a table. Respect.
So we just walked through the old part of the city, and it was really nice. Peaceful, almost, despite the noise of the cars once we got out of the old city and towards the road and despite all the people, but it was nice. Essentially it was just like walking around in Turkey, with the only difference being that people around me were speaking Arabic and I couldn’t always understand what they were saying.
After walking around, we went back to the hotel, and I fell in bed but couldn’t go to sleep because it was so hot despite the fan whirling about. So I decided to sit up and read a book, and this is where one exciting thing happened—there hadn’t been any problems with the bed when I lay down on it, but when I sat up and reached over to my bag to take out my book (Elif Shafak’s Forty Rules of Love by the way, definitely read it if you have time), the bed sort of just went “graaccckkkk” and went down, but at an angle, so it was slanted. I was a little weirded out, and I just kept on cracking up and laughing because the bed had been completely fine when I lay down, but then I sat and it broke. Too funny. Well, after that exciting little adventure with the bed, I sat (again, but this time nothing happened) and read for a while, and when I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore I lay down (slanted, but it worked out better for some reason) and slept.
When I woke up, I went downstairs to have breakfast (egg, bread, jam, butter, olives, plums, and tea) and then asked for directions to the University of Damascus. It took me about forty-five minutes to walk there mostly because I wasn’t entirely sure I knew where I was going, and I asked for directions a couple of times, but eventually I made it to the university (and yes, I asked for directions in Arabic. Fusha, but they answered in aamiyah, but I was still able to understand. I think I might come back to America extremely adept at Charades). Little did I know that the real adventure was starting now.
I went in through the gate and into the building that had “كلية الادآب”written on it, thinking that was where I needed to go. After walking around much and asking where I could register and where the building and people of the program were and not getting an answer that matched from any two people, I gave up and decided to go check out the Turkish embassy to see if I could get the letter I needed to register for the class. So I walked over to the assumed location of the Turkish embassy, and to my horror, the building was completely closed and looked as if it hadn’t been taken care of in ages, which was just really weird because Turkey and Syria have pretty good relations now—for example, they’ve lifted the visa on travel between the two countries. Pretty depressed by this time, I went back to the hotel and moved out to the room that I’d seen during the half day, and it was then that a truly funny coincidence occurred and was pretty much the highlight of my day. I walked into the house, put my stuff down, paid the guy the rent for the month (10,000 Syrian pounds, or lira, as the money is known here, which is around $200-$300, I think), and then went downstairs to meet the roommates that were there, and it turned out that the girl who’s staying in the house is actually a friend that had been mentioned by another friend of mine. Such a small world.
After dealing with the stuff in the house, I went out to the bank again because I needed money, and after getting money I went to the hotel to meet with a friend from UNC who’s also here to do Arabic language study at the University of Damascus, who had much better success with the registration process than I did, so it was great to listen to him and his advice as I got the information I needed—the right information this time. The guy who’d shown me the house had also mentioned that there was a Turkish guy who was here and they’d mentioned that I was here and a Turk and could help this guy out, so I met with him as well in the hotel, and from him I learned the place of the Turkish embassy. Apparently they’d moved and the guy that had given me directions only knew the old place.
So after this pretty unsuccessful day in getting things done, I went back to my room and started to put things in their places. And that was when the defining moment of the day happened—as I had been expecting for a while, my nose started to bleed. Non-stop. I don’t mind nosebleeds, I’m used to them since I tend to get them especially when it’s hot, and this was just obviously going to happen because I’d been walking around all day, it had been hot, etc. so I was like yeah, this was meant to happen. After a while, once it seemed like it was sort of stopping, I went downstairs and took a shower (heaven. There’s really nothing like feeling clean) and then made a huge mistake—I blew my nose. That just got the bleeding started again. Copious amounts of blood, might I add, and it just wouldn’t stop. So I freaked out, which didn’t help with stopping the bleeding at all. Some advice: do not freak out when you have a nosebleed that just won’t stop. Then it really won’t stop. Stay calm, stay cool, and just keep that nose stuffed with Kleenex or cotton balls if you have them since they actually work better to stop the bleeding.
Having freaked out, however, I called my mom, who told me to calm down and call the friend from UNC who’s also here, which I did, and he was really nice and came over with the guy from the hotel who had been really helpful up till now, who asked me if I would like to see a doctor, and I just said sure so he went back out and brought the hotel doctor with him in like five-ten minutes. The doctor did some general check stuff and told me to press on the root of my nose to stop the bleeding, and also told me to get a lot of vitamin C, so the guy from the hotel ran out and bought oranges. The doctor, whose name I didn’t get unfortunately, watched me eat two of the oranges, and then said that I should be okay and that it was most likely because of the heat and all the walking I’d done. I paid him 1,000 Syrian pounds, and then he left.
In my defense, this is the first time I’m by myself in a country that I’ve never been to before, and I can sort of speak the language, but not as well as I would like to be able to speak it of course, and I speak fusha, not the colloquial, which I only understand half of, or less than half of, when I hear it spoken. That will insha’allah improve as time goes on, but at this point of time, I still don’t understand it very well. So yeah, I freaked out. After calling my mom though I managed to calm down, and by the time the doctor had come and gone I was fine. My nose stopped bleeding while the doctor was here, but he still gave me some of the cotton balls he had which I stuffed up my nose. This helped me a lot with avoiding the gazes of all the guys that were out in the streets at this time, because I needed to go to the hotel as it turned out that my phone wasn’t working properly.
The phone came back to the real world the next day, and I slept okay during the night, and now I’m simply paranoid about my nose so I’ve been taking better care of it than I’ve ever done before, but it should be getting better by now since I’ve been getting more used to the heat. And just my luck, it hasn’t actually been all that hot when I’ve been out walking about so that’s been good. I’ve actually needed the light jacket I brought with me some of the time.
That’s it for the one and a half day I’ve been here—May 16 and 17, 2010! More to come tomorrow insha’allah!
So I got into Damascus at around 16:30 (yay for 24-hour systems, they make so much more sense), and went to my hotel, Al-Haramain. I’d actually had my first experience with Arabic in the airport when I called them to ask to reserve a room, which turned out to be a really good idea because they only had one room left, which I took. Immediately when I walked into the hotel the guy at the reception asked me if I would like to see a room and I said “sure!” so once I put my stuff down in my room, the guy and his friend took me to the house with the room and I just looked around. It’s pretty close to the university in an area called Souq Sarouja, and is pretty quiet except for when there’s construction. They’re putting in actual roads (insha’allah) so they have construction going on Sunday-Thursday (note on the weekend here: its Friday and Saturday, not Saturday and Sunday. This also makes more sense to me but I haven’t yet figured out why I like it), but only from sometime in the morning until about 2 or 3 pm, which isn’t that bad since during most of that time I won’t even be in the house due to classes.
Anyways, so I saw the room, went back to the hotel, and asked if I could be shown the way to a bank. Turned out the woman at the reception desk also needed to go, and the guy that had helped me out in the beginning with the room also came so that I wouldn’t get lost and could make it back to the hotel safe. So we set off together. I got money from the bank, then went with the guy to a shop dealing with SIM cards and phone issues in general and bought a SIM card, so I now have a phone that works here. There was some trouble with it at the end of the full day, but elhamdulillah that got fixed so now it’s back in operation. After the phone business was taken care of, I went to an internet café, which I’m pretty sure is going to become my permanent internet café, although it may be too early to decide, where I spoke with my mom and dad through Skype. What a wonderful invention that Skype.
After that I went back to the hotel, put down some of the stuff I’d been carrying and just decided to walk around, and was going towards some random destination through a small park with what I’m still assuming is the ruins of a hammam in the middle of it (yes, I still haven’t been able to figure it out, mostly because it just seems really awkward to walk around the place half a dozen times with all the people in the park looking at you. And I already have this big sign on my forehead that just blares “FOREIGNER” so I’m trying to keep on the down-low; why the blaze you might ask well its due to my white skin that you don't see too often down here unless it is a tourist. or foreign student) when I once again came across the guy who had helped me out in the afternoon. We walked towards the Souq al-Hamidiyya, which I was really pleasantly surprised to find that it was close as my grandmother, who visited Damascus and other important places in Syria like Palmyra and Homs and Hama, had said that I should definitely go walk through it. Amazingly enough, it was exactly like walking through the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, except this one was actually wider and I didn’t get hassled as much by the sellers; they weren’t yelling out in twenty different languages trying to catch my attention.
We walked through the Souq al-Hamidiyya, and when we walked out of the end of the souq, I saw the Umayyad Mosque, which I didn’t go into, but I walked by it. I’m really excited about going to visit the Mosque, not only because it’s just such a beautiful place, but also because Salah ad-Din’s tomb is in a corner of the mosque. A random sidenote: for those of you who haven’t watched Kingdom of Heaven, I highly recommend it. If you don’t like war movies don’t watch it, but I really liked it, especially the last scene where it shows Salah ad-Din picking up a fallen cross and placing it on a table. Respect.
So we just walked through the old part of the city, and it was really nice. Peaceful, almost, despite the noise of the cars once we got out of the old city and towards the road and despite all the people, but it was nice. Essentially it was just like walking around in Turkey, with the only difference being that people around me were speaking Arabic and I couldn’t always understand what they were saying.
After walking around, we went back to the hotel, and I fell in bed but couldn’t go to sleep because it was so hot despite the fan whirling about. So I decided to sit up and read a book, and this is where one exciting thing happened—there hadn’t been any problems with the bed when I lay down on it, but when I sat up and reached over to my bag to take out my book (Elif Shafak’s Forty Rules of Love by the way, definitely read it if you have time), the bed sort of just went “graaccckkkk” and went down, but at an angle, so it was slanted. I was a little weirded out, and I just kept on cracking up and laughing because the bed had been completely fine when I lay down, but then I sat and it broke. Too funny. Well, after that exciting little adventure with the bed, I sat (again, but this time nothing happened) and read for a while, and when I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore I lay down (slanted, but it worked out better for some reason) and slept.
When I woke up, I went downstairs to have breakfast (egg, bread, jam, butter, olives, plums, and tea) and then asked for directions to the University of Damascus. It took me about forty-five minutes to walk there mostly because I wasn’t entirely sure I knew where I was going, and I asked for directions a couple of times, but eventually I made it to the university (and yes, I asked for directions in Arabic. Fusha, but they answered in aamiyah, but I was still able to understand. I think I might come back to America extremely adept at Charades). Little did I know that the real adventure was starting now.
I went in through the gate and into the building that had “كلية الادآب”written on it, thinking that was where I needed to go. After walking around much and asking where I could register and where the building and people of the program were and not getting an answer that matched from any two people, I gave up and decided to go check out the Turkish embassy to see if I could get the letter I needed to register for the class. So I walked over to the assumed location of the Turkish embassy, and to my horror, the building was completely closed and looked as if it hadn’t been taken care of in ages, which was just really weird because Turkey and Syria have pretty good relations now—for example, they’ve lifted the visa on travel between the two countries. Pretty depressed by this time, I went back to the hotel and moved out to the room that I’d seen during the half day, and it was then that a truly funny coincidence occurred and was pretty much the highlight of my day. I walked into the house, put my stuff down, paid the guy the rent for the month (10,000 Syrian pounds, or lira, as the money is known here, which is around $200-$300, I think), and then went downstairs to meet the roommates that were there, and it turned out that the girl who’s staying in the house is actually a friend that had been mentioned by another friend of mine. Such a small world.
After dealing with the stuff in the house, I went out to the bank again because I needed money, and after getting money I went to the hotel to meet with a friend from UNC who’s also here to do Arabic language study at the University of Damascus, who had much better success with the registration process than I did, so it was great to listen to him and his advice as I got the information I needed—the right information this time. The guy who’d shown me the house had also mentioned that there was a Turkish guy who was here and they’d mentioned that I was here and a Turk and could help this guy out, so I met with him as well in the hotel, and from him I learned the place of the Turkish embassy. Apparently they’d moved and the guy that had given me directions only knew the old place.
So after this pretty unsuccessful day in getting things done, I went back to my room and started to put things in their places. And that was when the defining moment of the day happened—as I had been expecting for a while, my nose started to bleed. Non-stop. I don’t mind nosebleeds, I’m used to them since I tend to get them especially when it’s hot, and this was just obviously going to happen because I’d been walking around all day, it had been hot, etc. so I was like yeah, this was meant to happen. After a while, once it seemed like it was sort of stopping, I went downstairs and took a shower (heaven. There’s really nothing like feeling clean) and then made a huge mistake—I blew my nose. That just got the bleeding started again. Copious amounts of blood, might I add, and it just wouldn’t stop. So I freaked out, which didn’t help with stopping the bleeding at all. Some advice: do not freak out when you have a nosebleed that just won’t stop. Then it really won’t stop. Stay calm, stay cool, and just keep that nose stuffed with Kleenex or cotton balls if you have them since they actually work better to stop the bleeding.
Having freaked out, however, I called my mom, who told me to calm down and call the friend from UNC who’s also here, which I did, and he was really nice and came over with the guy from the hotel who had been really helpful up till now, who asked me if I would like to see a doctor, and I just said sure so he went back out and brought the hotel doctor with him in like five-ten minutes. The doctor did some general check stuff and told me to press on the root of my nose to stop the bleeding, and also told me to get a lot of vitamin C, so the guy from the hotel ran out and bought oranges. The doctor, whose name I didn’t get unfortunately, watched me eat two of the oranges, and then said that I should be okay and that it was most likely because of the heat and all the walking I’d done. I paid him 1,000 Syrian pounds, and then he left.
In my defense, this is the first time I’m by myself in a country that I’ve never been to before, and I can sort of speak the language, but not as well as I would like to be able to speak it of course, and I speak fusha, not the colloquial, which I only understand half of, or less than half of, when I hear it spoken. That will insha’allah improve as time goes on, but at this point of time, I still don’t understand it very well. So yeah, I freaked out. After calling my mom though I managed to calm down, and by the time the doctor had come and gone I was fine. My nose stopped bleeding while the doctor was here, but he still gave me some of the cotton balls he had which I stuffed up my nose. This helped me a lot with avoiding the gazes of all the guys that were out in the streets at this time, because I needed to go to the hotel as it turned out that my phone wasn’t working properly.
The phone came back to the real world the next day, and I slept okay during the night, and now I’m simply paranoid about my nose so I’ve been taking better care of it than I’ve ever done before, but it should be getting better by now since I’ve been getting more used to the heat. And just my luck, it hasn’t actually been all that hot when I’ve been out walking about so that’s been good. I’ve actually needed the light jacket I brought with me some of the time.
That’s it for the one and a half day I’ve been here—May 16 and 17, 2010! More to come tomorrow insha’allah!
Sunday, May 16, 2010
First Post!!!
Salaaaaaaaaaaaam from Damascus everyone!
Indeed, Yekta's blogs just continue to continue. I believe I have three right now, one for my Turkey trip, one for my Balkans-Vienna trip (which I haven't actually written much in but I promise to be better with this one insha'allah), and now this one! So exciting :)
Elhamdulillah, after going through a marathon of 3 days of travel through Turkey, I have now arrived in Damascus. I came across a really nice taxi driver who said he'd help me if I needed anything, and the people at the hotel have been really nice as well, so elhamdulillah, this has been a good start. I took care of money and SIM card matters, and now have a working phone. I've also almost found a place but I'm going to look around a little more before sealing the deal.
I am now blogging from an internet cafe, called @internet cafe, its pretty good, the connection's nice, I can skype with my parents, so elhamdulillah, no worries. I don't know how successful I'll be when trying to upload photos, but insha'allah I'll be able to put them up somewhere.
I'm really hungry right now so I'm about to go on the adventure of looking for food.
Sorry for the short post, but I'll update more soon insha'allah!
Until then,
Byes :)
Indeed, Yekta's blogs just continue to continue. I believe I have three right now, one for my Turkey trip, one for my Balkans-Vienna trip (which I haven't actually written much in but I promise to be better with this one insha'allah), and now this one! So exciting :)
Elhamdulillah, after going through a marathon of 3 days of travel through Turkey, I have now arrived in Damascus. I came across a really nice taxi driver who said he'd help me if I needed anything, and the people at the hotel have been really nice as well, so elhamdulillah, this has been a good start. I took care of money and SIM card matters, and now have a working phone. I've also almost found a place but I'm going to look around a little more before sealing the deal.
I am now blogging from an internet cafe, called @internet cafe, its pretty good, the connection's nice, I can skype with my parents, so elhamdulillah, no worries. I don't know how successful I'll be when trying to upload photos, but insha'allah I'll be able to put them up somewhere.
I'm really hungry right now so I'm about to go on the adventure of looking for food.
Sorry for the short post, but I'll update more soon insha'allah!
Until then,
Byes :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)