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.
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