The weekend: Friday and Saturday

So you think I’ve written the days of the weekend wrong, do you? Nope. Not at all. The weekend here consists of Friday and Saturday instead of Saturday and Sunday, which I think is quite wonderful, and yet I’ve no idea why. Either way, I’ve had two extremely relaxed days where I really haven’t done much other than sitting and reading and eating and drinking liters and liters of water. I literally cannot stop drinking water. Anyways, as I haven’t done much of value for these two days, I’ve decided to dedicate this post to a description of Damascus and my house and things like that.

Thus, first of all, the house: it’s a classic house that consists of a courtyard with rooms all around, and it has two floors. The first floor consists of the courtyard, three rooms, the kitchen, and the bathroom. The second floor has two rooms (I’m on the second floor in one of these rooms) and there are also five little steps up to the roof of the house. You come in from the front door and walk through a small corridor that opens to the courtyard of the house. The courtyard is half covered by a grapevine and the other half is by some kind of cement covering but I don’t really know what it is made up of. Anyways, the first floor of the house is arranged around the courtyard. Immediately once you come out of the corridor, the first door to your right is a room. Right next to this room is the kitchen. There’s a bit of emptiness where there a bunch of plants and whatnot, and you can see the stairs going up to the second floor. On the left wall of the first floor, there’s space for the TV (which one of my housemates just recently bought because the old one didn’t work and had obviously not been used for quite some time. It’s actually sort of hard to tell for how long the old TV hadn’t been used since there’s a lot of dust and sand floating around here, but either way, it just hadn’t been used.) So after the TV, you just keep going and you have these random cement blocks that are covered by a rug and I haven’t yet become curious enough to lift up the rug to check and see if there’s anything substantial underneath the rug, so I’ll update you guys about that once I do check.

So, once you pass the cement blocks, there’s another room right in front of you, and then right next to this room is the bathroom. The bathroom has a toilet that you sit on, it’s not squatty. There’s a bathtub in there as well, and it’s quite clean except because we go in there with our shoes it gets muddy after a while since there’s just so much dust on our shoes and the bathroom floor tends to be wet. Either way though, it’s quite nice. Turn your back to the bathroom, and right in front of you are the stairs to the second floor, and to the left there are actually two other rooms-—one is a classroom that the landlady’s son uses to teach Arabic when he’s around, and there are some stairs going up which lead to another room.

Now, once you go up the stairs (the ones in front of you, not the ones leading to the room), the only things you’re going to find are the two rooms and there’s also a laundry line which I’m pretty sure I’ll be using that one because it puts the clothes right out in the sun so they’ll dry quicker. The two rooms are right next to each other, and the room in front of you when you get up the stairs is that of a housemate, and the room right next to it is mine! It’s quite nice, large, and has high ceilings so I feel like I have a lot of space. In my room there’s a bed, a closet, a desk with a mirror on it which I don’t use except to put my water and cell phone on when I go to bed, and then another table which I use more often. I also have a window that I tend to keep open while I’m in the house so that the room gets air. Despite being on the second floor the room doesn’t get very hot, especially when I keep the window open, but I do have an air conditioner. I used it the first night I spent in the house, but after that I just didn’t need to use it because the weather’s been so nice and cool and windy. The wind is a wee bit dangerous for the clothes, but hey, you win some, you lose some.

The way the room is arranged is as such: you come in through the door, and the window is to your left, and the little desk is right in front of the window. There’s a small sofa right after the table, and then there’s the bed. To your right is the closet, and after the closet you have the other desk thing, which, like I said, I just don’t feel the need to use. It’s a really nice room, but most of my time I spend downstairs in the courtyard area.

The house is nice in general, it’s not hugely taken care of or maintained, but there’s a person who comes in every week to do the cleaning and stuff so that’s nice. And they’re really helpful when it comes to installing and moving things about so it’s okay.

That's it in general for the house. As for Damascus, let me just get straight to the point and state it very succinctly: it is exactly like Istanbul, maybe less well-arranged, and Arabic instead of Turkish is heard on the streets. Otherwise, I swear I'm simply walking around a big city in Turkey unable to understand all of the conversations going on around me since my colloquial Arabic is pretty much next to non-existent. Damascus is also obviously older than any other city on earth so you kind of have to multiply the Istanbul effect of walking on history by 10 I think which should get you to the correct ratio of the history level of the city.

Anyways, Damascus a little bit more in general. Its actually quite small. I don't know why but it seemed absolutely huge when I was looking at the map and then I realized I could walk most places in less than half an hour, 45 minutes if I was being slow.

I can't help but be comparative right now though, so some comparisons and similarities between here and Turkey. Traffic: completely the same. Horns honk the entire time, cars/buses/minibuses/microbuses/taxis don't care about pedestrians, or bugs, as I've decided to refer to us humans who walk. Its really interesting as well but taxis and microbuses honk at whatever they see moving essentially. Whether they're empty or not, they see someone walking, they honk. Its amazing. People: friendly and helpful, elhamdulillah. The men are also the same as in Turkey where they pretty much stare at you for being a woman. White people might blend in a little bit more in Turkey so I get more attention here for the white color of my skin, but its not that bad. Nobody acts on the looks they give so really, everything is good. Damascus is quite the safe place elhamdulillah.

That's all the similarities I can come up with right now, but I'll be sure to update the similarities soon as I remember them. For now, look out for the next post about the start of school! :) Indeed. Even in Damascus, I have managed a summer school. And, for all intents and purposes, its been good. :)