Palmyra

This morning we got ready to go to Palmyra. I went to bed really early last night so I woke up really early. I went out on our patio and it was cold. That was the first time I felt cold in a long time. Before leaving, some of us walked down the road a little ways just to look around. It is so beautiful here. I never expected that somewhere in Syria would look like this. I imagined it to be one big desert. :



Anyways, we drove to Palmyra and visited another crusader castle which had an amazing view of the city, the sand dunes, and the surrounding mountains. After that, we visited some ruins, checked into our hotel, and then a group of us went back to the ruins for sunset, which was very cool. Oh, and as a side note, our guide, Nassr, was wearing Bedouin garb today. Why? We may never know.

1.Palmyra: My first thought when we got here was that the city looks run-down. It looks like it was a thriving area at one point, but now it's dusty and doesn't get as much attention. It's a nice place though. It's very quiet and feels very safe. There were a bunch ofkids playing Red Rover in the street when we were on our way to dinner. It was cool to see that childhood games like that exist everywhere. It sort of reminds you of the similarities we share even with people we are so different from.

2. the ruins

3.Bedouin food: At lunch today, Connor ordered camel meat. He said it was surprisingly tender, but didn't really have a lot of flavor. For dinner, some of us went out to eat at this little place whose claim to fame was their warm apple pie. We were more interested in the traditional Bedouin food they served though. It was amazing, and tasted very different than most of the other food I’ve tried so far. Maybe the spices were different, who knows?