Welcome to Syria, have a banana!

Today we left for Syria! Our flight left Cairo at 2:35 and everything went smooth—much better than our travels to Cairo from Boston! Once we got to Syria we had to get through Syrian customs on our group visa. Syria recently stopped accepting group visas from the U.S. in response to the U.S.’s Syrian Accountability policy. It took a while, but we made it through! On the bus ride to our hotel we met Nasr, our tour guide for Syria. The first thing he gave us when we got on the bus were bananas, which were 100% welcome after the interesting food on the plane (corned beef?). Then he gave us water, cookies, and nuts. Needless to say, I was loving Syria from the get-go. Then we got to our hotel, which is AMAZING. It’s the quaintest little place and Katie and I got this huge room with 2 floors!
the canary in the jungle/lobby of our hotel

Once we were settled, we decided to go on a quest to find an ATM, which took a while. According to Nasr, there are about 500 ATMs in Damascus, but only about 20 work. We ended up walking through a section of Christian Damascus where there are a bunch of cute shops and just a lot to absorb in general. We also ended up walking through a lot of the famous Damascus market and got all the way to the Citadel, which was a pretty far trek. When we finally figured out which way to go to get back to the hotel, we stopped at a restaurant and had some really good food. We finally made it back and went to bed.

1. Goodbye Cairo: I don’t want to make any snap judgments, but I like Damascus a lot better than Cairo so far. IT’S SO CLEAN. It’s also not as stressfully busy, there isn’t the constant sound of car horns, and it doesn’t have the same funky smells floating around. There are also a lot of plants and a lot of ivy hanging over the streets which is really nice. The market isn’t as cramped either, and the shops are organized and the vendors don’t harass you! If there’s anything that I will definitely miss from Cairo though, it’s Abduh. He treated us all like his own kids.


2. Arabic: Well, after that intensive course in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, I feel like Syrian people just speak a totally different language and have absolutely no idea what I’m saying. It’s frustrating, and it’s unfortunate that we won’t really be here long enough to learn much Syrian Colloquial. I feel incapable of pronouncing my jiims and qaafs! AHH

3. What I like about Syria, visually: