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Published: June 12th 2006
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Well I have now been here a few days and can safely say that I love it! I have been having a blast all day every day exploring and learning sooo much!!! I'll recap the last few days as best I can in the time I have. Unfortunately I am having trouble uploading pictures so those will have to come later.
As I said in my first entry, I arrived local time on Thursday and got to my hotel around 10pm. I wandered around for a few hours with a new friend I met named Mina who is in my program. I got to bed around 3am and fell right to sleep. I was awoken by a knock at my door at 7:30am and it was Mina asking why I had overslept and I was like I didn't. She thought it was almost noon but it wasn't. We went and wandered around alllll day exploring and the like. We met up with her friend Emily and a local guy that she had met a week before. He was nice enough to show us around a little bit in his car as well as on foot. I had a lot of
fun. Friday night I went to a club and danced (yes I actually danced0 with Mina, Emily, and another guy named Dan. It was tons of fun and we got back very late.
Saturday we got picked up at the hotel around 11am to go look for houses. We were told to bring our bags in case we found a place to stay we could move in. I ended up being the only one that brought them and I had to lug them all around the cobble stone streets of Bab Touma, the neighborhood that we are staying in. Eventually, after looking for a while we went to one of the houses that the man showing us around, Fuad, owned. The house was all students living there but the price and everything was adequate so I decided to grab it. So I moved in right away and paid him right then and there. I got my keys and went on looking with everyone else. Saturday night we went to dinner at a very fancy restaurant but didn't realize how expensive it was and made some people very mad when we refused to pay that much. We never actually received
more than the appetizer course but we got shooed out pretty quickly. I then went home and went to bed, late again.
I slept in on Sunday because I could. When I woke up I spent some of the day helping everyone else get acquainted that had arrived the night before. Mina was off doing her own thing with Emily and a girl from OSU, Erin, and i hit it off so we spent to rest of the day together. We explored some more and i "showed her the ropes" of the city. It's been fun just wondering off and exploring. Sunday night no one had heard from my friend Ashanti but I checked my email and found out that she was lost and in such and such hotel so I went to rescue her. She had no phone numbers and no idea where she needed to be or anything so it was a relief when I found her. I gave her some info on where to be and when and a few #'s and it was back to my place because it was pretty late again.
Today, Monday, i woke up at 8:30am and took another cold
shower (they don't turn the water heaters on in the summer) and got ready to go to school for my placement exam. I waited for Erin to call me since she said she would but she didn't. So, I called her around 9:30am and her and her roomate Chloe and myself went and got something to eat real quick on the way to the bus stop to go to the university. The test was impossible and everyone, even the students that had studied Arabic for 3 years had lots of trouble with it. After that Erin, Mina, myself and a few others I didn't know went and got lunch. Erin and I then parted ways at that point. The rest of the afternoon/evening was spent on a 3 hours walk into the city in an attempt to find a few specific things. We turned up empty and very lost, wandering through scary dark back alleys. We eventually hailed a cab and took it home and grabbed dinner. After that I came to the cafe for the second time today to try to upload some pictures. That didn't work but at least I finally got a nice long blog on here.
Tomorrow is orientation at the university and Wednesday classes start so I should get a lot more busy after that. Haven't decided if i want to go anywhere this weekend but it is a possibility. If so I'll be sure to post where I'm heading to and who with. Until next time.
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Mark
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We stayed at that same hotel when we were in Damascus. Too funny.