aleppo from citadel
Aleppo in August

I think I’m over my jet lag, which is pretty cool.

Yesterday there was a pretty big (thousands) pro-Syria protest near the U.S Embassy and I watched some of it on TV. Supposedly it was mostly Hezbollah and Amal supporters, though most of them were careful to carry Lebanese flags. An oh-so-clever slogan has been adopted- “U.S. — Leave Us”.

On Monday, Iran announced a new visas on arrival policy… for Americans, too! I didn’t read about it until yesterday. It was pretty timely because the night before, Ethan and I had chatted with an Iranian grad student about Iran and how it was too bad that Ethan and I, as Americans, couldn’t easily go there. He encouraged us to apply for visas anyhow, since sometimes they are approved. Now it looks like we will be able to go, which I hadn’t expected.

Our travel plans are getting pretty exciting. We are going to Aleppo (see photo above) in a few weeks (we got Syrian visas when we were in Washington D.C. in December), hopefully we are going to meet Katy and Oneida in Athens soon after that, and we are going to try skiing in Lebanon at some point. I hope that we can go to both Iran and Oman in March or April.

Last night there was a tremendous thunderstorm- some of the loudest thunder I have heard in my life. I have no idea how people manage to dry their clothes in winter here. We have moved the latest load into the apartment on our drying rack. I think we have been trying to dry them for 3 days and they have been caught in several downpours. I am trying to adopt the strategy of carrying an umbrella at all times. We now have a gas-fueled space heater, which makes a huge difference in taking the chill off.

On the way to Bourj al-Barajneh today, I noticed that the butchers seemed to have been hard at work. Lots of swinging carcasses and heads in buckets. As I sat on the bus, I watched a fellow remove the head and legs of a sheep a few feet away. Halal butchers are not kidding around with the sharpness of their knives.