Before English class today, I went into the room where many of my students take a hairdressing class. It was interesting, because about half of these girls/women (they range from 16-34 years old) are usually covered when in the presence of men, but in this room, they had shed outer shirts and were waltzing around the room in tank tops and tight jeans with their long hair flowing. Most of them had blond streaks in their hair, too. It was fun and they were all pretty excited to show me their hair, in part because they had just had it styled in the class.

Later, Ethan and I went to some jewelry stores in our neighborhood to look for wedding bands. It was really wild, because in every store, when asked the price of the ring, the guy would shrug and drop it on a scale. You pay based on weight. As most people know, the price of gold is international, you just pay extra for workmanship. All I know is that in the States, those jewelers are paid an awful lot for their craft, because rings here are so much cheaper than I ever would have imagined.

Tomorrow morning we are off to Damascus to spend about 24 hours with Ethan’s parents.