I'm enjoying this country, syriasly

A week in pictures:

En route to Aleppo, the second biggest city in Syria and pretty far north in the country, we stopped to see this giant mosaic church floor that had been unearthed. The church was built around 442AD...and apparently Syria is awash with old mosaics:
We visited the ruins of St. Simeon's church. St. Simeon lived in the 400s as well and became well known as an ascetic who spent more than 30 years of his life living on a pillar, away from humanity in order to get closer to God. I'm not sure how that worked with feeding himself and such, but apparently it impressed (and converted) many back in the day. The church was built around the pillar he lives on (now rather crumbled):
This is me at St. Simeon, looking at Turkey in the distance.
and this is Statue Wendy.
Later in the day, we went to Aleppo's Citadel. Pretty spectacular and imposing, turns out - and apparently it was to would-be invaders as well; the Mongols were the only ones who ever succeeded in taking it:
Aleppo from the Citadel (cool city, eh?):
Aleppo also boasts the Middle East's biggest souq, one that is 12km long. I didn't search through all of it, though I did manage a bit of shopping adventure.
Popular items to buy in Syria include olive oil soap...
...and scarves. Always scarves.
A country awash with mosaics simply must have a mosaic museum. I'm not big on museums generally, but I did like the mosque in which the displays were housed:
The ruins of Afamea were pretty spectacular. This was a city built around 300BC; most of the architecture was Byzantine and Roman, and fairly notable people like Cleopatra took the time to visit in its heyday. Really peaceful - and windy - now.


I attended a graduation for Iraqi students who participated in some of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate's vocational programs. One of the sweetest moments was watching a fashion show at the beginning. These little girls modeled dresses that had been made by students in the sewing classes, and they were adorable:
But it was really wonderful to see how excited everyone was - lots of proud parents and proud friends around, and it was quite touching.
Obligatory food note for the blog is my love of the mulberry squash you can get here (I'm using the British term 'squash' to refer to a really strong fresh concentrate that you can dilute with water) - but more importantly, the best ice cream place in Damascus is just up the road from the monastery where I'm staying, and they have ROSE ice cream there. My favorite. I'm eating it every day from now until I return.
Oh, this is what birthday cake candles look like here - more like a birthday firecracker than anything.
We had dinner with one of the bishops here last night, at the church of St. Paul (conveniently located at the very spot where Saul was stopped by God on the road to Damascus and then blinded). Upon hearing that the bishop goes jogging every morning (and after much frustration with the reality that solo female jogging here is simply unacceptable), I was quite tempted to see if he'd be interested in picking up a jogging partner...but he's off to Sweden tomorrow for the rest of my stay here. Alas!
2 more weeks. More anecdotes and analysis to come before I head out to Lebanon/Egypt/Yemen/London/LA.