Flashback to 2011

Exactly 365 days ago...this was our life. Wowza. Our 12th move in 14 years of marriage.

{It is a good exercise to try to get all your worldly possessions into 17 boxes!}

Syria Update

Roman ruins in Damascus {photo from our trip in 2004}

Some recent news from our Syrian friends... 

Today started as a terrifying day.

We woke up at 5.45 A.m. because of shooting very close to where we live, then it turned into a real battle, with heavy guns and explosions, and a very loud shouting of Allah wa Akbar – God is big! It remained like this till 9.15, then stopped till 11.00, when they resumed the fight for half an hour.

And it remained calm till now 3.30P.m without knowing the result of the fight. Few minutes ago, I went out to walk around and see what happened, nearly all streets are empty and many thieves stealing furniture of military center close to us! I wrote in the morning on Facebook: It is very unusual to have your morning tea, with the music of “normal” guns and heavy machine guns and the shouting “allah akbar”!!

Then there were many, many days before we heard from them again. We were quite worried, but relieved to hear they are okay!

After 30 days of loosing the internet connection and also the mobile coverage we are able to open the internet suddenly. Today Sunday 9 September 2012. This email is to tell you that we are safe.

And today, we received some more news from him...

During the last month, I kept writing you hoping to have chance to send my mails. Here I’ll summarize what we had in the last month.

Fighting is still strong and heavy and getting closer to our areas. More mortars fell on buildings and churches.

Daily life is getting difficult more and more: more closed streets, more dangerous streets, Bread is in better situation than before, especially if you are willing to pay more. Gasoline and Diesel and cooking gas, is the same. As well if you are willing to pay for example 5$ to 1 litter of gasoline instead of 1$, and as I told you before it is 70-100$ for cooking gas instead of 10$!

Kidnapping: it’s getting so dangerous to go out of the city are more and more, and kidnapping is a great business now, and in general, no use of paying to release the kidnapped ones, because they will return them, dead, in more than one piece, raped or they inject him by Diesel injection!

Way to the airport: two weeks ago, I went through the city to the airport, it was my first time to pass by the areas that are under the rebels, it was very sad to see the city divided, buildings destroyed, streets in big damage. On my way, there were three check points: Syrian Army, Muslim forces and Kurdish militants!

I always find the anniversary of Sept 11th very hard, as most do. It is the day my homeland was attacked 'from the outside'. I can't imagine how it must feel to be living through an attack 'from the inside' like our dear friends. 

To read the other Syria updates, go here and here. 

First Impressions

First Impressions is a series of posts about one extraordinary person's first impressions of the United States. To read about how he got to the States, go here. To read all the posts in the series, go here.

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The day finally came, and we moved him in to his dorm last week.

It was one of those happy/sad moments in life...I was so excited for all the adventures that await him at school, but was sad to drop him off and drive away. My mommy heart skipped a beat. 

The university hung a Jordanian flag in his honor to welcome him as a new international student. That made us all feel really proud!!

Ok! Enough of the sappy-ness of the drop off of our first kid to college. Now on to a few quotes from the enormous list of insightful and often hilarious observations since his arrival. We have so enjoyed seeing our culture through his eyes.  
 

"The amount of green I see where I am now is more than the amount of desert in the whole country where I came from. Just the back yard feels like a jungle to me!"

Leaving the desert...

landing in the jungle.

 "Cars are actually stopping whenever they see a stop sign, and giving signals when they want to go left or right, not acting like they are Chuck Norris and trying to go through other cars without crashing in to them and pretending that they can go through them like a phantom."

Image from Jordan Times

source

 "I have noticed there are no cats on the streets. Are there any cats in the US?"

For a full dissertation on trashy cats...go here.

source

And one of my favorite quotes:

"Americans spend a lot of money. Everyday."

And there you have an astute summary of America: beautiful, rule oriented, rich, animal lovers.