I have nothing to write or whineabout today, but honestly I don’t want to break my streak either, I’ve been toobusy to write during the last semester and I haven’t paid enough attention tomy blog as I used to when I first started. That’s why I was more concerned withthe quality of my posts lately in order to keep my frequent visitors interested,and now each time I start writing a post I face the challenge of coming with abetter one or at least of the same quality. Anyway this post is nothing likethe previous ones neither in quality or kind; I’m just going to summarize whatI’ve been doing lately in Damascus and what I’m planning to do in the near future.

So I’ve been in Damascus sincethe 1st of February, my time is mostly divided between social visitsand gatherings, I always try to have my own me-time which is mostly during themorning when I enjoy a hot coffee and a walk down the old city –my favoriteplace on earth- I’m also editing a book even though I think I’m the leastqualified person to do so, but it’s fun –well not that fun but it’s beneficial-and most importantly it efficiently kills time. I also had the fortunate chanceto go twice in a hiking trip, however I was miserable enough to forget mycamera in Saudi Arabia,I would’ve taken amazing pictures otherwise.

The first trip I took was fromRankoos village to Halboun in the Kalamoun mountains to the north of Damascus, it was a fantastic15 km with really beautiful scenery and clean air. I accompanied Amr, Matt andBeth (American couples who teach English in Damascus University and theAmerican Language Center ALC), Attila (an Australian tourist who’s been roamingthe world and spent the last six weeks in Syria and is recently applying to geta job in here, it seems that we the Syrian are too loveable :-p), another twoAustralian girls whom I unfortunately remember the name of one of them onlywhich is Laura where there too, Talal a nice Damascene guy who recentlygraduated from Business school in Damascus University and who’s like me applyingfor masters but in Europe however, a Syrian family, and our mighty silent withvery long legs guide Bisher whom everyone call Khalo.

However the second trip washarder and longer but even more beautiful, we decided to go after it snowed inDamascus so we were pretty sure that the snow would be much thicker at Bloudan(a village that’s 40 km to the west of Damascus near the Lebanese borders), andwe weren’t disappointed, the snow was so thick that it reached our mid-thighs.The route we took was from Bloudan to BaradaValley through Heireh (a rural village that transportation recently reached). It wascold and muddy but the scenery was extremely beautiful with all the mountainswearing these white clean clothes, we were able to clearly see Harmon mount too,but the most appreciated thing in this trip was the serenity and peace we foundthere. I accompanied Issam Hajjar a very famous local photographer and an oldfriend of mines, our guide this time was Abu Hasan a very energetic 50something years old man who’s been hiking for more than 30 years, and know thearea as well as he knows his palm.

Anyway this post turned outlonger than I thought, so I’m going to stop babbling now, I should return toDhahran –Saudi Arabia the coming Friday to end my sponsorship this time, and toleave for good, so wish me luck and as always keep checking your RSS reader youmight find something interesting to read. ;-)