Roadside tea and bread

Earthen oven cooking. Mm Mm good. Making fatayer, with jbne (fresh goat's cheese), zatar (thyme herbal paste), or flefle (red pepper paste).

Mountain Livin'

This guy's collecting fire wood for the earthen oven the roadside tea place sports. Syria has really good munchies style baked bread called fatayer. It's like a flat burrito filled with a paste made of dried peppers or an herbal thyme paste with local olive oil, all with natural, locally produced goat's cheese, if you must have cheese. I'm going to miss this food so much when I leave.

Indian Summer

On the road to Kassab, stopped at a small tea serving roadside rest stop. Kassab's a coastal town in the mountains overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. If you turn your back to the salt water air and walk 8 miles, it feels like parts of Appalachia, kinda like the Smokeys.

Another West meets East picture

Or is it an East meets West picture? Valerie, 3rd Grade teacher, on the left, directing her student's through their song at the assembly. Aya, her assistant, assisting. No matter where you are, women always have style.

A Pair of New Clown Shoes

When I took this picture I felt rushed. I'm a first time teacher, which means I am responsible for all kinds of things new to me: crowd control/photography were just two during this pictured moment. I guess a goal of mine is to become a better juggler of things. It fits in to my whole "feeling like a clown." Dat-tat, Tara-dat, dat-dat, Tat-dara...

There's an Escalade with spinner's somewhere around here...

But, downtown AziZia's got Hummers too, beside's the classic donkey pulled carts (used for carrying produce and merchandise). The truth is, you don't normally see both on the street very often, but they're there. The old and the new.

Concrete Jungle

Walking back from the gym among Aleppo's concrete jungle.