Mike In Aleppo, Syria, Otha'wise Known As Hallab

Some More Beaches

2009-05-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

Sometimes life gets a bit precarious. Other times, it gets cliche. This little ditty of a cliche, stacking rocks as if in some spiritual ritual, is still loads of fun. I mean, look at it. Nearly deserted beach...

Cats in Aleppo

2009-05-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

There are so many cats running wild in Aleppo. Here's one resting on the roof of the ancient souk system in the old city. Perhaps, these are the longest city dwelling cats in the world. It really is a concrete jungle of sorts.

Day, Night, and the Clouds

2009-04-09T11:58:00.000-07:00

The sun and moon play such an important role in seeing how beautiful Syria is. Light reflects in world class ways here. The first picture is in Kassab, a small town on a mountainside facing towards the east. Beeaauuutiful!
You really won't find a more chill area than the towns around the Northern coastal region. From Slunfeh, to Latakia, to Samra, it's all good.
The picture in the middle is in front of a restaurant called The View, in Latakia. There are lots of tide pools just in front, and when the sun sets, numerous reflections sparkle in the waning sunlight. The last picture is a sunset just outside of the valley surrounding Samra. The beach is getting popular every year.

2009-04-09T11:49:00.000-07:00

Hiking for half an hour can get you to a few unnamed beaches. Giant caves, plenty of rock climbing and cliff jumping, and some marvelous snorkeling. Bring a tent and you can stay a week, spear fishing and foraging. From the cliffs you can look out across the bay and see Turkey's coastal mountain range on clear days. At night, after captivating sunsets, Turkey's lights twinkle beneath a sky full of stars.

Samra

2009-04-09T11:42:00.000-07:00

Samra Beach and sunshine. There aren't many beaches where women can swim in bikinis and not worry about offending someone. The beaches around Samra allow coed groups time to relax without having to worry about ruffling local mores.

Beaches in Syria

2008-10-13T08:34:00.000-07:00

If you make it to Syria and get to stay for more than a week. You have to see the Mediterranean Sea. This country is full of beautiful coastline, even though many public beaches are littered with garbage. If you don't mind hiking a bit, and prefer quiet bays that are uninhabited, then you'll have a great time relaxing under the sun. This beach is near the small mountain town of Kassab. The beach is known as Samra, after the smaller little mountain valley village up on the cliff overlooking the rocky Syrian shoreline. This is right on the Syrian-Turkish border. If the northern currents work their way down from the Aegean Sea, the water turns to different shades of blue.

Low Tide

2007-02-17T07:03:00.000-08:00

These are pictures of a part of the old souk area of Damascus. It takes you to the Ummayad Mosque. This is early, early mornin' time. As soon as the shops open, this place is a sea of people.

2007-02-17T06:39:00.000-08:00

Kids climbing this old battering ram like a jungle gym. Not its intended use, but when you're a kid and boredom is just a look over your shoulder, anything can be turned into a game.
Not that the Ummayad Mosque is a boring place, it's just that kids would rather play on its slippery stone floors and old giant courtyard, than marvel at its old, old mosaics and artwork.

Ummayad Mosque, Damascus

2007-02-17T06:26:00.000-08:00

Ummayad Mosque in the old city of Damascus. Kids were running this place. I counted 8 different games of tag.

Roadside tea and bread

2006-11-18T04:16:00.000-08:00

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'

2006-11-17T04:32:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-17T04:24:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-17T04:01:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-17T03:48:00.000-08:00

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...

2006-11-17T03:37:00.000-08:00

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

2006-11-17T03:28:00.000-08:00

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

9/10: A little bit about cars

2006-09-10T10:26:00.000-07:00

I once wrote to a bunch of friends that Aleppo has an exceptional car culture. This is only one of the beauties, if you like old cars that is. There're so many it's hard to get myself to take more pictures, because the chances to catch the latest BMW or the oldest, is 8/10. There's even American cars that you rarely see outside of car shows, easily found. If you want to see more, let me know. I can take more picture's easily, and, many of the owners love to show them off and tell you about them.

Ah! But there's also and over abundance of cheap cars in Syria, not worth much recognition, except for the fact that so many people decorate their Iranian made compacts (which sport lawn mower engines and excellent gas mileage) with Ferrari stickers and the necessary, patriotic facial symbols of a Syrian President, past or current. Here's what the locals call a "Suzuki." It's a super light golf cart masquerading as a pick-up truck. Everyone who uses this little hauling machine has at some point loaded it with ingenuity, although still with grave danger to the health of all motor vehiclists and pedestrians.

Notice the silver sticker on the windshield. It's a very popular sticker of the Syrian President.

Apamea: 09/03/06

2006-09-06T10:31:00.000-07:00

Last week I visited the Roman ruines at Apamea, pronounced Afamea. The following pictures are just some of the pictures I took that really sunny day. Apamea is about 1 hour and a half south of Aleppo and next to some amazing foothills, resembling Colorado. Really, a friend from Boulder, CO who went along as well, also had moments when she felt like she was back home. Except that we were walking through some of the most interesting Roman ruins in Syria. Apamea has a set of columns, down its main street, that is longer than all the other sites in Syria. Many of the stones were meticulously decorated, giving me a sense that stone art is worth the trouble.
The gigantic, sun soaked columns stood out in front of a really inviting set of mountians. It seems like a great place to take a hike this Fall. I'll be checking that out later.
Apamea was one of the main centers in the region that trained elephants for war fare. You can still find their giant mollars lying around in the rubble at your feet. I heard that at one point they had 500 elephants there. Imagine 500 elephants hanging out in Boulder, CO.

If you want to see more pictures from that day, send me an email if you know it, or leave me a comment asking me too, and I'll post them on here.

Ahhh...So back for a second year of Turkish style coffee in Aleppo: 9/01/06

2006-09-01T04:53:00.000-07:00

So its been a few weeks since I arrived from the States, via Amsterdam, to Aleppo. Many of my friends and co-workers were still on their way back to Syria when I took this picture. I was enjoying a reunion at the popular Baron Hotel and noticed these dolled-up men across the street, looking very arab and very formal. Drinking coffee and smoking tobacco out of a traditional bong without women is something a lot of guys do here, at night, after the socialy accepted curfew hours of single girls.

I was still jet-lagged when I took this night shot and couldn't keep still enough to take a clean shot. But I think it came out well enough. This is a common sight at many downtown arab-style coffee houses, although these men were at a European style hotel lounge/coffee house/restaurant

(I finally got my camera fixed in the States this summer so I'll finally have pictures. Don't be shy to recommend subjects to photograph.)

I was a little worried about coming back to Syria this summer because of Israel's war in Lebanon. Of course, as soon as I saw my good friends in Aleppo, much of any of the worry I had, went away. I quickly remembered that what I saw in the news in the States about the Middle East and Syria is misleading. The great majority of Syrians I've met or mingled with would be dissapointed about the way ordinary Syrians are portraid in American news programs. I'll write more about that later, if you're interested.

Oh, on a total aside, it is more common to see posters of Nasrallah (Head Honcho of Hezbollah) in Aleppo right now, all over town, on many a' store front and car windsheilds. Of course, it can be hard to distinguish the reasons why somoene puts a poster up of a revolutionary figure (How many times have you seen the famous bust shot of Che Guavera? Isn't it now also a watered down pop cultural symbol instead of just a memorial-esque picture of a radical?) . I believe not everyone supports Nasrallah or the Palestinian cause in the same way here, and it will be very interesting, though I'm sure uncommon, to have someone tell me a very personal and not so easily guessed reason for their representin' a popular cause.

Okay, so anyhow, I'm going to post some photos of a trip I took with a few friends to a lake outside of Aleppo's city limits, near the Turkish border. The town area is called Mdanki. It's a more beautiful and natural region than dusty Aleppo is right now, so it was a good getaway to the country side. Hope you too got away from town this past week and experienced some fresher air and a relaxing atmosphere.

My First Message out of Aleppo, Syria: Aug. 27, 2005

2006-08-04T20:33:00.000-07:00

Mahalo everyone! Yes, I'm in Syria and it has been a long, long time since I have spoken to some of you. So first I'd like to say hello, how the heck are you?, and then sorry for not keeping in touch. But hey, such is life sometimes.

So, I'm in Aleppo, Syria now, typing away at an internet cafe, where you can even smoke a cigar if you wanted to and have the darkest, strongest coffee you've ever had (they usually serve coffee in Syria that'll keep you up for two days). In about two weeks I'm going to begin working at the National School of Aleppo (NSA), which is the reason I traveled to Syria for less than $15. All I spent during the long trip from Denver International Airport was, that amount, on food, most of it in Navaro, Italy on the layover to Damascus, Syria.

Anyhow, it's amazing what an employer will do if you speak english and have any kind of a college degree (I suggest to you all who are a little bored with the states and life in general to look up teaching abroad, because sometimes you need no experience at all, just some education and a willingness to live far, far away for at least a year). I literaly got hired before I technically applied through a connection from my friend Jon, whom some of you know and laugh at quite often.

Over some rueben sandwiches in a little known Denver restaurant, the director of the NSA hired Jon and I to teach young kids English, Math and Science. (Yah, I know, I suck at math, and I haven't opened a science text book since high school, but we're going to teach 2nd and 3rd graders so it's nothing we can't make up). So, realy fast, I got hired to travel to the Middle East, a place many of my family members and some friends misunderstand and fear. I have been interested in this area and Arab culture ever since I moved to Colorado last year, for many random reasons. I wanted a better look at a culture people fear or love.

So far, the arab world and Syria are fantastic. Honestly, everyone I've met here keeps proving to me things Hank (the director of the NSA) has been telling me. Mostly, people are friendly and hardly a day goes by that someone doesn't welcome you with a smile, apparently glad that someone from America decided to visit Syria. A number of people I have met in Aleppo have family in the states orwant to visit, they even watch the same tv shows since many of them have satelite tv. Jon watched the Family Guy last night, a rerun though).

The food is also great, and the weather, though really sunny and hot, is nothing like the humid days spent in Florida or Kentucky. Jon and I are making new friends every day and we even got some phone numbers from a few muslim girls and an arab-christian girl, who don't normally talk to any men they don't know, as is the custom. So you know we are doing something right. Because of the way global economics work, I've also been able to afford a realy nice place, in a part of town where all the highly paid professionals live. I even got an arab style haircut and I truly look funny, they even cut my nasty side burns really sharp, like all the players here in Aleppo. I look like a sheikh.

Well, this little message will have to do for now.

I hope all is well for you and that this hello finds you doing something other than work.

Take care,

Mike