Exactly One Week to go!!!!

Hello everyone, yup you read the title correctly, we do have exactly one week to go in Damascus, before we head back home for a well deserved break. We dont think anyone is still reading this, because of the long interval between blogs, but if you are, hopefully you will enjoy this one.

Lots has happened in the 3 weeks that we havent blogged, it will be difficult to try and remember all, but we will give it a shot....

A few weeks ago, people from the Winchester University (the Uni. which is accrediting our program) came down to look at the Institute.. They are of course British, so they did stand out quite a bit. It was 2 men and one lady. They were here for about 6 days where they sat in a few of our classes, but were mostly involved in meetings and some touristy things. Sabiha gave the lady guest a chador and a scarf and took her to the Haram where she was asked by some lady to convert some british currency..LOL. One of the nights, we went to the area where our new school will be in 2 years and we had a wonderful bbq. We enjoyed some mushkaki, camel kabobs, chicken, rice, tabbouleh, mutabbal and some other type of salad. Great food and good times.

A week after that, we, the teachers and students went out on a little field trip for swimming and relaxing. They have a wonderful system here where they have swimming pools for men and separate swimming pool for women, this is one of the coolest things we like about Syria. It gave a chance for Jaffer to bond with his male teachers and Sabiha a chance to do the same with her teacher and their families. Since then, Jaffer has gone a few times for swimming with a few of his friends from school, but for sure we will make the most of this swimming thing in the years to come.

Lets see, what else.... oh yeah, WE ARE NOT PAKISTANI!!!!! LOL... everywhere we go, every store that we enter, the first question they ask... Antum min Bakistan??? and right away in a snappy reaction we say... Nahnu Lasna Bakistani!!! LOL, just kidding about the snappy reaction, but we do say that all the time... This has happened from the first day, probably because there are a lot of Pakistani tourists that come here, even our Nephew from NY who is studying here faces the same questions on a daily basis...LOL.

As the title tells you, we have exactly one week to go... infact less, it is currently 540pm our time, and our flight leaves syria next saturday at 4pm... exciting.... for those of you who are following (this might be a repeat, but oh well :) ) we fly to bahrain first and have a layover there for 5 hours, during that time we have made arrangements for a taxi to take us around Bahrain so we can see the country, dont know when we will get a chance to see it again.. ofcourse we will make sure to visit some good american restaurants, here they have a great steakhouse that we want to try...LOL, then we fly from Bahrain at 1am into London and have another 6 hour layover... yup, i know, thats crazy, we will no doubt be dead tired by then... then at 1130 we fly back to LA... yaaaayyyyyyyyyyy

In all this excitement of packing and wrapping things up, dont forget, we have our final exams this week... we just had our first and hardest exam today, Arabic! boy, was it a killer...lol... but thank goodness that its over with, and iA it will be easier from here on out... Please pray that everything goes well for us.

K, we gave you lots to chew over... maybe the next time we blog will be from LA.