Dulled perceptions

While Iman and her family have been great to me and I feel very comfortable there, it was nice today to spend the day in fluent English speaking company. I've been out of contact with anything English for about four days now, no internet or good conversation, I even finished my book. This morning I went with my friends Justin and Hiba on a trip aroudn northern Syria visiting ruins. We started with St. Simeon, a site known for a man who decided monastic life was not severely pious enough for him so he retreated to a cave dwelling. His piousnes, however, drew pilgrims and he soon grew tired of the attention so he erected a pillar on which he could live without being touched by his pilgrims. As his tolerance of people grew less and less he built the pillar higher and higher. Living forty years like this he eventually reached a height of 18 meters, about sixty feet, from which he would preach and yell answers to his pilgrim's questions. After his death he was buried in ancient Antioch (Antakya) where I was staying before coming to Syria. His pillar here was reduced to a boulder of about one square meter by pilgrims chipping away souvenirs.

We visited a few other sites, places we would never have found had someone not shown them to us; a cemetary and 500 year old shrine, a Roman amphitheater hiding behind a hill just off the road, and a lake where the river had been dammed where we amused ourselves with a rock throwing/skipping contest for about an hour. It felt great to be outside the city again, seeing the countryside, the olive trees stretching into the distance. We laughed alot, at ourselves, being silly, and most of all at the obsessive use of the word hubibi in Arabic music (it means 'my love'). Between this mini adventure and the movie/coffee last night, I'm loving life in Syria again. I think when you become accustomed to a new surrounding you stop realizing how amazing hte experience is. I look at the pictures from today, of myself standing on the remains of a 5th century church and nI realize if I was looking at someone else's pictures I'd be impressed and jealous of their adventures. That perspective made me appreciate even more what I've been able to do here, how unique my experiences have been, and how much I will cherish these memories when I'm back in my comfort zone, sipping coffee at Wild Joe's talking politics and futures.

We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away. - Watchmen