Overview

It's been a long time since I've posted and I apologize.
I've started writing many times, but every time I begin, it gets interrupted and then another couple days go by and the update I was going to post becomes totally outdated.

I don't even know where to begin. So much has happened since my last post.
First of all, I'm no longer in Cairo. On March 17th we embarked on "Travel Component."
Our first stop was Istanbul. What a rush. After spending 2-3 months in desert and city, it was exhilarating to see grass!
The air was clean, cold, and crisp. We had a bit of drizzly rain the first two or so days and with Istanbul being on the water and hilly, I was reminded of Seattle.
In Turkey we spent our days listening to various speakers (journalists, AK Party, residents, etc.) on lots of topics...secularism, Islamism, Turkey's foreign policy, the Kurdish issue, the EU, the Armenian "genicide" etc.

From Istanbul we traveled to Ankara, the capital, for a few days and then on down to Syria. I don't know why we Americans paint a picture in our head of a dry, dust ridden Middle Eastern Region. Yes there's vast desert in certain regions, and other regions may be more on the dry, dusty side, but there are so many areas that are fertile and alive with color. Syria was beautiful to drive through. It was so green.
On our way to Damascus we stopped at one of the largest (or THE largest) crusader castle left in the world. [If only I had made the trip there as a 10 year old. I would have been in Heaven exploring the underground passageways.] It was a cloudy/rainy day when we went to the castle so unfortunately we didn't get to see the apparently spectacular view that one gets standing atop the castle on the hill. It was still really cool nonetheless.

On our way to Damascus we also stopped in Maloula (one of 3 aramaic speaking villages left in the world) and visited St. Tekla's shrine and an old Orthodox church.

In Damascus, we spent basically all of our time in the Old City. We saw the house of Ananias (who healed Paul when he went blind) and the Ummayid Mosque (where, supposively, they have John the Baptist's head). There were lots of Iranians in the Old City, especially at the mosque, and it was interesting to see their reaction to seeing Americans...it was fascination/excitement. Apparently Iranians rarely come in contact with Americans, if at all, and so we found ourselves to be the subject of a lot of camera lenses. There will be dozens of Iranians taking home pictures of their "American friends". haha.

Anyway, from Damascus we moved on to Amman, Jordan. We were only there for a day basically, and spent it at the Dead Sea. and Yes you can literally sit in the water reading while floating as if you were sitting in a chair.I wonder if swimming through space is a similar feeling to swimming in the Dead Sea? I was weightless.

So from Turkey, Syria, and Jordan, we have made our way to Israel and occupied Palestine.
More to come.