dispatches from here

 
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Currently taking a short break to Aleppo (Halab), but traveling light and left the laptop in Damascus, so no pictures for you yet.  After a day of rest and a day of hitting the crowded souq, today was ruins exploration day in the countryside around Aleppo.  Started out early and made it to Qala’at Samaan (a basilica to St. Simeon on a huge rocky outcropping) , Dier Samaan (tiny village with no roads/cars),  Ain Dara (10th century BCE Temple to Ishtar with carved lions and sphinxes in the fertile Kurdish countryside), and finally to Afreen (a Kurdish town about 20 kilometers from the Turkish border.

Covered quite a lot of ground, thanks to a little bit of Arabic and a fair amount of hitch-hiking in:

• A giant yellow dump truck with two Mohammeds and an Ahmed
• A motorcycle with a red and white khuffiyeh flapping in my face
• The back of a manure truck (mostly, but not completely, empty)
• A bread delivery truck (smelled much better than the manure truck)
• A pickup with Mustafa
• And finally, a few mini-buses

Pictures and etc to follow (should be back in Damascus by the end of the week).  Tomorrow heading to the ancient city of Ebla, which was sacked and destroyed by Sargon of Akkad in 2250 BCE, and the dead/abandoned Byzantine cities of Serjilla, Ruweiha, Jerada, and Al-Bara.  The goal is sunrise is Serjilla, which supposedly sits in a deep basin and fills with mist in the mornings.