Heck, work!!

Would you believe it, we've actually got to do some work round here!! I say we, but obviously I've got Adrienne doing all the work whilst I "prepare" the classes... we paper rock scissored, Adrienne won so she's working now. The flipside is I'll have to commute 45 minutes each day for my teaching, whenever it starts. It's actually nice to have some teaching to do as we miss the interaction etc, and after all it's what we're here for...

Eastern Turkey was great - we stayed in a city called Mardin for most of our time as it was so beautiful. Our hotel was an old caravanserai built in 1275 - absolutely outstanding. The city claims to be the second (!) oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. It's full of old (very old) buildings and is dramatically sited on a hill overlooking the Mesapotamian and Anatolian plains. The silk road passes 20km to the South and you can see into Syria from the city! Adrienne's highlight was a beautiful old religious school (medrese) in semi-ruins, mine was visiting a deserted 3rd century monastery on top of a hill outside the city. The monks had carved dwellings into the cliff face and there was a whole series of caves and buildings and tunnels - great exploring to be done!

We also went to Diyarbakir, the capital of the region. Apparently it's walls are the second longest in the world after the Great Wall of China... so they say. It was nice but a bit of a come-down after Mardin. Ironic as we'd also applied for jobs there.

The border was a challenge - we waited 4 hours to cross into Turkey, and on the way back to Iraq we made a soldier really angry because the business card we had been given had "Kurdistan" written on it - a big no-no in Turkey. We also got stopped a lot at police and army check-points. It generally went like this:

Where from?
England, Canda.
Why here?
Teaching English.
Speak Turkish?
No.
Oh......OK, photo?

at which point they would pose with us for a nice family photo...strange

Our life in Dahuk is slowly getting into gear. We got a bed today, bonus. Went looking for bicycles but they're all crap - we'll have to get a couple anyway as there's not much else to do for exercise. Still can't speak Kurdish as there's so many dialects - we'll try to get some Arabic lessons as we can use Arabic here and it's a slightly more transferable skill... The electricity goes off randomly every day or so which is a little annoying, especially as the average temp is up in the 30s now and getting higher. Air-con we love you. We are staying in the school which is actually a massive house - our room is on the roof and is pretty nice. The building has bullet-proof doors that were pillaged from Saddam's palace, and is made mainly from marble so stays pretty cool.

Great to hear from you guys and hear what you are up to. I'm sure Groove Armada was rubbish Al, your place looks great P and J, can't wait to go there, I CAN'T IRON - please come over Innes, Come on Beasties - pull your fingers out!! Mammacita your daughter loves that you call yourself that - she think it's a vicory for her!! Stepher come on over - sun, sand and camels what more do you want?

OK that's it for now, let the good times roll, Alex