Kafroon… We have left Aleppo for the countryside. The terrain and weather and religious backdrop has changed dramatically. The valleys have become wooded, water is seen flowing in the valleys, and the hills are wooded and green with olive groves, apricots, apples, walnuts, pomegranate, and other fruit trees. The day was threatening rain as we left around 7 a.m., and as we moved toward the coast and up into the mountains it strengthened its resolve and dumped buckets.
We are visiting Auntie Bedia in Kafroon a Christian community just north of Lebanon and off the Eastern Mediterranean. Bedia is an honorary relation who has helped in the rearing of some of Yvette’s sisters, been with her family in Libya, and is now a neighbor to them in California. Bedia is in Syria for 2 months with her sisters and brothers and the extended family that is her home village. On our bus ride from Aleppo we met Dr. Bassem who grew up next to the home where we will be staying. He answered our grammar questions, shared with us his knowledge of the Bedouin people, helped with our pronunciation, filled us in on the medical education in Syria, and discussed with us the current system of military service in Syria: families with only one boy don’t have to send their son, some medical conditions exempt one from service, immigrants who stay abroad – for example a Syrian doctor who does his residence in the states and then starts to work there can pay a fee in lieu of service.
Kafroon welcomed us with armies of olive trees standing sentinel on the terraced hills. The bus took us up and around a few hairpins before halting on one and honking - the driver motioning us to enter the house on the corner. We were the last passengers receiving this door to door service and he stayed to chat with our host family. There were 8 – 10 people visiting in the room –people with 40 – 70 years of shared history and stories who know each other well and welcome us into their midst with English and Arabic and food and gestures and smiles. By the end of the day we will have visited 5 more families in their spaces, held twin babies, bounced balls on our heads, drawn pictures and letters , stretched out our Arabic vocabularies, and eaten walnut and pistachio laden sweets and oranges and carrots and cake and drunk numerous cups of tea and coffee. Neil will also have been lectured repeatedly about the merits of babies and why he should have one soon – “don’t be selfish”, “God has said to be fruitful and multiply”, “it isn’t the same”, “this area is very romantic”, “if you don’t want baby – why married.”
After lunch we are whisked away to see the sites. The Syrian equivalent of my sister (and Lisa I mean that in all the good ways) acts as tour guide and has a very efficient agenda mapped out to optimize our viewing pleasures: An old church in a cave – “look the ceiling – very beautiful”, “take a picture – very old”, “ok, we go” ; a cave on another hilltop, a church that people make pilgrimages to pray for babies. The hilltop views are expansive and show the sprouting condominium developments of the last 10 years marching up the ridges. We manage to finish this itinerary before the skies really let loose and knock the power out leading to a candle-lit supper of smoky baba-ghanouj, benijan (eggplant, onion and tomato), cheese, bread, salad, and the ultimate comfort food for a cold stormy night – warm lentil soup with freshly squeezed lemon.
I am now experiencing the ineptitudes of hosting by the most well meaning of hosts. Assuming that we are devout kiddos and missing Christian sermons, our host has tuned to the English 3ABN channel (Three Angels Broadcasting Network – a conservative Seventh Day Adventist channel, the religion of our parents) - spouting out information about baptism and converts and the devil and how your best friend may turn on you in the end of time and how much worse it will be when those inside the church will turn on us – much worse than when the infidels or the agnostics turn against us, and how we must be strong…. Because English is harder to understand, our host has cranked the volume to an ear piercing level…. There is almost nothing else I wouldn’t rather have blaring in my ear, but I am enjoying the family scene of wrinkled grandmother (Bedia’s sister) having her blood pressure checked and picking her nose and grinning from ear to ear and gesturing with great animation. She is wearing 5 visible layers and sitting right in front of the small central heater: black tights underneath with knee-high white stockings with runs in them ; over this are calf-high grey socks; padded slippers and a grey polyester skirt complete the ensemble - along with a greenish tee-shirt and a navy cardigan. Wonderfully Monty-Pythonesque.
Tomorrow we will visit Krak de Chevaliers – one of the great Crusader castles just north of Lebanon.
We are now half-way into our whirlwind Jordan tour. We stayed last night in Aqaba and after failing to find the seashore last night we were greeted by a great view of the bay this morning with tankers in floating in the gulf and the sun striking the water. After typical hotel breakfast chaos – no clean glasses, running out of orange juice, trying to find a place to sit, we headed out to the Red Sea for a glass bottom boat ride – I saw a fish or two, but the people watching was better than the fish. The Israel-Jordan border and checkpoints were clearly visible, and it was interesting to watch our Syrian friends’ reactions to the proximity to a country they consider to be an enemy and occupier of their territory.
After the boat ride we visited a small aquarium and got to see a few more creatures up close and personal. A small sea turtle making the rounds in his tank, a very dashing looking octopus flashing different colors and putting on quite a display, along with a downright dapperly dressed green fish with radiating orangish-pink lines from his eye and a showy tail fin like that of a beta. As tours often do we were packing it in, and the next thing on the agenda was a stop at a beach - for an hour. I took the chance to swim and buy a cheap snorkel. The snorkel band was kid’s sized and wouldn’t fit over my head, so I just had to hold it onto my face and hope that my mouth could hold the breathing tube upright… I ingested too much sea water, but the fish that I saw were really beautiful and I like seeing them in the open water better than the aquarium. 
From the beach we headed for Wadi Rum – a truly impressive desert valley. The monoliths are huge and rise out of the sandy valley. The sun was painting them in golden hues as we arrived and soon it brought out its red brush and shadow tools for a desert sunset. We jeeped out to some Bedouin tents and a place to walk about a bit. I ended up playing soccer with some runny-nosed kids who were all toting plastic guns and asking me for a dollar to take a picture. I ignored the latter request, and they soon were posing for me and getting in the way of the camel pictures I was hoping to take against the landscape. Yvette, Julie and Joachim came over and we all went over by the fold that held the cute little goat kids – about 30 of them or so with the youngest being 5 days old or so. They were springy-legged little things, and the one I picked up decided to snack a bit on my shirt. 
As dusk gave way to night we have headed back to Aqaba and are now at the mall. We will go shopping for the next 2 hours or so, but I would rather be looking at the stars in the desert.
