New Friends

While the owners of my firm are here, they've been introducing me to lots people and on Saturday we were able to go to someone's farm outside of the city which is amazing! They've built a beautiful house and pool and gazebo and guest house and soccer field and barn on their farm which is also full of orchards and gardens. One the prettiest and most relaxing places I've seen since being here. We had an incredible iftar (the meal when you break the fast during Ramadan, this family is fasting, I am not!) and after I stuffed myself on their great food, we all sat down around the gazebo and each had our own hooka/sheesha/nargila (they call it nargila here), which if you know me at all, that's pretty much heaven! They do something really unique, they use an actual orange as the bowl and put the sheesha inside of it and attach that to smoke out of, it makes for a really smooth and wonderful flavor. I had lemon mint and enjoyed it for hours! They have a HUGE family and there were people coming and going all night, I couldn't keep up with them all. But they were very welcoming and so very kind! I feel privileged to have met such wonderful people here. They are also the same people that own the Women's Fitness center for the city (which is phenomenal, I'll have a separate post about it later), so I'll be seeing alot of them!

The owners left yesterday and we finished up all of our meetings, now I have a million reports to write. Thankfully, today is the last day of work for 6 days (because of Eid al Fitr, the end of Ramadan), so I'll have plenty of down time to work on the reports. I have no idea what else I'm going to do to occupy my time during those 6 days. There's talk of another day trip somewhere and there's a bowling alley here and go carts, so we'll probably make use of all of those things.

Last night I had dinner at the German restaurant... I've never even eaten at a German restaurant in the states, then I go to one in Iraq! The food was quite good, I had chicken schnitzel and an awesome beer! After dinner we went and walked around at Sami's park. First of all, Kurds LOVE to be outdoors, having picnics, walking, whatever. So the grounds of the park used to be a military fort and the Iraqi army executed thousands of Kurds on these grounds. They decided to convert it into a beautiful park dedicated to peace and friendship and it is a beautiful park, and huge! There are several fountains and two big lakes with paddle boats, kids playground stuff, flowers, trees, paths, benches, a restaurant, several snack stands, an ampitheatre, and a monument. It's really a special place, especially because it is named after the former Minister of the Interior that was killed along with 100 of his friends and colleagues in a bombing back in 2004, his name was Sami, that's why it's called Sami's park. This is where I can see progress in this society. If they can turn tragedy into a such a beautiful place and make it about family and friends and life, instead of death and retribution... that's real justice.