I had a special treat this weekend. A coworker left for the weekend and granted me the gift of the keys to his car!! I finally was able to drive myself to the store when I wanted, to the gym when I wanted, etc. It was glorious! Just like everything else here, there are a hundred different stories as to why I haven't been given a car yet, but they all result in my being carless.

Another big development I was also finally able to move into my apartment last night! No more hotel for me! I'm sharing an apartment with two other American women, one civil rights lawyer, one other young professional that just moved here last week to work for the Department of Foreign Relations. We've been working the last few weeks at getting all of the furniture and everything ready. We realized last night a big thing we forgot... propane (gas stoves, no natural gas lines here!) so we can't cook yet, oops! Its nice to finally fully unpack for the first time and feel like I'm in a home. Though I will miss my clothes being ironed for me. :) This now makes the car situation even more difficult because I'm away from my colleagues that have cars and I'm quite a bit further away.

We're busy in the planning phases for some field survey work, which is exciting. But not as exciting as my upcoming week... I'll be in Turkey as of late Wednesday night and will spend a few days there, including yes Thanksgiving in Turkey! :) The photos will be awesome and I will share soon!

The Iraq you never see

Strange things about Kurdistan:

* They don't allow cars older than three years to be imported into the country.

* If you buy a new car, you also then have to purchase (if you don't already have one) a much older car and cut it in half! (they're trying to keep junk of the roads) But you have to show proof of this before they'll give you a license plate.

* The color orange here is really popular, carpets, couches, curtains, clothing... you name it you can get it orange! They must all be VOLS fans!

* This is the one place in the world I've been where Pepsi is more popular than Coca Cola, though they have plants here for both. I don't drink either, so it doesn't affect me much, can we get a Dr. Pepper plant here please?

* There is a full fledged film school here, professionally accredited and doing great work, who knew!?


Just some insights from this week. So last week I had the pleasure of going to a wonderful Christian village, called Bedial. More beautiful scenery along the way, this time there was snow on the distant mountains in Iran and Turkey.
This cross was on top of a small chapel, but as you can see its a bit broken!
This is the head of Bedial in front of the old church. This village was destroyed in Saddam's Anfal campaign, but because the church was of stone, it wasn't fully destroyed like the houses and such. They've since built a new church where they worship, but this one is pretty awesome. No one really knows how old it is... someone said several hundred years... but we don't really know!

I'll post a few pictures here, but you can go HERE: http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2125291&l=4a2d7&id=7413237 and see alot more.



Also I got my hair cut here and its the best hair cut I've had in years!! I love the J&K women's center!!!! I still have a free full body massage and free facial to use at some point before January. :) They've torn up the road in front of and behind the center though and I'm afraid its hurting their business. So many of the business men here want to see them fail, b/c its two women owning a business that caters to nothing but women. So I love supporting them and really hope they're able to hang on! I should be headed there in about an hour... its by far my favorite place in Erbil!

Weekend

Another week goes by! This week was full of work. At one of my ministries we just got a new office building and the internet doesn't work well, so it makes it difficult both to do work and to procrastinate work. :) One of our projects, a building project for a Ministry seems to be getting on track and that's very exciting! It's going to be alot of work, but it'll be a historic project to be involved in!

Today is our official day off and it was pretty low key, but I did go to lunch with a friend to a new restaurant outside of town which had a better view than food I think! They insisted on paying and later were discussing the price in Arabic... I guess they don't know how much I understand... but it was WAY to expensive for what it was and I felt bad, though I offered to pay at the time. Generosity and hospitality here is ubiquitous, even when its ridiculous. The cost of food is one of those unexpected costs here. Salaries are not that high and groceries aren't all that expensive, but restaurant food is exorbitantly expensive! A normal meal (nothing special, chicken, fries, etc) will run you $20-$30. Don't get me wrong there is cheap street food (not cheap by Ghanaian standards, but you can get a shwama for about $2). I don't know how anyone getting paid what the majority gets paid can eat out, much less pay for others!

After lunch we went to a new park that just opened about a month ago and its beautiful! Lots of fountains and waterfalls and bridges and flowers and paths, they did a very nice job. I'll have to go back with a camera. So the company was nice, the landscape was nice and I saw quite a few surprising things at this park. Friday is the most popular day for everyone to go out walking, and everyone appears to be well aware that its see and be seen. Women and men alike are wearing their best clothes (while I certainly was not...), fully made up and carting along the whole family. Or couples were holding hands or arms entwined, something I've been noticing more and more lately... and that I find almost shocking for the area (not bad, just shocking)! However, the most shocking thing came when we were walking out, a young man pranced in fully made up, he had on mascara and tons of foundation and blush... I had no idea it was ok to be that openly homosexual here. He's definitely the first one I've seen here, but to be that open about it really surprised me. Good for him!

Tomorrow a last minute exursion was planned, so I'll actually have something interesting to write about and have new pictures! So expect an update soon!