End of School, Citadel & Olive Wood

Wow, you guys are lucky. Two pictures posts in two days!

Just over a week ago the semester ended at the university and so the weekend before and leading up to the finals my classmates, teacher and I spent some time together. One day for breakfast we gathered to meet her fiance, and then the night after finals were over I, along with three other classmates met my teacher for supper, which was nice. 

Then last Friday my friend and I decided on a picnic at the Citadel, where there are lots of ruins from the Roman period, and the Islamic Empire period. We crazily went through with our plans even though Friday turned out to be the hottest day yet this year. 

And then Saturday I went with a couple of friends from church (the same ones I went paintballing with) and some of their colleagues to an olive wood factory, where they create hand-carved olive wood pieces.  We had a tour and then got to explore their small shop there too. One of the reasons I was glad to purchase things from them was because their goal is to mostly hire people who are disadvantaged, in order to help them. They have beautiful things and they also do online orders, as well as some wholesale, if any of you are interested in checking out their site.  

Me with my teacher, Afnan, and her fiance. They are getting married this summer and she's so excited she's almost giddy...it's so cute!

The famous mosque at the top of my jabel, or mountain. It's quite an uphill walk from my house, but it is beautiful up there, as well as having a nice view of the city.

The remains of a Hercules statue at the Citadel. The only other remaining piece is the elbow in the background. This thing is huge, in case you couldn't tell from the picture.

There are 4 or 5 columns left from the Hercules temple at the Citadel and it's pretty fascinating to stand directly below them and look up. 

One thing I love about this country...you can get up close and personal with the ruins. They aren't roped off and inaccessible. 

Trying to stay in the shade when at all possible

These are some of the roughly cut shepherd figurines at the factory. They are carved like this on a larger machine, and then someone carves the details into them, before they are sanded no less than 5 times, and then finished. The end result is beautiful!

Some of the men working on the pieces

This woman is sanding ornaments, and she's deaf. It was fun using sign language to communicate just a bit. And the camels at the bottom of the picture...super cute!