It is growing on me

No, I am not talking about the pounds on my hips and belly. *Grins*

Although I could be, since I am ravenous all the time. Breast-feeding makes so hungry. It is not like the first month anymore though, when I went to bed with a stash of health bars or biscuits for midnight snacks. I used to eat those whilst nursing Beatrice, careful not to crumble in the bed. Or on her.

Somehow it seems much harder to keep up the healthy eating now than during my pregnancy. Chocolate, cookies or bread are the fast option for some quick pick-me-up energy. I also seem to have less time to cook and prepare healthy snacks... *Makes mental note to drink more water and snack on fruit again because need to loose those stubborn last two kilos of baby weight*

I digress. I actually mean that Damascus is growing on me.

I came here with no real expectations. I had no idea that Syria has in fact more inhabitants than the Netherlands (roughly 18 million) and that Damascus has over four million inhabitants or that it is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Nor that 85% of the population is Muslim and 15% Christian. Or that it twins with Rio de Janeiro. No, I was way too busy being pregnant, giving birth and looking after a new-born. In that order.

We live in East-Mezzeh. Or Mazzeh. Or Mezze. It's a transcription thing. Kafersosa is where the super market is. I call it Kaiser Sose. *Jonny rolls with his eyes*

The Autostrada intersects East and West Mezzeh. It has officially five lanes. During rush hour people turn it into seven. Or eight. I took this picture when it was quiet.

You never need to wonder how long it takes for the light to go green again. There is a little countdown display next to the light. When the display is down to five seconds people start beeping their horns impatiently. At three seconds they go.

This is our street. A street with a name. Which is really not that common here. There are lots of streets with no name *thinks of inserting pun referring to the U2 song* or even street numbers. People are used to using landmarks for reference. We live close to the LG shop.

The door you can actually see in this picture is the door to the basement apartment. The door entering the building is on the right hand side under the canopy. Jonny had a look at the downstairs apartment too, although it has a big garden, it is quite dark. Apparently lots of downstairs apartments are.

And they don't get the nice view over the cactus plantation. This picture was taken from the living room. Our next door neighbour told me that the fields are gorgeous when in bloom. And they are in bloom for a good five months of the year. We just missed it this year.

Our kitchen. I am really glad that my kitchen utensils arrived in the air freight. It is not easy cooking with only a knife and three frying pans. I also happy to have my herbs and spices back. I was lost without cumin. As you are. ;-)

Grand mart. The super market opened a couple of years ago and was one of the first of Syria. There are now at least two. The selection is really quite good, better I dare say than most Dutch super markets. The imported things are quite expensive though, but food and food shopping really deserves a post of its own.

They do some clever recycling there. I have no idea what was actually in the waffles packaging. Or how it got there. It looks like potpourri, but it was next to the herb counter. Weird.

And yet, despite getting used to the city, slowly settling into our new life, I have heaps of moments where I find it difficult too. I miss my family and friends (and phone calls abroad are so expensive that I think twice about calling somebody). I miss knowing my way around, it being easy to quickly pop Beatrice in the sling and walk to the shops. I miss my life being easy.

But mostly I consider myself really fortunate. Had we still been in the Netherlands, then I would be back at work by now and Beatrice in day care. And she is still so very tiny. I am really enjoying spending time with her and getting to know her. Slowly I am learning what the different cries mean, what makes her sad and what makes her happy. That makes me happy!

Trip to Seidnaya

Appologies for not updating the blog for a while... been having problems with our internet connection. Here's the post I actually wrote at the weekend...

The weekend turned out to be a quiet one. Last weekend my botty was not well and this week it was the turn of Flo's titty, since she came down with mastitis. And a throat infection. Double whammy. [edited by Flo]

We still managed to get a short trip in today (Saturday), to visit the Convent of Our Lady of Seidnaya. Unfortunately, we didn't get chance to stop and walk around and take some photos, since even before arriving Flo started to feel sick and so we drove straight past the convent and returned back to Damascus the way we came (minus the unnecessary detours).

I'm trying to at least upload a map of our route, but our 3.5G internet connection (DSL connections are still extremely difficult to get installed here) has been offline most of the day and even now it's struggling a bit. I suspect that at the weekends the network is overloaded. Or maybe the thunderstorm I can hear brewing outside is effecting it? So I'll have to try and upload some pictures during the week instead.


Beatrice is continuing to grow. She's slowly settling into more of a routine now following the upheaval of the move and is managing to get some sleep in during the day, which is making her and hence Flo and ultimately me much happier bunnies. She's also getting stronger and wanting to sit up more and more (still with some help from Mum and Dad) and she's starting to spend more time on her belly trying to learn how to crawl. She's certainly got the leg actions down, but just needs to learn to move her arms.

From Beatrice Dorothy Corcutt

I've added a couple more pictures to the ever expanding Beatrice album above. I've got a movie to upload too but I'll try and do that at work to save some monthly data allowance for Flo on our internet connection...

Our air freight arrived!

Our first outing

Despite me being bed ridden yesterday (thanks for sharing that with everyone Flo), we did manage to get out and about on Friday on our first outing from Damascus.

We're starting off with some shorter trips to get our bearings a little and for little Beatrice to get used to the car, but plan to use our weekends to explore the area. So the first trip was only a 20 minute drive out of Damascus and since Friday mornings are very quiet on the roads I thought it was also a good opportunity for Flo to drive and get used to the roads.

As Flo alluded to in her previous post, sign posts on the roads here are not the best, so you have to really pay attention and not drive too fast otherwise you'll miss the small English text that's written on some of the signs. So, it took us a little longer to get to our destination than planned as we completely missed the turn off. But we go there in the end!


View Larger Map
We visited the Greek orthodox church's Abbey of St. Paul the messenger, reputedly built on the location that St. Paul (Saul) fell on the road to Damascus. So the location is very historic, although not the abbey itself which was built in 1965. Still, it serves to highlight the religious tolerance of Syria, where Muslims, Christians and Jews all peacefully cohabit.

Abbey of St. Paul the messenger

It's nice to get out of Damascus and breath some fresh air and the natural scenery is quite dramatic looking, but unfortunately spoilt by the litter that is strewn everywhere; the abbey is a beautiful oasis in this respect. Take a look for yourself by clicking on the album above.

On how...

.... I was waiting to have spent some time in the Old City of Damascus to give my first impression. I did not want to be negative about our new home town, but so far, I don't find Damascus a very pretty city, with lots of high rise, houses and appartments that seem stuccoed with brown mud. I have been told though that the Old City, full of history, is very charming and that also the neighbourhood of Abu Romanouh is very interesting (in a none British sense of the word).

... the plan was to go and visit the Old City today, but that worked out differently. Jonny woke up not feeling to great and came down with some sort of bug. Which involved diarrhoea. After having warned me when we got here that I would probably get ill within a week, due to the different water and the poorer sanitisation. Since I was fine, I offered to drive to a pharmacy and get him some Immodium.

... traffic in Damascus is complete anarchy. There are rules, but most people seem not to take them very seriously. This involves overtaking, undertaking, not indicating, cutting off, seriously going over the speed limit and doing something (like crossing the street) and then looking if there is traffic. With Jonny's warning still ringing in my ears, the stories of serious accidents in the back of my head, I was reluctant to drive at first. Since Beatrice was born, I have become very sensitive to the fact how vulnerable you are in a car. Add the unfamiliarity of a strange city and a big car I had not driven before. But desperate times call for desperate measures, so off I went.

... I drove to a bakery knowing there was a pharmacy next door. That turned out to be closed. The other five pharmacies I drove past were closed too. It seems Saturday is not a pharmacy-open-day. There is something confusing about opening hours here anyway. On Friday (the official day off) all Moslim shops are closed. On Saturday all Jewish shops are closed. On Sunday the Christian shops are closed. On the days that all shops are open, opening times seem to be pot luck. Apparently at ten thirthy in the morning you have the best chance to find most shops open.

... although I did not get any Immodium, bought two loafs of bread. Which is quite an achievement by itself. Before coming here, I was hoping that the few years of French occupation left some sort of a bread legacy. Although there is a shop called Sucré and Sallé in the center of town, the main bread eaten here is Arabic flat bread. There are government run bakeries that stock piles and piles of the bread. Loafs of bread on the other hand are not so easy to come by. So I was quite pleased with my purchase.

... whilst trying to find a pharmacy, I was beeped at almost continiously. Beeping your horn is not a sign of aggression here. Well, not necessarily. It can mean, 'careful I am behind, besides or in front of you' (maybe the latter not really) or 'you are in the wrong lane' or 'drive faster' or 'drive slower' or 'hurry up' or 'the light is green, go. Now.' I was beeped at for all of those reasons. Which was not all that strange considering I was going at a low speed to try and read the signs and trying not to get hit by a manic driver. Or get lost.

... I got lost anyway. Whilst completely aware I was getting further away from our neighbourhood, I could not see a place to turn around on the motorway. When I finally did, it was admittedly not the safest place to make a u-turn. But with the traffic anarchy in mind I thought I might as well have a go. Three police men thought otherwise. Three! I don't even know where they came from but within seconds they were knocking my windows telling me to drive on. Driving further and further away and with only the mountains to give me some sense of direction, I was afraid I'd end up in Aleppo before being able to turn around.

... meanwhile I was getting bit worried about Beatrice. She is exclusively breastfed, so there was not a lot Jonny could do in case she got hungry. I was also very aware that he was probably not in the mood to do anything that involved getting out of bed. Other than going to the toilet. Thankfully I did manage to find my way home again and although having woken up five minutes after I had gone, Beatrice was fine. Jonny had to content himself with the old fashioned solution of Coca Cola and banana. And maybe some bread when he is feeling better.

Beatrice is learning to talk

Beatrice has been making noises for a while now, but over the past couple of weeks she's been having "conversations" with me and Flo, usually while changing her nappy.

What happens is she'll make a sound and smile a bit. If you then talk back to her or make some noises and then stop, she'll take this as a cue to make some more noises herself. Recently, she's been learning to make new sounds. The latest is a kind of gurgling noise in the back of her throat.

The really exciting development though is that she's now stringing together different sounds in the same "sentence". It's really fastinating seeing her develop her language skills! It's great being able to see her every day now too... when I wake up in the morning and when I come home from work, I'm invariably treated to something new. I swear she's different every day; one day she seems to have filled out a bit, then the next she slimmed out and grown a bit in length. It's phenominal how quick she's growing and developing.

Anyway, the movie above was an attempt to catch one of her conversations last night before going to bed, but she's easily distracted by the camera. What's incredible is that she's already learning volume control and can make the noises either loud or quiet. It's almost as though she's a bit nervous about making new sounds so tries them out quietly first.

An update in pictures

Before I give you my first impressions of our new home town of Damascus, our last week in pictures.


Beatrice found the whole move quite boring frankly. Or tiring, depending on how you want to interpret her yawn. In fact, she slept through most of it. In her sling, in her father's or mother's arms or in our bed. No, she did not want to sleep in the camping bed provided by the hotel. Fair enough, since she did not even fill a quarter of it!


All our stuff was packed in a matter of hours. And boy, do we have a lot of stuff. Almost 300 boxes/items (since a table is not boxed, but does count as an item). That is roughly four times as much as what we had when we moved to Dubai six years ago. One does accumulate a lot of stuff over the years. And we can't blame the baby on even a tenth of it.


All that is not going by either air or sea freight, we took with us. Nine pieces of luggage and two cats equal 149 kilos. A Bugaboo, a car seat, a laptop bag and two pieces of hand luggage. One very good baby, who only cried a little bit during the two flights. Two very tired parents by the time we arrived in Damascus. More on that later.


Yesterday it was 34 degrees here, so a good opportunity for Beatrice to wear her one and only dress she was given.

A new adventure begins...

We arrived at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam nice and early this morning, with six bags, our Bugaboo and two cats to check in along with our hand luggage and of course little baby Beatrice!

From Syria

Since we arrived nice and early we had a bit of time to sit in the lounge and feed Beatrice, which gave me time to make this quick post!

Educating Beatrice

From Beatrice Dorothy Corcutt

Beatrice decided that she'd teach me how to read the other day, starting with "The Foot Book". I have to admit that she's a very good teacher; we got to the end of the book together in only ten minutes!

From Beatrice Dorothy Corcutt

Next, she's been taking acting lessons. Here she is practising the part of Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers series of films. Admittedly, she might have been practising Mini-Me?

From Beatrice Dorothy Corcutt

Following on from the other week when Beatrice discovered that she has hands, she has now discovered that if she hits things they move! This is great news for us, since she now spends at least fifteen minutes entertaining herself with the mobile when we attach it to her cot.