1-20-09

We took a taxi from Kumily to Aleppi today. I am sorry to see this city go. It was the first place I could really feel at home. Ah well, moving on. Aleppi is nice as far as cities go. It is, however, at a much lower elevation than Kumily and near a bunch of canals. It’s also the first place to provide mosquito nets. This was worrying, but it isn’t so bad. (Coming from me, this means a lot. I am plagued by mosquitoes wherever I go.) Our hotel room is enormous- it is the family special. There is one giant room with a couch, a bed, and a table with chairs, plus lots of space to spare. There’s another room attached with another bed. At first glance, it looked lovely. After we really looked around though, Patrick decided somebody had been murdered there (I’m not quite sure why), Mom admitted that it was a bit creepy, and I was rather afraid of the massive amounts of dust. However, I hardly got allergies and I had no asthma whatsoever! Hooray, that homeopathy seems to be working! I think it was just our room that was bad. The other ones seemed fine, but we had already moved in. It was more expensive to get two small rooms than this suite, anyway. It was fine for one night.
There is a pet eagle in the garden. It is beautiful. When it preened itself, a few feathers fell out, so I picked them up and stuck them between the pages of my journal as a memento. I can’t bring them home, though, because it is illegal to own eagle feathers in the US. We asked one of the employees how they came to get a pet eagle. He said that when the eagle was young it flew into their garden, pursued by a flock of crows. They protected it, sheltered it, and fed it, so it stayed.