Things I've learnt
We had our kind of midterm exam today. I don't know if you really can call it midterm since every course is just four weeks long but I'll do it anyway.
Usually I don't learn that much from exams but today I learnt something really important; in Syria two hundred is more than two hundred thousand. The thing goes like this. It was during the listening part of the exam and the guy on the tape said that there has lived people in Damascus for more than two hundred thousand years... On our question paper there was then a statement that there lived people in Damascus for more than two hundred years. I of course marked that as correct, thinking that two hundred thousand years are probably more than two hundred. WRONG!!! Stupid me.

So I thought I should mention some other things I've learnt here:

There's a "musical" genre called Swedish melodic Death-metal.
There are Syrians that like that kind of "music"
It's always better to change lanes, especially in rush traffic.
About 500-1000 new Arabic words (I'm making amazing progress, not that it makes any difference)
There are no queues, then again who doesn't love chaos?
Americans are crazy
Americans have a funny vocabulary
Kent are big in the Pakistani community of Austin, Texas
Damascus has some nice nightclubs
"Son of a taxidriver" is a valid insult
You can find anything you need in Syria. Everything from Authorized Apple Resellers to Temporary fillings is to be found. Sometimes it just takes a bit of time. (If you think it was hard for me to find earplugs you should really try to find some temporary fillings (for cavities that is))
People are crazy, did I ever tell you that?
There's a Swedish company that exports wooden LCD-Screens to Syria
Mozart was German (Nope not Austrian)
"Power Hour" is a bad idea
"Olympic Games" are even worse
Americans are really, really crazy
They will even rather use the Term "An Afro-American from Britan" rather than "A Black British guy"
Swedish is a useful language here, unless you run into Swedes that don't speak a word of it
Hanging out with Brits make me use a lot of bad words
Hanging out with Brits makes me learn a lot of bad words
Hanging out with non-drinking Brits (almost an oxymoron?) can make you very drunk
Brits are cool