Day 28: The Ministry of Information and Evening at the Spa

I give props to Dr. Denis for handling an impromptu press conference with skill and grace at the Ministry of Information today. Unlike our other meetings that took place as roundtable discussions, today our group was thrust into a nationally televised press conference. The room had about the same number of Syrian reporters as students in our group, and we got asked a lot of loaded questions about our thoughts on the “massacres” in the Golan committed by the Israelis.
Denis was seated with the Minister of Information in front of the crowd, and fielded as many if not more questions from the audience as did the Minister. After the conference, we were taken to the Minister’s office for a reception with some awesome mini-sandwiches and pastries. I am definitely eating very well here, as I was told we would be.
Later this afternoon, most of our group took an excursion to a bathhouse (or hamam) that is over 800 years old. We lounged around the many chambers of the large sauna, then we each got a scrub and massage. It was very hot inside the saunas, so we ended up having an impromptu water fight, sneaking up on eachother and splashing small buckets of cold water on our unsuspecting targets. That was a lot of fun—I haven’t had a water fight like that in a long time.
After the bath, we were wrapped in towels and fed an awesome meal of salad, some water and bananas, and a rice dish with yogurt. I hope to find out how to make the rice dish because it was delicious!
Tomorrow we leave bright and early for a weekend trip to a different part of the country. I’m going to head to bed now so that I’m well rested for tomorrow’s adventures.

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