June 21, 2011

I'm sitting in a lush garden of the home of my cousin, my uncles daughter on my fathers side. We are in Halabja, the town that Saddam Hussein obliterated over 20 years ago. The city is now a bustling array of cars, new buildings, and smooth, impressive roadways. Its come a long way from the run down mud buildings and dirt roads I saw four years ago when I was here. The government has invested a lot of money into this city, and its quickly progressing towards a more modern, established city.

The cities of Silemani and Halabja are nestled between vast mountain ranges on both sides, so whichever way you look, your view will come across tall, majestic mountains bigger than you can imagine, no wonder this is the place that Noah's ark stopped at. The mountains are spotted with dark green tress's: otherwise they are sand colored sea's of rolling hills and mountains. The tree's themselves are fascinating; they don't get water for over half the year, yet they are still green and thrive.

Before we got to Halabja, we stopped at a picnicking spot nestled cozily between a mountain hedge, where after a mountainous road only designated drivers and jeeps can take, you come across the biggest waterfall in Kurdistan, and Iraq. We didn't got there today, the car ride there was about a half hour through dangerous mountain terrain. We just hung out in the lower area near the entrance, where the flowing stream from the waterfall rushed past us.

We eventually made it to Halabja, and settled at my cousins house. My other cousin, Zana, who is an English teacher here, took my sister, brother, and I to a supermarket to get "american" food for us to eat in the next few days if we don't like something, like the lamb head stew that we are rumored to have tomorrow for lunch. The pickings weren't much, we got some ramen noodles, pasta, pasta sauce, canned mushrooms, and diet coke. Next tot he supermarket there was a sweets shop, where I got us all Kurdish rice cookies,one of my favorites sweets.