A student services agency, Arabesk, maintains several apartments in Damascus for foreigners studying Arabic and Islam in the University of Damascus and the other schools in the Syrian capital. The location of one apartment in the Al Midan district allows the foreign students to take a ten minute bus ride to the university, to walk to the Baramka Souk for shopping, or continue on to the government offices in the city center. Usually the cul-de-saq street remains very quiet. However, at 12:20 every afternoon, the schools at the ends of the block release crowds of children. The children and teenagers mob the two grocery stores for sodas, potato chips, candy, and ice cream. This video shows a foreign professor encountering the waves of students leaving the schools. The stationary store on the block provides quick, cheap photocopies for the foreigners in the apartment above the shop -- and photocopies for the students and teachers of the schools. In this quick video, the professor studying Arabic in Damascus goes to the downstairs photocopy shop -- and then the elementary school releases a thousand noise-makers. ( Foreigners will find the children of Damascus very polite and correct. However, they stare at foreigners, they will often shadow foreigners to listen to ideomatic English, or they will practice their classroom English with foreigners. )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMeYwqgWyI4&hl=en
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