Perks of the job

Just as I was grousing to myself about traffic, noise, and other disagreeable aspects of living in a big city like Istanbul, I got a nice reminder of why I'm glad to be precisely here and not somewhere else. One of the two students in my history class happens to be president of the Yeditepe History Society, the group I led on a tour of the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum recently. Well, yesterday in class he said that they were planning some more tours on which my company would be welcome – and one is a three-day trip to Syria in June, one day each in Damascus, Aleppo, and Palmyra. Now there's three places I'm dying to see, particularly the first two, since they've got some of the coolest Islamic architecture to be found. And since Syria is conveniently located next door to Turkey, the tour only costs $200. There is, of course, the issue of my being American, but if I'm just going with a university tour group I don't think they'll hassle me. (Unless I wear a big CIA t-shirt or something.)