Abiding for an Apartment

Finally, after a week attempting to register our lease of an apartment in Aleppo, which included visits to no less than 25 different offices, where generally a slightly overweight middle aged man would look frowningly at pieces of paper that supposedly had our information on them, nod, and indicate where we had to go next, we are almost completely registered in the Syrian system as residing here.  However, barring (hopefully) a few more formalities, I am now legally renting an apartment in the middle of the Old City in Aleppo, whose roof just happens to provide the best view of the city I have seen.  So, in lieu of verbosity, I give you PICTURES!

To the west, the New City, with the minarets of the largest mosque in Syria

The main minaret of the Umayyad Mosque

To the east, the rest of the Old City, with the Citadel on the right and the minaret of the Umayyad Mosque on the left

The New City during sunset

The citadel by day

And by night

The citadel with a mosque to the right

To those of you who have bothered to scroll down this far, I will mention that last night I went to a soccer game between Aleppo's Ittihad team and some team from Thailand.  Ittihad won, which means they're going to the finals of the AFC cup.  Basically Asia's soccer tournament for developing nations.  It was sweet and I think the U.S. should immediately realize how awesome soccer games are.