Maalula

When we left Damascus our first stop was to this village because it is one of only three villages in Syria that still speak in the language of Jesus, Aramaic. It is a mixture of Arabic and Hebrew and slowing dying out, unfortunately because it's one of the world’s oldest languages. At this stop we ran into a group of Iranian tourist who were just wonderful to us, when they heard that we were American they got excited and ALL wanted their photograph with us so we had to stand there while they took turns coming up for a picture. (Is this how a celebrity feels?) Iranians are sometimes demonized in our press but this was one more example of how the people and their rulers are not the same.