ACS Syria Trip - March 2007

It was a wild crew that went to Syria. After much negotiation with French speaking nuns and the government of Syria Mike arranged a free group visa and 27 American Community School people piled into 2 buses and hit the road for a 3 day weekend. I missed the fun of the bus ride as I got held up at work. Our copy room superviser raced me up to the border in our car to catch up with the group. Everyone had already had finished their exit visas from Jordan when I got dropped by Mayat on the far side of the border. As you cannot take a car you don't own into the secured border area, I cleared the guards and then ran the 100 meters or so to catch up with Jason who had held back from the rest of the group. Good thing I had packed lightly. It felt pretty strange to be running over a border crosssing at night, but when we finally cleared to the Syrian side Jason had is own odd experience. After you get your passport stamped you go through a final checkpoint where a border guard comes aboard the bus and checks everyone's passport. This is the point in the process where I was refused entry into Jordan in the fall so I was a bit nervous. Not so Jason. Jason handed his passport to the Syrian border agent and smiled a big, goofy grin. The agent turned to Veronica and said, "Mr. Bean," cracking himself up. The bus applauded his joke and we cleared the border with roars of laughter. If you dont' know who Mr. Bean is, follow this link to get a picture http://www.benovsky.com/bean/eyeball.htm