University Picnic

It is now Thursday, 6 days after the University picnic and I still haven't recovered... the dust storms don't help - cold and wheezy, it is a big effort every morning to get up and drag myself to work... but perhaps not as much effort as it was last Friday to get to the university campus by 6:30am to board the buses bound for Dinarta. Of course the students were late and we didn't set off until nearly 8:00am and the students who encouraged me to wear jilki kurdi decided at the last minute NOT to wear theirs... but all in all, a good time was had by most...

The boys below are the musical entertainment for one of the 5 stops on the way to the picnic area - the last one - the stop where the drivers realize they are lost and have to turn the huge unweildy buses around on a dirt path high on mountain with the back end jutting out over a drop on point 2 of the 3 point turns.

After arrival at a picnic area (not the one the planner had been planning - we couldn't find that one), each group of students unloaded their provisions and set out to lay their picnic area. The boys below invited me to share in their picnic lunch of chicken shish... They wanted the perfect spot, for which they decided to cross streams and climb up and down hills... not an easy task in my impractical sandlas and jilki kurdi.In the photo below, Dilshad fans the fire with a paper plate. Although it is a picnic food, I have been told many times that really only women like "dolma" (a stuffed vegetable dish), so my group had just olives, vegetables and lots of meat for grilling...

The picnickers next to us consisted of a more mixed group, past and present students, male and female, Kurdish and Arab... Below Chrissy and I pose with the women.

The men are too satiated to stand! Dolma, biryani, other rice delicacies, fruit, soda and more litters the tablecloth...



And at about 4:00 pm, we teachers leave early for the long drive back to Erbil.