Day 1

It's hard to believe I haven't even been here a full day. In case you don't already know, for the next several months I will be living with Jiries Atrash, the tour guide for the Tree of Life Journey and long time friend of the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, and his elderly mother Huda. They come from the Halaway family, which means "the sweet people". Jiries has a wife and son who live in Madrid but he lives here to be with his mother. During my stay I will be keeping her company so that he can travel and spend more time with his family. Their house is comfortable with lots of unique furniture and miscellaneous objects Jiries has collected from around the world. Outside there are grape vines and lemon, orange, fig, and pomegranate trees that will soon be ready to be picked and eaten. There is also a garden of pretty flowers, but they are extremely dry because it has not rained much and each house is only distributed a certain amount of water every 10 to 15 days, and it is not enough to water the plants. Also, they don't flush toilet paper down the toilet here because their septic system is different from ours and the t.p. could totally mess it up. Not a big deal, just something to get used to... at least the toilet is not a hole in the ground!

After unpacking I drove around with Jiries and Huda to several different grocery stores, and Huda pointed to different foods and told me their Arabic name. The only thing that really stuck in my brain was moz, which means banana (although I probably spelled it wrong). We stopped at the chicken store, the vegetable store, and then a small market place that only sells Palestinian products to support the boycott of Israeli goods. After that we went to Jiries' sister's house to visit since she just arrived from United States, where she and her family live in San Diego. She told me I was lucky to travel through Tel Aviv; since she is a Palestinian she hds to go through Jordan to reach the West Bank. It took her family three days to get to Beit Sahour because many Palestinians return home in the beginning of the summer, crowding the border region in Jordan. She said this irritates the Jordaian authorities, who treat the Palestinians like they are animals in the same way that the Israelis do.

On Thursday Jiries and I are going to Jerusalem then Bethlehem; on Friday I am joining a volleyball team and going to the first practice/game with Jiries' niece Jane at the YMCA across the road. It looks like I might be joining her for workout and swimming sessions also! She speaks English so she will be able to help me understand Arabic.

Goodnight!