Masa alkher (good afternoon) blog fanatics!
First of all, thank you for all the positive feedback I have gotten. I am really glad to know that so many people are following my adventures! If you get a chance please sign up for the "Followers" thing in the left margin- sometimes I feel like I am writing for a mystery audience, but I am okay with that too!
Yesterday Jiries and I spent all morning packing and repacking boxes of zet zeytoon (olive oil!!) to ship to the FCCOL! We had to make sure each box was under 20 kilos but with enough cushioning so that the canisters wouldn't get destroyed. What a job! We cut cardboard for hours to fit boxes in boxes, we taped the boxes up for a few more hours, then taped on sheets of paper with the FCCOL address on them and covered the boxes with "fragile" stickers. The olive oil was produced here in Palestine and all the money made goes towards the Bridges of Hope program- it will be on sale at the FCCOL at some point, if you are there and you see them think of all the manual labor Jiries and I put into making sure they got to the US successfully (and also the great cause the money is going towards)!
After packing up zet zeytoon, I memorized the Arabic alphabet outloud AND in writing. Then I drove around the crazy streets of Beit Sahour. All in all it was an extremely productive day.
Jiries exhausted after packing up all the zeit zeytoon for hooooours
Today i ate way too much. Also today, we started constructing a fountain in the hang out spot under the grape vines. I mixed concrete!
So, today is Friday......there are 3 holidays here. Fridays are the Muslim holiday, when all the Muslim shopsare closed everywhere and they go to the mosque to pray for Friday prayer. Saturday is for the Jewish people (Shabat Shalom) when they all go to the Wailing Wall to pray and all of Israel is completely closed down. Sunday is the Christian holiday, when you see the Christians go to church, their shops are closed, but it is not very noticable since they are the minority in both Israel and Palestine. It is definitely noticable in Beit Sahour, where I live, since they are the majority here. For this reason you have to do all of your desired business activies before noon on Thursday, and you have to schedule what you are doing and when you are doing it based on who you are dealing with.
Pictures!
Jiries impersonating a Bedouin man in a traditional outfit he produced out of no where
Me and Loai
Shorok!
Nermeen smoking hookah......it has become a nightly activity. Don't worry Mom and Dad, its part of the culture! I am simply immersing myself
Loai and Jiries getting funky
Stray kittens!!! Jiries said I can keep one sometime soon, these ones looked not so healthy (note the eye that looks like it's been punched)
Jiries getting his hair (and eyebrows) cut
Jerusalem at night
Hot, hot lazy day
The fattest pasta in the world, cooked by Jiries. He is an AMAZING cook!
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