Alli in Palestine: As they say, it is written....unless it isn't

Today I got up early, took my last shower for who knows how long (the water has slowed down to a trickle), and went to the Wildlife Society for the morning. Yesterday Jiries had the cement wall outside smoothed out so that Jiries jr (mostly) and I can paint a mural on it. So far I mostly lay on the ground working on my tan and tell him when he missed a spot (hey, there's only 1 paintbrush) but he/we are going to make a sunset scene. It should turn out really nice, Jiries jr. is a great artist. We painted the background pinkish purpleish because one of Jiries' art teachers once told him that if you are making a large painting with 1 dominant color you should start by painting the background the opposite color. So that's what we did.
The 'before' picture:

We did that for a few hours until Jiries and I had another English lesson with the nun who works next door. I made a mistake last time, she is actually Brazilian, not Portugese. Her name is Hainai (spelled wrong? I can't pronounce it at all really) and she is super friendly. We did that for an hour or so and then came home because Maureen needed us to bring her to Jerusalem to have dinner with friends. At the checkpoint between Jerusalem and Bethlehem usually there is a decent sized line of cars, so there is almost always at least a 15 minute wait. There are a bunch of kids who hang around like 200 feet from the wall checkpoint and they sell knick knacks and cheap candy. Jiries jr. told me that they are nicknamed "the one shekel kids".... one of the guys walking around from car window to car window is mentally handicapped and it is really sad.
The one shekel kids:

We dropped off Maureen at her friend's house and then parked downtown in Jerusalem. Then we went to McDonalds. I'm not really sure why, it was more of a joke than anything, but it was a throwback to America because they certainly don't have any McDonalds here in Palestine. It was insanely expensive- almost 80 shekels for two meals. 1 US dollar is 3.85 shekels. We got a lot of food for the price though, my hamburger was twice the size as normal ones in the US. Ew I can't believe I went to McDonalds today, it grosses me out just thinking about it. The menu was in Hebrew and they happily offer kosher burgers.

Street corner in Jerusalem:

The old train station that used to be a part of Bethlehem, but since '67 has been part of annexed Jerusalem

Back in Beit Sahour at night, some shops along YMCA road, which I live on...
This sign says "All Phone's Tybes"; given that this should say phone instead of "phone's", there is no letter P in the Arabic alphabet, only a b. When Arabic people try to pronouce words like "parking" it usually comes out like "barking", and on a Sprite bottle the Arabic letters spell "Sbrite".