Yesterday I was shocked when I woke up on own my own and realized it was almost noon. It was Maureen and Jiries' last day, and I had slept through half of it! Big Jiries said they wanted to let me get my rest, which I didn't even realize I needed. Jiries junior had finished the painting outside except for his signature in the bottom right corner. As you can see above, it looks amazing!! I don't really know what I did between noon and 3 but somehow the time passed quickly and soon enough we were on our way to visit Tata Huda's brother, Halu Yosef. Halu means "uncle" on your mother's side, and it is something completely different for your father's side. We talked about water issues in the town (well, they talked about it, I tried my best to follow their Arabic) and they said they had a major water shortage on their side of town also, and when they finally got some from the municipality it was brown and smelled funny. We hung out at Halu Yosef's house for an hour or so, him and his wife seemed really happy to have company. I told them I would return with Tata sometime soon, it's funny how similar her and her brother look. Naturally we took dozens of pictures before leaving.
We headed home because Maureen and I were meeting the women of the family to go somewhere at 5. I wasn't really sure where we would be going but I knew that swimming and saunas were involved. At home Jiries checked the water tank; we received more water the other day but it got pretty low again yesterday. If the water ever gets lower than this Jiries would go buy a (really expensive) tank of water, but he has hasn't had to do that yet since he has an extra hose of water coming from the city's main line. You can see how low the water is in this picture, normally it is all the way up to the top of the tank.
Before I knew it, I was squished in a car with Jiries, Maureen, Shorok, Shorok's mother Nawal, and Shorok's sister Russia. We drove for about 10 minutes until we arrived at a resort complex in the middle of no where. We got out of the car, met up with the other women of the family (Hanan, her daughters, their daughters, Niveen and Nermeen). We went into a door with a sign above it that said "Reserved" and then walked through some winding tunnels with different colored lights until we ended up at a pool in a cave-like room. The doorways at the other end of the pool room each led down more tunnels to different rooms, the one on the left went to the sauna and the Turkish bath room, and the one on the right went to the steam bath room. We put globs of olive oil cream in our hair as a "mask" and everyone had tons of fun.
The jacuzzi:
The sauna:
The Turkish bath room, my camera fogged up immediately but everyone squealed when they saw it anyways. In here we used camel hair sponge-like things to scrub ourselves down with olive oil soap:
The pool:
It was only women who went, so by the time that Maureen and I got home Jiries and Jiries were bored and hungry. They started up the grill right away and we spent the rest of the night eating steak and pork, dancing to Arabic music at first then later 70s music, and just enjoying our last night together. It was especially nice to have the new mural in the background, it is so beautiful and sets such a nice mood. I am really sad that they are leaving.
jiries jr with salt on his head
Tarek showing us how to dance
After we bring Maureen and Jiries to the airport, Jiries sr. and I are going to hang out in Tel Aviv, maybe go to the beach, then visit Jaffa.
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