Alright, so, I think after about two months of living here and being pretty busy with life, I'm realizing that my blog posts are going to be longer and further apart in frequency. Sorry if that distresses any of you...mom.
It has been a crazy week! Things are going well though. I ended up going into Jerusalem last Saturday to help with the olive harvest. It was really cool! We spent several hours in the "orchard" I guess you could call it. We collected 17 bags of olives and 21 bags equals a ton, so we picked a lot of olives! They took them to the press Monday, so the turn around time is very fast. When you make olive oil though, it needs a few weeks to just sit and procure. Please consider buying some olive oil though. Also, if you would like to have a longer-term impact on Palestinian healthcare, consider buying an olive tree for $1000. It would be planted on the Mount of Olives, and be picked every year to produce olive oil, which would then be sold to pay for healthcare for Palestinians. Remember: without this and other Lutheran World Federation funding, people would not get any medica
l care!
Sunday was the Palestinian Thanksgiving, or so Christmas Lutheran Church said. Beit Sahour Lutheran Church celebrated Thanksgiving the week before and the week after (yesterday), so I'm not really sure when Thanksgiving was. Regardless, we celebrated Thanksgiving last week in Bethlehem. It was really cute, because all the Sunday School kids brought fruit and vegetables to the altar during the processional, and they were all wearing traditional Palestinian dress. They did some sort of small play/speech, and sang, "Jesus, Prince of Peace", in Arabic. It was awesome!
I had some interesting interactions after church. There was the man who came up to me in a very shady fashion and asked where I was from. When I said the United States, he pulled out a wad of money and asked if I wanted to exchange money. I was really offended! I told him no and that "This is a church!" in my most disgusted voice! He was like, "Yeah, I know, but church is over." No, my friend, church is not over. We're standing and greeting each other after service. You are two feet from the door! The church open space is still within the gate of the church and a story above street level. So, to come into this space, it is very intentional and should not a place for money changers to come. I was so mad!
I was talking to the one woman who works at Dar Al-Kalima after church. She is so sweet and has been very welcomingto me at the school. She pointed to her feet to tell me that she was wearing her "walking shoes." I asked her why. She told me it was because she thought she was going to walk to church. That's simple enough. I asked her why though, and she said, "We thought we were going to have to walk, because soldiers have been bombing a house in our neighborhood since 5am. We didn't know if we were going to be allowed out. I went outside and asked a soldier if we could go to church and if we could drive, because my father-in-law is in a wheelchair. He seemed hesitant, but that he was allowing us because of my father-in-law. I think they were trying to take a man to prison." I was dumbfounded. Here's this woman that spent the morning listening to "bombing," which I think is translated better as shooting, but she still came to church. It was important to her. It's also normal for people here. Like, that wouldn't stick out as something peculiar. A few people mentioned it at school on Monday, but it was very low-key; it was normal. It's sad really. It's sad that soldiers attacking a house in your neighborhood on a Sunday morning is normal.
After church, we headed to Taybeh. I believe it's the only Christian town in Palestine and it's the home of the only beer brewed in the Middle East--Taybeh. Now, I'm not a good Lutheran, because I really don't like beer, but I do support this as an economy. We went to Taybeh on Sunday, because it was their massive Oktoberfest. I ate a lot of falafel, drank one Taybeh to support the cause, and was able to see a few different Palestinian performers. It was a good day. I definitely felt like a tourist, since Oktoberfest is really geared towards internationals. It was still neat to be a part of though.
On Tuesday, we went to see a photography exhibition at the Aida Refugee Camp. It was beautiful! I'm hoping to include some of the pictures of their pictures in my photos. It was really cool to see how much hope the young photographers have in their world, despite the occupation and suffereing.
We then had dinner at the home of a young man we met in the market. This may sound suspicious, but when you're invited to dinner at a guy's house here, it means he wants his whole family to meet and interact with you. It's a whole-family affair, not a date. We had dinner with Yusef, who is actually in college at a school in Atlanta, Georgia. His family was phenomenal! They were all very eager to meet us and entertain us. His two sisters, Razanne (19) and Daana (17), were extremely interested in speaking with us in English. His brothers were nice. His mom fed us absurd amounts of food. We walked into their kitchen to find three plates. There was a small chicken on each plate, along with a massive amount of rice with peanuts and seasonings. The family had already eaten, so the food was primarily for us. Fortunately, Yusef, Daana, and one of their brothers sat down and helped us with the pile. We finished what we could, all the while having more offered to us. We moved to the living room, where Yusef's mom brought out the fruit. I've found that fresh fruit comes after the hot meal. She gave each of us 1/2 an apple, 1/2 a BIG orange, a pear, and a bunch of grapes to start with. She refilled our plate if we let it get too low. We then had Arabic coffee and nargila. One of the kids brought us a bowl of pomegranate seeds. Then we had tea with mint and date cookies. I was ready to explode. It was so, so, SO good though! We parted sadly, but very stuffed and tired.
I'm basically the "paint master" in the kindergarten now. On Thursday, the kindergarten teacher asked that I have the students paint their feet and print their left feet in one color and their right feet in another color onto paper. The teacher recommended that I cover the entire bathroom floor in newspaper and go to it. Alright, I have to admit, this is where my elementary background came into play, as did my obsessively clean side. I set up this system of papering the back corner. I sat in a chair on the edge, and blockaded my paper area with the drying rack for the prints. I had one child at a time enter the space. I helped each one take of their shoes and socks and rolling their pants up. We walked over to the paint buckets. The buckets the teacher gave me were these massive, six-inch deep buckets, used for cleaning floors. So, I helped each kid put their right foot into the bucket of specially mixed purple paint (she asked me to mix different colors...purple was one they didn't have), print onto the paper, switch to the other bucket, put their left foot in the brown paint (it was the one she chose for the left foot), print onto the different left foot paper, and basically carry them to the rinse bucket. I sat in my chair and rinsed off each kid's feet in the bucket. It was really very humbling to wash each child's feet. It reminded me of all the "foot-washings" I've participated in church or at camp. It was really cool though. In spite of my crazy fears of paint-covered walls and floors, I was able to create this intimate relationship between each kid and me. We laughed together when I tickled their feet. We made crazy faces when they felt how squishy the paint was. It was just a truly awesome experience. I loved it.
Thursday continued to get better. The swimming lesson kids are improving. The kindergarteners have the most visible improvements. The one little girl would not smile, splash, or do anything other than let her mother hand her to me to hold in the water. She was completely indifferent to being in the pool. She now walks by herself in the shallow end, with a big smile on her face. She splashes and jumps and has FUN!!! She is so confident that I have to still watch her and stop her from wandering into the deep end. The other highlight of my day on Thursday, was to take this little boy from screaming hysterically to walking around on his own. His mother literally brings him screaming and crying onto deck every week. I work with him every week, mainly just holding him and letting him scream. I figure if I can get him used to the water, then that's an accomplishment. He did his normal screaming and hyperventilating routine when she brought him onto deck this week. I don't really know how I did it, but somehow the boy was also walking in the shallow end and jumping in (with help) by the end of class. He was shakier than the little girl, but for both being 3 or 4 years old and having a complete turn around in behavior, I was rather pleased with the day.
There was a lot of other stuff that happened this week, but I can't really remember at this point. I had to come home early from school yesterday and I missed today, because I'm actually sick. It stinks. I had the interesting experience of going to the medical clinic in Beit Sahour though. It cost 15 sheckels to see the doctor, which is like, $5, and another 150 sheckels for medicine, which is like, $50, which is more than I wanted to pay. My roommate Nikki is also sick and hers was only 45 sheckels for medicine, so who knows.
Oh! I also found out, for all of you interested in the olive oil, there's a way you can do more! If you contact the same email address in my previous blog, you can send $1000 to actually BUY an olive tree on the Mount of Olives!! It would be an awesome church project and would mean years and years of helping Palestinians get medical care.
Alright, I think that's all I really have to blog about for now. The weather is still pretty warm here. Chilly at night, but like a comfortable late spring/early summer day at home. Arabic lessons are going well. The kids are crazy as usual. :) I'm having a lot of fun!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
Dear God,
Thank you for these past few weeks. Thank you for showing me how to be humble, even to five year-olds. Thank you for encouraging me to see the positives in situations and to develop deeper relationships with people. Please be with all who cry out to you, whether in their suffering or in witnessing others' suffering. Please watch over Cinnamon and Lois. God, I ask all of these things in your son's most precious and holy name,
Amen.
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