Still on school vacation.  I’ve never been more ready to go back to school!  In the meantime, we are entertaining ourself by tooling around town.

 

We went out on Tuesday and the city was quiet.  Everyone was home with their families still.  There were a few shops open (maybe the Christian ones?) so we were able to get our shopping done.  On our short list of things that we needed in the apartment (and couldn’t do without): stoppers for the bathtubs, dinner sized plates, towels and school supplies.

I am most proud of my plates.

 

In case you didn’t know, I am a sucker for plates.  When we went to Russia in high school, I bought a tea set (which Levi graciously carried home for me, if I remember right).  This set off a slight obsession. I have a lot of different sets of china (at least 4 full or almost full sets) decorating my kitchen until the kids get big enough that I will feel good about bringing them down again.

The store owner of the dishes said that he ordered these special with this design.  It is patterned after traditional Palestinian embroidery.  Now of course, I want to take these plates home, but they are porcelain and heavy. AND I don’t need any more plates!  Maybe I’ll just take home some serving dishes?

We also headed to the school supply store to look for school supplies.  I don’t actually know what they are required to have, because I forgot to get that list.  However, we picked up pencils, portable pencil sharpeners, a folder, pencils and a notebook for Maggie.  We will have to ask tomorrow and see what they are required to have.  The backpacks were really interesting.  I was tempted to buy a Real Madrid for the coolness factor, but then I remembered that I try to stay out of that particular rivalry.  My kids brought backpacks so we skipped that.

 

To finish off our visit, we headed to another lunch of kabobs.  They also had the most fantastic juice slushes.  Fresh fruit juice shops are very popular here and something we have yet to explore a lot.

 

But now we are headed to KFC with our neighbors for a last hurrah before school goes back.  Apparently there is a play place.  My family will find the irony that I avoid fast food fried chicken in the US and am purposely going there while overseas.