The cold snap has definitely begun here in Palestine with lows dipping into the 40s. Regular readers might recall my excitement in September about being able to always get a breeze blowing through the apartment, eliminating the need for air conditioning. Our think stone walls and tile floors kept the apartment nice and cool. That was a fantastic feature of this 4th floor apartment on top of a hill back when the temperatures were in the 80s and 90s. Today,…
This is Thanksgiving week. If it was just us here, I think I wouldn’t have bothered with a big meal because all the things I like to cook for the holidays my kids won’t eat anyway. However, we have been invited to a friend’s house for a potluck American Thanksgiving, so that gives me the chance to cook up all the things that I like to eat anyway! Namely, I have volunteered to make: Lemon pie (without meringue because I…
I did not actually zip line if you were worried. I did do a 4-mile marathon though. My dad ran too. (Huff, puff) I’m going to start at the beginning now. I went to school and blah, blah, blah. Let’s cut to chase. We were raising money for schools in Jericho that got torn down. They called it white boards on wheels. I got a medal for running. It had a hand holding a torch on it. Now time to…
Getting around town by taxi and servee is actually really easy. The transportation system takes a little bit to figure out, but it does work. We’ve been here for a little over two months now and we can pretty easily get anywhere in town we need to go without a car for just a few shekels. That said, I didn’t realize how much I had missed driving until this past weekend!
I yakked a lot. A lot of yakking. On Monday, I yakked a LOT. I yakked about being in Palestine and there were a lot of jokes. I yakked with my whole Pathways class. So, this was my powerpoint:
As we have mentioned before, my kids are attending a local school. We were incredibly lucky to get a slot only a few weeks before school started and the longer we are here, we have realized how lucky we are. Their school is easily one of the top schools in the area and many people say it is in the top 2. At their school, they each take a long list of classes: English Arabic English Math Arabic Math English…
The great thing about the busy social calendar is that we meet a lot of people. One of the luckiest breaks in my research has been that two of my kids’ friends have both an uncle AND an aunt who are supervisors at the Ministry of Education (MOE). They were really helpful in giving me an overview of the educational system in the area. Plus, my advisor at the university was able to get appointments for me with the principals…