Little trouble in Big Bethlehem

There’s been a recent grumbling amongst certain unnamable followers of this blog that some of you may be wondering what my daily schedule is.



Consider yourself lucky, that I have a moment while “on the job” ;)

Typically, each morning begins at about 7:30am with me literally peeling myself out from amongst my sweaty bed-sheets (I know, mega-gross. The nights are rather toasty here…) Shortly following, after I’ve already “put myself together” I usually have to remind Trey that breakfast will be soon (Promptly at 8am) and as we both know at this point, to miss a meal seems to be quite the offense to our host family. (Their generosity and overbearing hospitality does have it’s dark side…)

Breakfast has consistently consisted of pita with a wide selection of “dips” including amazingly fresh hummus, homemade marmalade, olive-oil, thyme mixed with sesame seeds, fried (or hard-boiled) eggs, and this white chunky stuff the two of us generally avoid. And always, as with every meal, it’s served with sweet tea with fresh mint.

Yeah. Elaborate. But awesome.

From there, I walk or bus into Bethlehem where my volunteer job is. (Doing all sorts of different things, actually… I stuffed envelopes the other day. Fixed a computer. Typed a bunch of stuff into better English, etc etc... Cool people though when they're around. There's also a few pianos there, and I'm definitely taking time out of my day to practice music. =)). Sometimes I even might get lost and wander around downtown for a hot-hour (Christie, that’s for you! ;) ) struggling in the heat and hills until about 5 taxi drivers converge and “help” me find where the place is...but it’s not like that really happens, I mean, it could. Probably. ;) Volunteering officially is from 9am to 2pm.

Between 2pm and 3pm, I have time to travel to the Bethlehem Bible College, maybe chill a bit, who knows. Arabic lessons at the college from 3 – 5, and then after that, the schedule is different for each day. Yesterday, for example, we learned some of a traditional Palestinian folk dance called Dabkeh. (Pretty awesome, I might say). Tomorrow we have some “football” and BBQ going on with the team.

That’s the typical day. ;)   All kinds of adventures, mishaps, and thinking about my girl back home (^_^) are typically thrown in-between for variety, I can assure you. Like trying to get a “burger” at 9pm two nights ago when me and Trey were starving. 40 minutes later… ughhh…. We finally got our "food". I don’t even really feel like talking about it. And how when we got back to our host family, they were upset with us because they’d saved us dinner food in an obscure metal dish hidden among all the other pans… SO frustrating! >.<

Anywho, I suppose I should get back to work!

Take care, all of you. Your thoughts and prayers on constantly appreciated! Shokran! (Thank You!) It makes it a little easier to be so far and away from everything I know, regardless of how exciting it is to be over here… a faint amount of home-sickness started to settle in my heart this morning… you guys really are helpful in that respect.

Hope you’re holding things together back home ;)

Mas salaama!