a wedding and a fan club.

So I know that it has been quite a while since my last blog update, but I just had the funniest/weirdest experiences…all of them in the same night, and I feel they are worthy of sharing with you all.

So the other night, we went to a wedding of one of our friends who works down at the site the climbing tower is at. They are both Muslim families, and traditionally at Muslim weddings they guys and girls are separated, but these families are not too terribly conservative so it was mixed…all of us were in the same room. While being there, I developed a little fan club. This fan club consisted of: three 13-16 age girls and their little siblings, a few younger teenage guys, some middle aged guys, and one crazy old lady. So we got there and choked down some nasty soaked-in-sugar-water Palestinian wedding cake, and then went and started dancing. This is when my fan club developed. The girls were really fun and nice, but the others…well…not so much. At one point this middle-aged man (maybe late 20ish) comes up and says that he wants to dance with me. I just kinda turned around and ignored him, but when that happened, the crazy old lady comes storming across the dance floor, grabs me, pushes the man away from me, shakes her finger at him while yelling at him, pulls me away from where I was, and acts as my body guard the rest of the time, yelling and shaking fingers at any man who looked my way. Interesting. At another point while I was dancing, one of the girls brought her little two-year-old brother to me. He was absolutely adorable so I was waving, gave him a kiss, and was giving him a lot of attention. Meanwhile, a boy maybe around the age of 16ish that had been trying to dance with me notices this happening. So he runs off the dance floor, grabs a little kid (maybe his little brother) and brings him over to me in hopes that I might pay attention to him. It didn’t work, but nice try. Lastly, for a while at the end I sat and tried to talk with the girls. They were asking questions about my family, etc. and kept saying they wanted to come back to America with me. Then at one point, one of the girls turns to me and says “I want to make friendship with you because I love you”. It took everything in me not to start laughing hysterically. I know she meant well, but it was just funny. I just said “thank you” and asked her another question. We all exchanged e-mail addresses, so hopefully we can stay in touch.

All in all, it was a fun experience, and I got some good stories from it :-P.

welcome palestine

i have had two very cultural experiences in the past week or so. one involving driving, and the other involving a doctors visit earlier today.

the first experience happened last week when sarah and i went to the tel aviv airport to pick up another volunteer, aaron. we left about an hour and a half before we needed to be there, leaving plenty of time to get through rush hour and just overall insane traffic in jerusalem. however, we got through jerusalem fine, but when we got onto the freeway, traffic was backed up really far and almost to a stand still. we were going an average of 20 km/h for about 30 or 45 min. the whole time, sarah and i were trying to figure out what in the world was going on that was making traffic so backed up. there were no exits so it couldn't be merging problems, so we thought there must be a wreck. we were right...kinda. we got up to one place to find a wreck..on the other side of the freeway. there was a cement wall acting as a median between the two sides of the freeway, and the wreck was on the clear opposite side. why did this slow traffic on our side down? because people were stopping in the middle of the road to look at the wreck. after we passed the wreck, there were no cars and it was clear normal driving the rest of the way to the airport. awesome.

next experience: doctor's visit. yesterday (sunday) i woke up with a sore throat and congestion, but i thought that it was just probably allergies, so i didn't really think anything of it and i went to saleem's village near ramallah. but as the day went on, i started feeling worse and worse, and when i got back home about 7:30 i collapsed on my bed and fell asleep with no problem. i am pretty sure it is strep throat, so this morning (monday) sarah took me to the doctor. we got there about 9 in the morning and sarah asked if i could see the ENT (ear nose throat) specialist, and they told us to come back about 10 bcause that's when he came to the clinic. well sarah had a meeting at like 9:30, so she took me back to the house to wait for the meeting to be over..which wasn't until about 11, then she came and got me and we went back to the clinic. and, of course, the ENT doctor was not there. he only works for an hour apparently. so we just asked if i could see a regular doctor. after the doctor asked me lots of questions about what kind of contact i've had with foreigners lately to make sure i wasn't infected with swine flu, he looked in my ears and said they were fine, then looked down my throat and says "ah, yes, yes, you have a sore throat". thank you captian obvious. he didn't do a throat culture, so i guess i'll never know if it's strep or just an infection, but he gave me a perscription for an antibiotic, so hopefully that will do something.

however, despite the weird inconviences, i still absolutely love it here :)

building adventures

busy, hectic, tiring, unpredictable, amazing, and so much fun. those are some words i could use to describe my trip thus far.

so as i mentioned in my previous blog, there is a group of about 10 people from a church in michigan here helping paidia this week. they got here sunday evening and they are leaving on tuesday. our big project for them is to finish the third side of paidia's climbing tower. much easier said than done. before anything else could happen, the two belay devices that hold the ropes for the climbers needed to be attached at the top of the tower. so me, jason, and saleem thought we would be clever and go out to the tower saturday afternoon before the group got there and attach them so that we could get started building right away when the group got here. easy, right? no. the board that we took up there was the wrong side. therefore, we had to go to a store and buy the right size wood. so then we decided we would just wait till the group got here and attach the belays the beginning of the first day of work, and, long story short, the wood was the wrong size again and the drill(s) broke. the entire first day was spent putting those stupid belay devices up. very unproductive.  that's kind of how this whole week has gone. our tools keep breaking, the wood that the place gave us was the wrong kind (it was indoor wood, not outdoor, so it kept cracking in half), along with other little various things that have gone wrong, making the job much more frustrating and much much harder. however, the group is great. they have helped in any way possible and they all have really good attitudes which helps alot. we work tomorrow and friday, and then hopefully we will be done. saturday through tuesday the group has different trips and tours scheduled so hopefully the next two days are productive and go more smoothly than the previous three. 

cool story...so today i was sitting and talking with one of the leaders from the group that is here and we were just talking about our lives and he asked me what made me choose to do nursing, so i told him how i had worked at camp barnabas and that was one of the main things that got me interested in the field. he then told me that right now their church has a group out at camp barnabas volunteering and they have been involved with it for the past three or four years. it's a small world after all...

i am starting to miss some things at home. such as:

-family

-my siloam friends

-air conditioning

-a dryer (for clothes)

-SONIC

-grilled cheese sandwich dipped in ranch

-being able to talk to almost everyone, no matter where i am because there is no language barrier

-my cell phone

-good t.v. channels

-walmart

please pray that the next two days of building will go smoothly and that we will stay injured-free as a whole group. thank you for your support.

it never slows down...

i promised myself i would never become one of those crazy twilight fans that obsessed over the books and movies, but i'm embarassed to say that i'm slightly starting to seem like that. i finished the first book and i'm frustrated because saleem has my second one, so i can't read it until he's done. haha.

my days are still busy busy busy. thursday i got the opportunity to go to Ramallah, which is a city in Palestine about an hour away, with jason and saleem to a day care/summer camp. we ran a program and played games with the kids for the majority of the afternoon, and they want us to come back a few more times throughout the summer which is a really cool opportuinity. let me tell you, those kids were adorable and SO much fun. my heart was stolen.
we had to take a taxi there because to get to Ramallah from Beit Sahour, you can you two ways. one all the way thru Palestine and one through Jerusalem which goes through Israel. we had to go the Palestine way because saleem has a Palestinian I.D. and therefrore cannot cross the checkpoint into Israel. we also had to take a taxi there because the checkpoint we had to go through only allows white plate (palestinian) cars and sarah and jason have a yellow plate (israeli) car. that is how most things work over here...very inconvienent. however, getting to experience the taxi ride was an adventure in itself. the way there was great. we had a really nice newer taxi, so it was clean and the seats were pretty comfortable. however, lesson #1 for my next taxi ride: take my iPod. the driver turned on the radio very very loud to a muslim preacher for the whole hour ride to Ramallah. luckily, jason had his iPod and was kind enough to share with me. the taxi driver was nice though because he actually turned on the a/c, and he didn't try to kill us with his driving...unlike the next one.
the taxi on the way back to Beit Sahour, however, was a completely different story. the taxi was older and run down a little so the seats were not comfy, it was dirty, and there was no a/c (which the whole ride to was through pure desert...so it was very very hot). not only was the taxi itself not so great...the taxi driver was insane. before we were even out of the parking garage that the taxis leave from, he had almost wrecked twice, yelled and cussed alot, and i don't think he had taken his hand off of his horn the whole time. and that's how he drove the whole way home. he was swirving in and out of cars, honking, yelling, racing, etc. it was one of the scariest car rides of my life, but i live to tell about it. :).

next week is going to be extremly busy and very tiring, so prayers are apprechiated. there is a group of about 10 college students coming from america tomorrow for a little over a week to help Paidia, and we are going to be working on finishing building the third side of the climbing tower as well as other various maintence things. it will make for some long days working out in the sun, so please pray for strength and cooporation for everyone involved. thank you so much for all your continued support!

sunburn, climbing walls, and moving

the past two days have been very full of adventures and lots of work. yesterday (monday) i helped paidia run a day camp for kids in Aidia refugee camp here in Bethlehem. the camp lasted from about 9 in the morning to 5 or 6 at night and the activities included ultimate rugby, various team work low ropes type games, and the climbing wall. i was initially supposed to just take pictures, but we were understaffed so i ended up working the climbing wall all day which was very fun but also frustrating and tiring. i got really sunburned with some awesome tan lines. i now have a farmers tan from my shoes and from my shirt sleeves...it's pretty cool. not. i feel that the camp was successful and the kids had alot of fun. it was still hard not knowing arabic, but i am still learning more and more as i go on. please continue to pray that i will pick it up fast. 

today (tuesday) all day was spent moving sarah and jason into a different house. it's not too far from the old one, just about a 10 min walk, but it was a huge task. when we got to the house we found it to be not so move in ready. the family that lived here previously moved to America, and they left a lot of their stuff here. the closets were full of blankets, clothes, towels, table cloths, books, shoes, and pretty much anything else you could think of. all the closets had an overwhelming smell of moth balls and the smell had moved through out the whole house. the freezer was full of meet wrapped in tin foil and there were still pictures of the family that lived here before all over the walls. also, we found a total of 4 refrigerators. one in the kitchen, one in a bedroom, one in a stairwell, and one outside on the side of the house. needless to say, sarah, jason, me, saleem, and 2 little neighborhood boys spent the day moving our stuff in and trying to move their stuff around to make room for ours. it was a very interesting  and tiring experience, but the majority of the stuff is done. tomorrow nothing is planned so far so it should be somewhat relaxing and a good day to finish organizing our stuff.

thank you for your prayers and support.

First Adventures

so i'm going on my 4th day here, but lots has gone on so it feels like forever. which definitely isn't a bad thing :). yesterday i started working with Paidia. my work consisted of going to a one hour meeting at 2:00 and working open climb in the evening. Paidia built a climbing wall in Beit Sahour near a park/restaurant/soccer field area and one or two nights a week they have open climb where people can climb for 3 sheckles which is about $0.75 in american money. there was a huge group of kids that were from a summer camp type thing down at the soccer field playing a soccer game with tons of kids watching, and as soon as the game got out all of them came up to the climbing wall and wanted to climb so we were there from about 5 to about 9:30 at night. very fun by very very tiring. i was mainly belaying the people climbing but i also helped jason put the harnesses and helmets on. it was a really fun experience, but also very frustrating for me because i don't know hardly any arabic (which is my fault for not attempting to learn over the school year). saleem was actually teasing me at the meeting because my 14 month old niece already knows more arabic than i probably ever will haha. i did learn some basic things last night but i still have so much to learn. 

today me, sarah, and hiba went into Jerusalem which turned out to be quite the all day adventure. we had planned to leave about 10 in the morning, but sarah was the first to wake up out of anyone in the house and she got up at 10:30, so we didn't get going until late. our goal was to go to the post office to get their mail and then to the orange store (cell phone company, not food) to get my cell phone. but we ended up driving around Jerusalem for hours trying to find it because when we went to the place we thought it was, that store had closed and they had moved, but we couldn't find the new store. we were unsuccessful and finally just gave up and came back home. we did go to eat lunch at a restaurant near the old city and had some really good cheese ravioli, so i guess that made the trip worth it. :)

thank you again for all your prayers so far and i would like to ask you to pray that i will be able to pick up on arabic fast because it is really frustrating having to depend on someone to translate for me when i am trying to talk to the kids i'm working with. thanks! :)

I made it!

so i have arrived safe and sound in Palestine for the next 2 months. yay! the trip over wasn't too terrible...it was really really long but i guess that's normal. hiba (my niece) did fantastic! we drugged her up with benadryl for the long flight from NYC to Tel Aviv so she slept most of the way :). going through passport control in tel aviv went pretty smooth. it took a while and they asked alot of questions because sarah and jason's visas were expired and i had been here previously, but Jesus was on our side so we all got 3 month passes into the country.

the car overheated on the way home from the airport (which happened to us last time i came here...i think i'm bad luck :P) so we had to stop at a mcdonalds and cool the car down and jason fixed the fan while me, sarah, hiba, and another girl went inside and got cokes. but, it was fixed fast.

we got to the house to find saleem and munther (two of sarah and jason's friends who live here in Beit Sahour) grilling chicken and sausages for dinner for us, so that was nice. we kicked them out pretty early tho...we were all in bed and asleep before 9 i'm pretty sure due to jet lag haha.

today has been realxing so far. i just went shopping with sarah and hiba and then went out to eat with sarah and 3 of her girl friends that live here but, the relaxation is short lived because i start working for Paidea tomorrow. however, now i'm probably gonna go take a nap :). thank you for all your prayers and support that have gotten me this far.