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! :)