Bethlehem University

So I'm actually in Turkey now, but I have several posts that I want to finish. And it just won't be the same thing when I get back. So I'll post about my trek through Europe later.

Today's post is about Bethlehem University. Somewhere in the middle of my less-than-wonderful Arabic experience at Hebrew University, I realized that I could waste my money going to classes in English that weren't going to count for anything, or I could spend my money on a bunch of random classes in different languages all over that wouldn't count for anything. Can you guess what I decided to do? The second semester of my time at Hebrew University I dropped to half-time, took only 3 classes (all in Hebrew) at the university, and then took a class at Bethlehem University, one at the Polis Institute, an intensive Hebrew course at Ulpan Or (more to come about that later), and in addition to my internship at ICCI, I travelled to several different places in the West Bank to conduct research.

It was, to say the least, much, much better than wasting my money on classes in English with Americans like I did my first semester.

Classes at Bethlehem University and classes at Hebrew University were completely different. The whole atmosphere was different. The only things that overlapped, I think, was the smoking and, well, probably the smoking.

While most students at Hebrew University are between the ages of 22-30 (because of the army, travel, and other things Israelis do before going to college), most students were 22 or younger at Bethlehem University. It actually reminded me a lot of the University of Jordan, but on a much smaller scale. Bethlehem University is a Catholic university, and the only Christian-run and -funded university in the West Bank. (But Muslims are welcome and make up more than 50% of the student body.) It is quite a small campus in Bethlehem, with several buildings and large outdoor areas where students can sit and chat.

Did I mention that in both the University of Jordan and Bethlehem University, the students like to sit and chat? Like for hours?

I decided to take a class here for several reasons. First of all, I wanted to improve my Arabic by listening to lectures in Arabic. Secondly, I was intensely curious to see how a Christian-Palestinian university and a Jewish-Israeli university differ. And third (and this is perhaps the most important), I wanted to be surrounded by students who like to sit and talk. Because I wasn't speaking Arabic enough every day. And all of those students were just sitting there, waiting for me to go up and talk to them.

My class was interesting enough--it was an introduction to Islam and Christianity, with half the class about Islam and taught by a Muslim teacher, while the other half on Christianity was taught by a Christian teacher. I mostly just sat in class and tried not to make waves. I was thrilled to realize halfway through the semester that I could finally understand what the teacher was saying, but I'm sure that had a lot more to do with subject matter than my Arabic ability improving! (The Christianity half was the second half...)

My classroom

However, what really changed my life and my experience this past year was what I did each Thursday and Friday before class. I bit the bullet and went out into the courtyards to talk to the female students sitting around chatting.

To understand what a feat this was for me, you have to understand how I felt about junior high. I hated junior high. Absolutely hated it. Walking down the halls, it was like everyone was judging you because you weren't popular enough or your clothes weren't fancy or you walked funny or you were just different. It seems like junior high is a time to fall down the stairs in the hall and forget where your classroom is and sit alone in a corner at lunchtime trying to eat as fast as you could. And the worst thing about junior high was the GOSSIP. Or maybe the fact that friends were your best friends one day and your worst enemies the next (and the next and the next).

Now, Arab universities and American junior highs are very different places. But when I walked around the campuses of the University of Jordan and Bethlehem University, I felt like I was in junior high again. Those same feelings of are people looking at me? Why is everyone staring at me? Can I just sit in the back of the classroom and not say anything? Where's a bathroom that I can hide in? Why do students sit around every door into the building? Can't I just walk for five minutes without having to walk past people? plagued me every day. Especially because I'm a foreigner and I walk around alone. I always felt like people were staring at me (not just at the university, but all the time actually!).

But, I moved to the West Bank so that I could improve my Arabic, and I had to talk to people if I wanted to improve my Arabic. So with a lot of help from Elad and my Arabic class, I would walk on campus, see the throngs of people sitting around talking, walk into a building and find a bathroom, take deep breaths and remind myself how much I needed to speak Arabic, go back outside, walk around campus looking for my next victims, and then walk up to them and strike.

"Hi, I'm Breanne and I'm studying Palestinian accents," I'd say (which is true). "Do you mind if I ask you some questions and record your answers?" They were almost all totally willing and excited to talk to me about Palestinian weddings, Islam, the university, the relationship between Muslims and Christians, etc. So I would talk to them for 15-30 minutes, recording the conversation, and then thank them and leave.

It sounds easy, but it was, for reasons beyond my understanding, incredibly difficult for me. Perhaps because I was in a position of disadvantage (because I don't speak Arabic perfectly and I was the foreigner and I was asking them for help), but it was really hard to do this each week. Plus, I had to find the perfect people to talk to: no less than two girls and no more than three (otherwise it's overwhelming to them or to me), no boys could be with the group, they couldn't be too close to the fountain or other loud noises, and as the summer wore on they had to be in the shade since it was way too hot in the sun.

And guess what? I only chickened out a couple of times. Most days that I went to class I found at least one group of girls to talk to. And it was always a good experience. You'd think that it would get easier because of all the good experiences I had, but guess what? It was still pretty hard.

The most important thing, however, was that I recorded lots of conversations in colloquial Arabic about lots and lots of different topics, and lots of the same topics, and it gave me the courage to work on my graduate research interviewing women from all over the West Bank.

And yep, my Arabic improved a lot. So I guess it was all worth it. And I'd probably even do it again if I had to!

How Arabic Became the Best Thing in My Life

I never, ever thought I would write a post with this title. My previous experience with studying Arabic in the Middle East was quite a disaster, and I never, ever, ever in a million years wanted to hear Arabic or speak Arabic or even think about the Middle East. Even though I tried to be positive on my blog while I was in Jordan, the truth is that most days I would break down crying and go and hide in a corner of the university instead of going to class. I remember when my parents flew into Amman at the end of my program so I could give them a tour of Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank. Their flight was a little late, and as I stood there at the airport waiting for them, fearing that maybe they weren't really coming, and maybe I would never get home, and I just wanted out of this country (I stop thinking rationally when I'm waiting for late flights at the airport), I started weeping and cried until I saw them walk out of the terminal, relieved that I only had to stay for another week.

I was terrified to come back to the Middle East. I was terrified to touch the dead carcass of Arabic that I had so gladly left by the roadside on my way out of misery and anger. Because I not only had to touch that carcass, I had to resurrect it and live with it and somehow be happy about it.

When I first tried out the Arabic program at Hebrew University, I was very much less than happy with it. Taught in English, it was very much a focus on grammar. We opened up the dictionary every five minutes. The people in the highest level taught here couldn't form sentences in Arabic. And so, after fighting with the administration to get into the highest level, I dropped it after a couple of weeks. I didn't need any more incentives to be miserable in Arabic.

I hope you can understand at least a little bit of what I felt at this point. I had just spent a large amount of money to come to study in Jerusalem for a year because I felt very strongly that this was what God wanted me to do. I knew I needed to improve my Arabic. And now I had just walked away from my Arabic class (which was one of the best decisions I have ever made and the only regret that I had was that I had stayed there for so long). The only option I thought I had was studying on my own.

And then, I saw a sign at the university. "Learn Arabic in Arabic," it boasted. I emailed them the same day. Taught through the Polis Institute, a Catholic institution in Jerusalem, and one of several language options there, the Arabic program is taught completely in Arabic, patterned after the Hebrew Ulpan program here.

I can (and do) go on for hours about how amazing my Arabic teacher at Polis is. Although he is Jewish Israeli, he speaks Arabic like a native and knows so many random things about Palestinians and the West Bank. He learned Arabic by talking to the natives, all the time and all over, so he often tells about different accents all over the West Bank, Jerusalem, and even Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Morocco. Somehow everything about Arabic is an absolute joy and delight to him, and he loves speaking and teaching Arabic. The best part is that he doesn't speak much English at all and all of the other students in the class are Israeli, so if he has to explain something in another language he will speak a few words in Hebrew, which helps both of my languages.

After half a semester in his class (I had joined halfway through), I was excited and thrilled about Arabic. I was starting to understand so much more colloquial (my MSA had been dominant when I was in Jordan), and I was stoked every time I heard something new so I could ask my teacher about it. I had this urge to travel all over the West Bank and see how they spoke in each city, and even politically frustrating things became interesting because I could talk about them in class (since it is very difficult for the other members of my class to enter many parts of the West Bank). I was on fire. I lived for Wednesdays--on difficult Fridays, or Mondays, or Sundays, I would think to myself, today was horrible...but just a few more days until Wednesday!

This was a huge transformation for me. Not only had I resurrected that Arabic carcass, but now it had become one of the most exciting things in my life. The dead carcass had become a beautiful steed that I could ride all over, exploring the wonderful world of Arabic. Maybe I have taken the metaphor a little far, but I hope you get the picture. :)

At the end of the semester, I said my goodbyes to everyone. They were continuing, but unfortunately I didn't have enough money to pay for another semester. I was in a very good place with my Arabic and felt confident that I could continue with the other classes and programs that I had in place.

A few days later, I was in Morocco. I was so excited about everything I heard--how they spoke, the words they used, how similar it was to Egyptian, and how I could tell my class and my teacher what I heard and saw in Morocco. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't in the class anymore. During my extensive time sitting on trains in Morocco, I stared out the window and thought about the next few months without my Arabic class. I suddenly realized that this Arabic class was seriously one of the best things that had ever happened to me and it would be absolutely ridiculous to give it up. Since I was less than happy with my classes at Hebrew University anyway, I decided to drop to half-time status and use some of the extra tuition for another semester at Polis.

The second semester of Arabic has been even better than the first. Somehow the excitement and joy that I get from my Arabic class on Wednesdays gives me the strength and the energy to do all sorts of difficult things during the rest of the week. Since my classmates have few opportunities to speak with Arabs in Arabic (due to the complicated political situation here), I offered to record conversations I had with girls at Bethlehem University and give them to Elad, my teacher, to share them with the class. I hate going up to random people and talking to them. Even though I served a mission. And even though I did it for 2 hours a day in Jordan. I still hate it. And I would go to the university before my class started, look around at all of the girls just sitting around chatting with each other, and go inside and sit in my classroom for 30 minutes instead of talking to them. I just couldn't find the motivation to do it.

Just because I thought this door was cool.

But after I offered to record conversations for my class, I had new inspiration. As I walked onto campus, I would think to myself, I have to talk to these girls. First of all it will help me improve my Arabic, but more importantly, I can give these recordings to my class! And when I would walk up to groups of chatting girls, introduce myself, and ask if I could record their answers to some of my questions about Palestinian weddings, funerals, the relationship between Muslims and Christians, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, etc, their willingness was, I'm sure, in part due to my excitement about talking with them and learning more Arabic. I listen to the recordings over and over on my ipod, gleaning new words and phrases and improving my Arabic exponentially. Recording the conversations was great both for my Arabic and for my graduate school research, since I now have all these language samples in colloquial Palestinian Arabic.

I recently started a project of interviewing women all over the West Bank for my MA research. And each time I go and record our interviews, I get excited about how much I am learning and what I can tell my class about what I heard and saw. Refugee camps, villages, big cities, checkpoints, areas of conflict, cultural experiences--they all have become exciting and inspiring. Even days without water in my apartment have become bearable.

I never thought I would be excited by Arabic. I definitely never thought it would be the best thing ever in my life. I am shocked and amazed by the transformation that my mind and my emotions, in addition to my language ability, has gone through. I am eternally indebted and grateful to my teacher Elad. And if I ever teach Arabic or any other teacher, I hope to be even half as inspiring to my students as he has been to me.

You Can't Pay for Help Like This

I love living in a small Arab Christian city. There are lots of perks that come from living in Beit Sahour, even if it is a pain to cross a military checkpoint every day.

One of the best perks of living here (besides the price of chocolate, which is MUCH cheaper here than in Jerusalem!!) is that the people here are seriously so nice. And most of them speak very little English. Nice people + no English = an ideal living situation for me!

I usually get a ride from Beit Sahour to Bethlehem with Sahar, a friend from the branch who lives just a few blocks away. This saves me a lot of time and money every day, and I will be forever in her debt because of that! But the other day Sahar was sick and didn't go to work, so I had to find another way to the checkpoint.

A little after 6:30 am I walked to a central bus/taxi/service station about a block away from my house to find a way to the checkpoint. I had several options: I could take a bus (and then two service taxis; total cost 8.5 shekels, total time maybe 30 min), a taxi (total cost 15 shekels, total time about 8 min), or a service (pronounced ser-veese, a large van that functions as a taxi-bus, total cost (plus a service taxi from the drop-off point to the checkpoint) 6 shekels; total time maybe 15 min). Taking a service was my #1 option, but hundreds pass by each hour in the morning and I didn't want to have to stop each one and ask them where they were going (they don't all go to the same place). Flagging them down and asking them where they are going gets old after about 4 service.

So I did what I always do in this type of situation: I went into the vegetable store right next to the bus/service/taxi stop and asked the store owner if there were service from there to Bab-Alisqaq (where I could then catch a service taxi to the checkpoint). "Yes," he said, motioning for his coworker to walk back out with me. "Show her which service go to Bab-Alisqaq," he said.

I followed the man back outside and was pleasantly startled to see that he started flagging down the service and asking if they were going to Bab-Alisqaq. I could have hugged him! After flagging down 4 or 5 service with no luck, he finally found one going to Bab-Alisqaq. I thanked him and got in and he walked back into the store like it was no big deal, he just made some foreign girl's day. And I thought, "I couldn't pay for help like this, and he just did it to be nice!"

Yep. I love living here.

Living Life in Four Languages

One of my goals for my time here in Jerusalem is to come back fluent in four languages: Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese, and of course it would be wonderful if I could still speak English. :) This has proved to be a wonderful challenge, and I have all sorts of awkward and hilarious adventures as I try to keep the four languages separate in my head. Sometimes, however, it doesn't always work so well.

A couple of weeks ago I was in the Arabic-speaking Palestinian city of Ramallah. I had ridden the bus and spoken to people in Arabic on the way there, but when I hailed a taxi I got in and started speaking to the driver in Chinese! That was awkward.

Another time I was crossing the separation wall to get into Ramallah. I wasn't sure where to go, so I asked these women (in Arabic) if they knew where the bus was to go to Ramallah. They just stared at me, uncomprehending, and one of them finally said (in Arabic) "Arabic. We speak Arabic." "I'm speaking Arabic!" I said back. I knew my Arabic was intelligible, but they just weren't expecting this white girl with red hair to speak to them in Arabic and so they thought I was speaking English or something!

Sometimes it is hard for me to know what language to speak to people: Hebrew, Arabic. Most of the time it is quite obvious, but sometimes I can't tell the nationality of the person before I start speaking to them! Like the other day when I was going to my kickboxing class. I couldn't figure out how to lock the locker (turns out you had to insert a 10-shekel coin), so I asked these girls walking by in Hebrew if they spoke English, and then asked if they knew how to lock the locker (in English). Then they turned to each other and started speaking in Arabic! "I know how to ask that in Arabic!" I wanted to shout, but I didn't. They didn't know how to lock the locker, either, so I guess it didn't matter what language I asked them in!

Another day I was on the other campus of Hebrew University (I take classes on the Mount Scopus campus, but I had to go to the Givat Ram campus, on the other side of the city and right next to where I live right now) to do some research in the library there. I asked a man in Hebrew for how to get to the library, and he walked with me there to show me the way. We exchanged small talk in Hebrew, but I was really struggling to keep pretending like I was understanding what he was saying. Suddenly, we passed someone right as we got to the library complex and the man giving me directions started talking to the other man in Arabic! "You speak Arabic?!" I asked (in Arabic), now aware that he was Arab-Israeli. "I speak much Arabic much better than I speak Hebrew!" I said, thinking of how it would have been so much less awkward for me if we had been speaking in Arabic.

A few days ago I went hiking in the forest near Jerusalem with another grad student. We knew that the hiking trails were right next to the parking lot of the Ein Kerem Hadassah hospital, but we had no idea which parking lot! So we started asking around--but couldn't seem to find anyone that spoke English. I do speak a little Hebrew, but I am always missing vital words in the conversation. For example, in asking someone where the hiking trails are, I can say, "Excuse me, do you know where the ..... is?" but unfortunately I don't know how to say hiking or trail. Yeah. Doesn't do me much good. (This happens to me in almost every conversation in Hebrew. I am missing those key verbs and nouns...which I guess is motivation for me to study harder!) Anyway, I asked one security guard (in Hebrew) if he spoke English, and he said (in Hebrew) "No." When I looked disappointed and was about to walk away, he said, "Don't worry, I speak great Hebrew! What do you need?"

Great. Him speaking great Hebrew did little for the fact that my own Hebrew skills are so minimal! My friend and I tried to explain that we wanted to go hiking. "We want to...travel...near the hospital," we said, trying to make motions like we were hiking. "You want to walk around the hospital? Why?!" he asked. "Go ahead and walk around it!"

I walked up to another security guard and asked him (in Hebrew), "Do you speak English?"

"No," he answered in Arabic.

"Oh! Do you speak Arabic?"

"No," he answered in English.

Utterly confused at this point, I just stumbled through another hand-motioning game of showing that we wanted to hike. Luckily, he knew where the trail was, and we were on our way.

And one final story: since I have to take a level test for Arabic at the end of October, much of my free time is spent studying Arabic and re-memorizing vocabulary. The bus is the perfect place to do this, but I get some strange looks from a lot of people (yes, there is a lot of discrimination in Israel between Jews and Arabs. Shocking, I know.)

I was on the bus studying a list of vocabulary words when suddenly the man next to me said (in English--he was from America but I think had moved to Israel), "You're studying Arabic?!!!" with a look of slight disgust on his face. "Yep," I answered. "Ugh," he said. "It's such a...guttural language."

Yes, well, maybe I like studying guttural languages! It's prejudice like this that inspires me to work even harder at becoming proficient at both languages. And maybe, just maybe, one day people won't have such strong feelings of disgust about either a people or their language!

And just because blog posts are always better with pictures, I'll leave you with this one.

Rosh Hashanah at the Moshav

The month of October is full of Jewish holidays: Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), and Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles) all fall within a few weeks of each other, which means a lot of celebrating (and a lot of days without public transportation--the downside of living in a country that shuts down every week on Shabbat and on all the religious holidays!). And for the past several years I have been dying to celebrate these holidays in Jerusalem, ever since I heard about the shofar-blowing and palm frond-waving and everything else.

Lucky me, this year I got my wish!

My graduate program paired students up with families who wanted to host foreigners for the high holy holidays, and I was lucky enough to be paired up with a family in Tal Shahar, a small farming community halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

I'm going to have to apologize right now for the quality and lack of pictures--since Rosh Hashanah is a high holy holiday, observant Jews don't use electricity, drive, or use cameras. And although, as a Christian, I am not expected to follow any of those rules (as will later be apparent), I wanted to be respectful and as non-awkward as possible. So I just took my pocket-sized digital camera and took pictures discreetly. (The fact that the batteries in my camera were almost dead made it easier to resist taking many pictures!)

The house I stayed in was adorable and reminded me of childhood memories of going to stay at my Grandma Campbell's 100-year-old house in Idaho (minus the creepy basement). 

My host, Vered, told me that her parents built this house "with their own hands" more than 30 years ago when they first moved out here. She and her mother apologized several times for the state of the house (and one of Vered's brothers spent a few hours taking pictures of the cracks in the walls to submit to the TV show "Extreme Makeover" to see if they could get a spot on the show), but I told them they had more than 50 years to go before their home could rival my grandma's house (which surprisingly has held together quite well)!

This was my room. Isn't it cute? Vered said they call it the "giraffe room."


The view from the 2nd floor at sunset.

Their house had some serious character. Each room was a different size, and there were surprises everywhere. Like this airplane room.

My favorite part was this landing right at the top of the stairs. I love the camel.

Tal Shahar itself is a cute little farming community of about 50-60 families, just off the main highway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It has an elementary school, a synagogue, and a gas station. If you need anything else, the next closest city is only about 15 minutes away.

Each of the houses has one of these little name plates out front, identifying the family that lives there. This is for the synagogue.

And this is the synagogue. I love it. When I told Vered that I wanted to take a picture of it, she looked at me strangely. "It's so cute!" I said. "No," she said, "It's kind of falling apart." "It's picturesque and quaint," I told her. But seriously. It is picturesque and quaint!

And who couldn't love a town with this little beauty? (courtesy of Vered's yard)

Before you become too enamored with the pictures of this adorable little moshav (the Hebrew word for these small little communities), let me share with you a few of the highlights from the trip:

1. I went to synagogue twice with Vered, and the first time they blew the shofar 100 times throughout the service. They only blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah (100 times each service, I think) and on Yom Kippur (just once, to signal the end of the fast), so this was especially thrilling to me. 

2. Wednesday night we went to Vered's mother's house (Vered, a graduate student at Hebrew University, is currently the only one living in the family home) for dinner. Vered, three of her siblings, and her mom and mom's boyfriend were all there, and they certainly made for a lively bunch! After dinner and more than an hour of them bantering back and forth in Hebrew, Vered's mother asked me how long I had been studying Hebrew. "One month," I answered. "That's all?" she asked. "You should have said something and we would have spoken in English. You missed half the jokes!"

"No," I answered, laughing. "I missed all the jokes!" [If you don't find this funny, go and study another language for a month and then sit in on someone's conversation and see how much you can understand. For me, it was very little...and I certainly wasn't catching any of their puns!]

3. Thursday morning I went to synagogue with Vered, where I met the rabbi briefly. Vered had told him that I was coming to visit and that I was Christian. (I told her that I'm Christian as soon as she emailed me with the invitation to spend the holiday with her, in case she wondered why I don't drink wine and why I am so unfamiliar with Jewish practices!) That night, as I was sitting outside chatting with Vered and her family, two of the rabbi's daughters (about 11 and 9) walked up, looking very solemn and scared, and started to talk to Vered. She called me over and said, "There's been some sort of emergency...and the rabbi needs you to drive his son to the hospital! Can you do that?"

I knew, of course, that as an observant Jew he couldn't drive on the holiday, but I was slightly confused as to why they asked me, as Vered's entire family (except Vered herself) are secular Jews and were about to drive home. I quickly realized, however, that observant Jews can only ask non-Jews to break Shabbat and holiday rules for them (such as driving and turning on lights), and as the only Christian in the moshav, I was the only one they could ask!

Naturally I said yes and ran with the sisters back to the rabbi's house, fearing the worst. The girls knew enough English to tell me that their brother had cut his head open and he was covered with blood, and I was worried that I would have to drive an unconscious boy to the hospital in the middle of the night! Thankfully, though, when I got there the boy was quite conscious, the blood had all been cleaned up, and his father told me that the kids had been playing and someone had thrown a chair ("you know how kids are") and it had hit him in the head. "He was covered with blood," the rabbi said, "and you can see his brain through the opening in his head!" Sick.

Even in this state of emergency, I was surprised to see that the rabbi was still so strict in keeping the Shabbat rules. He gave me the keys to the car and then said, "And I'm sorry, but I'll need you to open the doors for us." I did so and then got in the driver's seat. I reached out to close my door, but before I could shut it the rabbi shouted "WAIT! We need to close our doors first."

I let them close their doors and then closed mine, still totally surprised that even in this state of emergency the rabbi was concerned about turning off lights (which happens when the last person closes their door!).

The trip to the hospital was pretty uneventful...a few hours of waiting around, they glued the cut closed and gave the boy a tetanus...etc, etc. As we were waiting, I tried my hardest to make friends with the boy, Ephraim. I kept trying to speak to him in Hebrew to see if he would smile...but nothing. His dad finally told me, "He speaks English!" so I tried that too. Still nothing.

Finally, while he was waiting for the tetanus shot, I told him, "I think you're very brave" in Hebrew. And finally! He smiled! He even laughed a little bit.

Later, when I told Vered what I had said, she said, "No! You didn't tell him he was brave...you said he was very angry!"

No wonder he was laughing!

When we got back to the moshav late that night, Vered asked the rabbi the same question I'm sure all of you are wondering--"Rabbi, the Torah says that life is more important than a holiday, than Shabbat--why didn't you take him to the hospital yourself, since it was an issue of life?"

The rabbi told her that yes, he could have taken him to the hospital--but once he was stitched up and it was no longer an issue of life, he wouldn't be able to drive him home and he would be stuck at the hospital for two days! And then there would be no one to conduct synagogue services, and everyone in the town would remember the time when the rabbi was stuck at the hospital for two days!

3. While I was at the moshav Vered told me that she needed to help an old woman feed her animals Friday morning. She told me I didn't have to help, but I told her that I know how to feed animals and I would be more than happy to go with her! Still, she expressed doubts the whole morning--wondering if it would be faster if she just went herself, since she thought it would take more time to have to explain everything to me! I chose not to be offended, realizing that when she lived in America, she lived in a rich Jewish community and the children were all spoiled. And I was certainly taught how to work as a child! Even though we never had animals, my parents would hang their heads in shame if I didn't know how to feed the chickens!

Vered, naturally, was shocked that we got done in half the time. (She had chickens and rabbits and other birds and an emu and goats and lots of other animals--probably 2-300.) Elisa, the old woman whose animals we fed, told me that I was a "natural" and "absolutely perfect!" Others in the moshav, however, were also worried about my experience with the animals--and the rabbi later asked if I experienced any trauma from feeding them! Nope, not me...I'm Utah bred! :) And while this picture proves nothing about me feeding the chickens, I thought I would include it because A-it shows off the awesome cowboy hat (I need one of those!) and Beatles shirt that Vered lent me, B-this is the outfit I wore to feed the animals, and C-I thought the composition and color scheme was pretty awesome.

4. The rabbi was so thankful that I drove his son to the hospital that he invited me and Vered over for lunch on Friday (after we fed the animals). On holidays and Shabbat, religious Jews perform a kiddush before eating, which is a blessing over bread and wine. They bless the wine and everyone drinks some, and then they bless the bless the bread and everyone eats a piece. I had told Vered several times I don't drink wine, but I still had several awkward kiddish moments where I just left the wine sitting in my cup (it's only a swallow) and didn't drink anything for the rest of the evening, thinking that that was perhaps the least awkward solution.

Anyway, at the rabbi's house naturally some wine was poured in my cup, and naturally I didn't drink it. After the kiddush was over and everyone started eating, I whispered to Vered and asked if she wanted to drink my wine. "Oh yeah," she said, and then told the rabbi, "Breanne's a Mormon and doesn't drink wine." "Not even just a little?" the rabbi's wife asked, and I said no, not even just a little. "She doesn't drink coffee or tea, either," volunteered Vered.

"No coffee!" exclaimed the rabbi's wife. "Alcohol I can understand, but coffee?! You don't know what you're missing out on!"

I laughed to myself that an observant Jew would be surprised that I abstained from drinking something. And I had enough tact to NOT say what I was thinking: "You've never had a bacon cheeseburger? You don't know what you're missing!" (Observant Jews, of course, don't eat pork and don't eat meat and milk products together, so this would be a double whammy.)

5. Vered and I didn't attend synagogue service Friday night because her family came in for dinner. But later we were informed that the rabbi told everyone in the service about what had happened to his son and how I drove him to the hospital, etc...and then he told everyone that I'm Mormon, and Mormons don't drink alcohol, and they are a lot like Jewish people! (I'm assuming he was referring to my large family and modest clothing.) Although I am not affiliated with BYU I respect their non-proselyting rules (which helps keep the BYU Center open in Jerusalem) so I don't tell people about the beliefs of Latter-day Saints, but here was a rabbi in synagogue doing it for me! :)

6. After Saturday morning synagogue service (they sure do attend a lot of synagogue services on Shabbat and holidays!), the rabbi waited until everyone left and then asked if I would like to go up to the front and see the Torah scroll--which is a great honor! Naturally, I was thrilled, and he opened up the scroll and asked me if I could read it. My 4 years of training served me well, and the rabbi was astounded that I could read the Torah. "You're amazing," he kept saying...especially after he learned that I know Chinese and Arabic as well! (It really wasn't that impressive, though, because the Hebrew said something like, "And the Lord said to Moses...." which you learn in the first semester of Biblical Hebrew!)

Well, friends, I think my trip to the moshav was a success. It was so great, actually, that I am going back to celebrate the end of Sukkot with Vered! Who knows what adventures await me...