Eating with Chopsticks

Did I really eat berry pie from a plastic bag with chopsticks for breakfast on Friday?

Why yes, yes I did.

The Move to Bethlehem: Part 1

I have been considering moving to Bethlehem for several weeks now, for several reasons. First of all, I wanted to be forced to speak Arabic every day...even when I was tired and didn't want to wander the streets of East Jerusalem to find someone to talk to. Secondly, the rent (and cost of living) is MUCH cheaper in Bethlehem, in part because it is behind the separation wall and the economic situation is not the best. And thirdly, I came here to experience life on both sides, and what better way to see what life is like in the West Bank than to live there?

With these considerations (and after a lot of prayer), I decided to move to Bethlehem. Sahar, a Palestinian member of the church who also lives in Bethlehem (and has been a great help and friend to me), had given me several options of people she knew who were renting out apartments, and I finally decided to go with one right next to the checkpoint. The house was surrounded on three sides by the separation wall (pictures to come) and seriously looked like a prison, but I decided I wanted to get the whole experience and so grabbed my stuff and move in.

The "apartment" was actually a guest house, with 5 or 6 rooms with private bathrooms. The kitchen and living room were shared, but other than that each room was private (although some rooms had 4 beds in them!). However, no one had been staying there for months, and the landlord said that no one was going to be there until Christmas (and then just for 2 nights), so I thought of it as moving into my own apartment and not a guesthouse.

Imagine my surprise when I opened the door to my new apartment with all of my luggage and saw a man sitting inside! "Oh, hi," he said. "Are you moving in too?"

Too? Too? No. No, I'm not moving in too. I'm moving in! This is my apartment! At least, that is what I thought it would be. I was so startled that I didn't say anything except a feeble "Hi, nice to meet you" and started taking my stuff back to my room. I was so shocked and overwhelmed that I didn't notice that there was a step down between the kitchen and my bedroom. I was carrying a large box filled with pots and other kitchen supplies, and as I stepped into my bedroom I missed the step and fell flat on my face, dropping the box and spilling the contents everywhere.

Unfortunately, the box also had a large bottle of canola oil in it, and when the box dropped the canola oil broke open and started spilling everywhere.

This was the last straw for me, and I did what any reasonable person would do: I started crying. And then walked out of the house to make some phone calls to see if I could get myself moved out of this awkward situation.

However, NO ONE was answering their phone. I walked back to the church in Bethlehem (my apt was 3 blocks away) to see if the people I was trying to get in contact with were there having a meeting, but the church was locked up and everyone was gone. And after about 14 phone calls with no luck, I finally called Arlissa, another member of my branch, and started crying. This was not what I was hoping for when I decided to move to Bethlehem!

Luckily for me, Sahar didn't stay in her meeting for too much longer and called me back as soon as she got done. "Is there some sort of emergency?" she wanted to know. "Because you called me like 9 times!"

Well, yes, there is an emergency. "There's a man living in my apartment!" I told her. She was just as shocked as me (thanks, Sahar, for validating my reaction!) and immediately asked if I wanted to go check out another apartment farther in the city. I went and spoke with the landlady and told her I felt awkward about the situation, and she totally understood and didn't even ask me to pay any rent (for the 1.5 hours I lived there...). And Sahar took me to another apartment, rented out by her niece, and not too far from where she herself lives.

Let me tell you, friends, that as soon as I saw the empty apartment (2 bedroom/1bath/kitchen/living room) and verified that no one else would be living there with me, I moved in that very night. It was actually more like 15 min. And let me tell you all, it has been amazing to have my own apartment! Of course, I don't have any mid-40s nice British men for roommates, but that is one thing I can do without!

Dogsitting

Being jobless and homeless in Jerusalem has given me some interesting opportunities to do things that I never, ever thought I would do. 

Like dogsitting. 

Those of you who know me will be as shocked as I was to hear that for the past 3 weeks I have been housesitting/dogsitting for a couple in the LDS branch here who went back to the States as their daughter just had a baby. (How could I say no to free rent for 3 weeks?!)

Shadow is a cute litte dog and doesn't require too much from me. The first week was a little rough but we finally got used to each other.

Some things I learned from Shadow:

*When I get home and walk in the door, no matter how long I have been gone, he is going to jump on me at least 8 times.

*Several times a day he needs to lick me. I have learned to just stick out my hand for a couple of minutes and let him lick and lick. It saves my face and my legs.

*When I say "go" or "outside" he will immediately go into excitement overload and will jump on me until his leash is secured and we are outside.

Some things Shadow has learned about me:

*There are some things I don't share. My bed is one of those things.

*I am not a happy camper when my legs get licked early in the morning.

*The food I eat (cereal and sandwiches) is not that exciting, even for a dog.

Overall, however, things have gone pretty well, especially if you look at my extensive (ahem, nonexistent) dogsitting history. We only had two major mishaps:

One day Shadow started acting like a very drunk dog. He was staggering around the house and his vision was unfocused. I got really worried and had two thoughts: either he is going to die or he is about to throw up. Luckily it wasn't the former, but unluckily for me it was the latter! And he happened to choose the only rug in the house (the floor is tile) to throw up on. When I saw this disgusting thing, I did the thing any responsible adult would do: I called my mom! Thankfully she was home and, after complaining to her, I calmed down and cleaned up the rug. It was pretty nasty, though.

Another day I walked into my bedroom to grab my jacket. I usually keep the door closed but I didn't even notice that it was open before I walked in. I left the light off because I was just going to grab my jacket and walk out. Imagine my surprise when I reached out to grab my jacket and instead grabbed Shadow's face! I'm not sure who was more startled: me by him, or him by my scream! I did learn, however, to turn the lights on before I walked into rooms!

Tomorrow the dogsitting days come to an end. It's been thrilling, but three weeks in one place is almost getting to be too long for me, and it's time to move again...

The Umbrella

Today was one of those days. I could write about 8 different blog posts on the many frustrations I encountered today, but it's late and I'm about to go to bed. Suffice it to say, by the time 5:30 rolled around, I was overly frustrated, stuck on an overcrowded bus (that smelled like wet bodies), and it was pouring rain. The bus driver missed my stop so I had to walk several blocks in the pouring rain to get to a night class I'm taking. I was late and muttering to myself about how awful everything was, and to top it off here I was soaking wet, caught in the rain without an umbrella.

And then, out of nowhere, this Italian woman (I think she was Italian) started talking to me in some language I didn't understand. She was gesturing for me to take her umbrella. Confused, I looked at her husband, who said, "It's for you! This one's big enough for me and for her--we don't need two!"

It made my day. And it restored my faith in humanity. And really, guys, God is watching out for us, even if just to prompt some stranger to give us an umbrella in the middle of pouring rain at the end of a really long day.

Beit Jamal

About a month ago I went with my good friends (and both MFSOs--Mormon Foreign Service Officers) Beverli and Arlissa to a convent in Beit Jamal. The nuns there are famous for their hand-painted pottery, so we went to check it out.

One of the nuns told me that each sister contributes what they can to the painting of the pottery. "Some sisters aren't quite as advanced," she said, "so they just put the dots on each piece." That would definitely be my job!

I was less interested in the pottery and more interested in talking to one of the nuns who was helping in the gift shop. She was from France and also spoke English, Arabic, and Hebrew, and she was absolutely fascinated when I told her that I study Hebrew and Arabic. She told me that she loved Arabic and wished that she knew more, but she mostly gets Hebrew practice from working in the shop.

I started asking her about her life, and it turns out that besides running to the store to get a few things, the nuns don't leave the complex. I always thought that I would make a great nun, but this might be a little much for me, even with a beautiful compound!

I kept asking her questions about her life, but each time she quickly responded with a question of her own. It was like she was fascinated by my life. She just couldn't quit talking about Arabic and what textbook did I use and where did I live and that she had heard about the Mormon University and even seen pictures of it! She was like an excited little kid, and it was so fun to talk to her (although a bit unnerving). And then I found out that these nuns have taken a VOW OF SILENCE! The only ones who can talk are the ones assigned to the gift shop, and they rotate every few years. So WOW! No wonder she was so talkative and inquisitive! This was her only chance to talk in years! I would talk to every customer too!

After talking to us for a while, she ran and got a piece of cheesecake that she had made for us to try. Isn't it beautiful?

And it was delicious too!

As we were driving away we saw a huge herd of sheep crossing the road. Yes, this is the Middle East!

[Hitch]Hiking

My Hebrew language course finished at the end of September and my graduate classes didn't start until the end of October, giving me a month free from classes. I hadn't had this much time off in years (and years and years!), so I decided in addition to celebrating Jewish holidays with Israelis and meeting the President that I would go hiking. The Negev hiking trip was so successful that I got one of my friends from that trip, Moriah, and we set off to find a trail through the Jerusalem Forest.

I read online that the trail goes right out from the Hadassah hospital parking lot in Ein Karem, so naturally we thought it would be super easy to find. Wrong. After a long ordeal of awkward hand gestures and asking five different security guards in Hebrew if they knew where the trail to the Jerusalem Forest was, we finally found it (I wrote about this in an earlier post). In case anyone wants to hike in the Jerusalem Forest, it's really easy to get there: just go to Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital and go to the back parking lot (it is the biggest one). Go out the exit, walk down the road about 200 meters, and the trail is on your left (it sounds simple, but it actually took us a really long time to find out where the trail head is!).

Moriah and I were gung-ho and so excited to be hiking since it had cooled down considerably the past few days. But guess what? That day was one of the hottest days of the summer! We were dying. Naturally, we decided that walking to somewhere with water would be the best choice, and so took a trail that passed two springs.

I know, impressive, right? :) It was so hot that I crawled in that little hole to feel the cool air drifting up from the underground spring. Moriah laughed at me, but I was ready to keep crawling back in and explore the cave instead of hiking in the heat!

The views were pretty awesome, though, despite the heat. This is looking back at Ein Kerem Hadassah hospital.

The trail also cut through a lot of peoples' orchards and olive groves (I'm sure it was nice for the owners to have a trail maintained by the city that went up the mountain to their trees!), and this beautiful little garden on the side of the hill. It might not look that cute until you look around and see that it is all barren hills and olive trees except this little patch of land!

 

We found a couple of old houses (we weren't sure if they were legit or just built by the government to add excitement to the trail!) along the way, which were pretty sweet. The one below was a teeny house but had what looked like a watchtower next to it. I can definitely imagine someone spending the night in this structure, looking out over the valley and watching for enemies who might come in and destroy their trees.

Because I thought the weather would be much cooler than it was (we were hiking early in the morning in the forest! Shouldn't it be cooler than hiking in the desert?), I was sorely unprepared in the way of water. I took just one liter with me, and it was gone long before we finished the hike. By the time we came out on the top of the mountain across the valley from the hospital, both Moriah and I were exhausted. There was no way we were walking the 6 or 7 miles along the trail back to the hospital. So we started thinking about our options.

There was a road right next to the trail head that lead back to Jerusalem, so we decided if worst came to worst we could just walk back along the road. "Or we could hitchhike," suggested Moriah. "Yeah," I said. "But I've never hitchhiked before, unless you count the time my car ran out of gas at midnight on the freeway in Utah and some guy picked me up off the side of the road and took me home." Moriah had never hitchhiked either, but people do it in Israel all the time (it's not as dangerous or uncommon as it is in the US). But I'm not quite as adventurous as my sister, who sleeps on benches and in ferry station showers, and I was hoping and praying that we could find another way back. I had these horrible visions of being stabbed and thrown down the side of the mountain.

Anyway. Moriah and I were sitting on a bench discussing our options when three girls came up and asked us to take a picture of them. Happily I obliged, and then, in a subtle hint, asked if they knew if there was a bus back to Jerusalem. "Sorry, we aren't from around here," they said, and walked away.

Well, it was worth a try, I thought. And then. AND THEN. One of the girls turned around and called back, "Hey, do you need a ride back to Jerusalem?"

Yes! YES!!! Moriah and I tried to hide our excitement as we grabbed our stuff and ran to join them. "Sure," we said nonchalantly, as if we were just planning on strolling back if we couldn't find a bus. "That would be nice. You girls heading that way?"

They dropped us off right in the center of town, and Moriah and I couldn't thank them enough. And as the car pulled away, Moriah and I both decided that we could totally claim that as hitchhiking...

"Something There Is that Doesn't Love a Wall"

I thought that reposting this photo essay of pictures of walls in Jerusalem (especially the separation wall separating Israeli and Palestinian territories) and the poem "Mending Wall" by Robert Frost that I originally posted on my Arabic blog would be appropriate after my post on Hebron. When I read the poem several years ago, I immediately thought about the separation wall. When we build walls, what are we keeping in and what are we keeping out?

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs.

The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

He is all pine and I am apple-orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down!"

I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there,

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Hebron

I have wanted to go to Hebron for years now. Not only is Hebron home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, where tradition has it that Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah (Rachel is buried in Bethlehem) are entombed (on the land that Abraham bought for Sarah when she died), but Hebron has been a hotly contested site in the past several years (it is a Palestinian city in the West Bank, but there are many Jews who want to live or visit there because of the holiness of the Tomb).

However, Hebron is behind the Separation Wall, deep in the West Bank, and when I was here several years ago it was a hotbed of violent activity. For these reasons I have felt like Hebron would be a very dangerous place to go and visit.

But I really wanted to go, so I checked the news (nothing violent for months!), found a friend (Sabra, who is from America and studying Arabic here in Jerusalem), and hopped on a bus.

It is actually quite easy to get to most big cities in the West Bank. There are two central Palestinian bus stations across from Damascus Gate in Jerusalem (one for busses going north and one for busses going south), and even if those busses don't go where you want to go, you can transfer in one of those cities to another bus.

The best part? Bus tickets are actually pretty cheap on Palestinian busses. It costs 7 shekels to get to Beit Sahour (next to Bethlehem and inside the Separation Wall) and just 6 shekels to get from there to Hebron.

The bus ride to Hebron was beautiful! I felt like I was in the Jordanian countryside...which I never thought I would miss, but it was so nice to get out of the city. I even saw one tree with leaves that had changed to red for fall! (It's stayed pretty green around here...olive leaves just don't ever change color!)

The bus dropped us off downtown, and we walked through the Old City to get to the Tomb. The dynamics in Hebron are really very strange. Hebron is a Palestinian city, as I stated before, deep in the West Bank, but since it is also holy to Jews, there are about 500 settlers there. And according to the Lonely Planet guidebook, there are about 4,000 Israeli soldiers posted there to keep the peace!

I usually try to stay away from too much political discourse on my blog. After all, I am studying Arabic and Hebrew in Jerusalem so I can promote peace on both sides. But I will say that I do not agree with the settlers' ideology at all. And actually, according to the UN and the rest of the world, the Israeli settlements scattered throughout the West Bank are illegal and only serve to delay the peace process. In order to create roads for the settlers to drive on, they have to take more land from the Palestinians, in addition to the land taken for the settlement. I have found Israelis, on the whole, to be quite kind. But it seems like the settlers' ideology is one of entitlement--that just because this land was holy to their ancestors, they should get it.

It is a difficult thing to live with anywhere, but I think the situation is particularly tense in Hebron. So it didn't surprise me at all to have to pass through two checkpoints to get into the synagogue side of the Tomb (we couldn't go to the mosque side because it was closed for Friday prayers). The Tomb is divided into two sides (with a wall in between and separate entrances) because both faiths lay claim to the site.

According to Wikipedia, it was Herod the Great that built the first big structure over the caves, the Byzantines that added a roof, and Salah Ad-Din that added the minarets and turned it into a mosque. The Byzantines worshipped there for hundreds of years, so I'm surprised that the Christians haven't laid claim to part of the building, too! (Oh wait, they did...in 1100 the Crusaders conquered the place and no longer allowed Muslims to worship there. But even though Salah Ad-Din conquered it back in 1188, he allowed Christians to continue worshipping there.)

Anyway. Enough with the history and politics. I think in keeping with the integrity of the site, none of the Islamic paintings on the walls have been covered up or painted over (and according to Wikipedia, the waqf, the Islamic ruling body, has control over the maintenance of the site). So the cenotaphs of Abraham and the rest are covered with Arabic writing, the walls are painted in Arabic, and Hebrew signs and Torah scrolls fill the rooms. It's very odd.

This holds the Torah scroll in the room between Abraham and Sarah's cenotaphs (the caves are underneath and inaccessible). See the Arabic on the wall? And see the Hebrew on the box for the Torah scroll?

This is on the cenotaph of Abraham. It's Arabic.

No one is allowed to get close to the cenotaphs. This is looking in on Abraham's.

This is looking in at the room between Abraham and Sarah's cenotaphs. Abraham's cenotaph is on the right, Sarah's is on the left.

Both the Jews and the Muslims have washing rituals to cleanse themselves before worship. This is a Muslim cleansing station (they wash their hands and their feet, which is why it is so low) that now serves as a Jewish cleansing station.

Standing at the top of the synagogue, looking out over the city. The Old City (where mostly Palestinians live) is on the left, the settlement is (I think) on the right.

Soldiers guarding the road. I don't know if everything was closed because it was Friday prayers or because the Israelis closed the road so the settlers could use it, like one of the residents told us, but it was a pretty empty street. I'll have to go back when it's not Friday and see what life is really like.

The left side, behind the barriers, is for the Palestinians and leads to the Old City and the mosque side of the Tomb. The rest of it is for the settlers and leads to the synagogue side of the Tomb.

Sabra and I were walking through the Old City when we saw something fluttering in the breeze above our heads (Sabra was so shocked she just stared):

There are lots of checkpoints (I don't know if they are active) throughout the city. Here is one of them. Behind this wall is an Israeli building.

My visit to Hebron was fascinating and very enlightening. I am anxious to go again, this time on a weekday so I can see normal life (most things shut down on Fridays for Friday prayers). It makes me feel ill when I think about the injustices and horrors done on both sides and how both sides are suffering for it now. But whenever I get too weighed down by these things, I see restaurants like the "Happy Bunny" and I laugh again. So just in case you feel too weighed down by this post, here's the Happy Bunny (taken from the bus window as we were leaving Hebron).