Eid

Eid (pronounced like ede and aid mixed together)

This Saturday the Muslim month of fasting, Ramadan, ended. The Muslims spend an entire month fasting from any food or drink during daylight hours (and from a number of other things during both daylight and nighttime hours, as well). Their month ends with four days of celebration (eating, drinking, meeting with family, having get togethers into the night).
For the school, Eid meant that we had a four day break from Sunday through Wednesday. During three of those four days I did little other than eat, sleep, play violin, watch movies, play video games with some of the students, and visit a few people's homes for meals. The fourth day was spent grading papers, and putting any finishing touches on lessons plans I had thought through for the next couple of days. Eid marks the end of School: Round 1 and the beginning of School: Round 2. I've spent a large portion of the last five weeks catching up on work and developing simple relationships with my students. More recently, a number of us have started hanging out on a more regular basis (such as with the video gaming I mentioned a moment ago - I'm becoming more convinced that video games are a great way to develop early relationships with youth - especially guys. Plus, I love doing things where I can taunt them for losing to a teacher...).

Round 2 of the school year will be significantly more busy than Round 1. This week I'll be starting up two or three Bible studies, an after school outdoor club, and an English tutoring afternoon with the other English teachers. I'll be leading a Bible study for the 8th grade boys (they're the one's I've been bonding with the most these past few weeks). There are 12 boys in the class, and together they make up a whirlwind of chaos that is impervious to any exhortations to self-control. So I'm splitting them up. Two groups of six will be easier to manage and better for discussing some of the deeper issues of life. They are a great group of guys. They are smart, witty, full of energy, and quite often bored out of their minds (a good combination for someone interested in their lives). I'm also thinking about leading a Bible study for the 7th grade guys, who are night and day calmer and more attentive. That Bible study would be much easier to run, and I've come to love some of them as well (though not so much as the 8th grade guys).

I love living here! I still miss things like southern fried chicken (we had KFC the other day... awful. I can't believe I paid ten dollars to choke down something similar to deep fried pinecones). I miss boating with my family and having furniture in my house. But I love life here. More often than not I forget that I don't understand 80% of what is happening around me socially.

I should have taken pictures of the Ramadan lights around town (they look like Christmas lights in the States - except that their stars are next to crescent moons - complete with blinking lights strung along from window to window), but I forgot. The month flew by; I can't believe I've been here for more than a month!

Instead, here are some other pictures:

Your first view of our school

Yes, there are bars on the windows.

Like most schools, we try to create a prison-like

feeling among the students... for morale.

I took these pictures on a Friday,

which is why it looks so desolate

That's right, we have an olive orchard around our soccer field.

How fitting.

Our students, heading home for the day.

As teachers, it is our duty to beat the students in everything,

which is why the teacher on the left is the one who caught the ball.

Not the student :)

The blue-shirted guys are my students.

Front: my 9th graders (trying to be gangster)

Back: my 7th graders shooting hoops (I always try to get these two

on my team because they are such good shots)

in response to, "do something cool"

This 7th grader almost beat me in chess

(phew! that was a close one)

A busy new life

For the ADD:

I am here! I was sick, but I'm almost better. I was without a home, but now I have one. Classes started yesterday: I am neither a terrible teacher nor am I as good a teacher as I hoped to be from the get go. I am teaching English Literature to grades 7-9 and Bible to grade 12. Another teacher hasn't yet arrived, so I have taken over teaching some of his classes as well (putting me at a full day with no breaks - Ahhh!!!). I was stress, and I still am; although, I am no longer desperately struggling to keep on top of everyday responsibilities, so rest is near. The students here are upside down: the 12th graders are my most rediculous students and the 7th graders are my most calm, studious students. And as of today, I am officially here under a volunteer teacher status (meaning I don't have to leave the country in three months). I am SO GLAD to be here.

For the slightly more focused:

I spent my first 6 days here exhausted from my travels, discouraged at not finding an apartment as easily as I had hoped, and overwhelmed at how much work I had to put behind me before school started Monday (three days ago). I visited TONS of apartments, but most of them were lacking a number of things I considered essential (either being close to the school or being less than $400 or being near a muslim community) and none of them felt right. So I waited and looked until I was weary from the social interaction.

One of the teachers at my school suggested I talk with a certain couple who live close to the school. I was on my way over to Terry and Melissa's (where I was staying) and stopped by to say hello and see if their room was still available for rent. After three varieties of cake, a pudding desert, a cup of hot tea, and two hours of talking, they turned out to be an awesome christian couple (who have since been enormously hospitable and kind to me - such a neat couple!). Their apartment wasn't available for rent, but they walked me up to meet their neighbor, who kindly showed me through a BEAUTIFUL apartment she had available for rent.

The apartment is a two minute walk from the school, only $300 per month, and (as I found out the next day) right across the street from one of the few muslim apartment complexes in town. It also happens to be directly across the street from the town soccer field, so all the soccer or ultimate frisbee games we host this year will be able to retire into my home for some drinks and rest! (as popular as soccer is here, I'm stoked about the opportunity to have an apartment right across the street where the youth I meet can come hang out after games).

So God has provided. I moved in Saturday night, in time to settled for classes to start Monday. Classes are good, for the most part. One of the teachers is stuck in the states until this coming Sunday, so the rest of us have taken over his classes until he arrives. I went from teaching three English classes and one Bible class (in a six period day) to teaching four English classes and two Bible classes (in the first week of my first year of teaching). Day 1 was nerve racking. Day 2 was long. And now that Day 3 has come and gone I am beginning to feel like I am getting over the hump of constantly catching up with work I need to get done.

The students are a handful. I'm teaching 7th-10th, and 12th graders, all of which are completely different dynamics. They are smart, sharp kids who are more or less interested in learning (until you get to 10th and 12th), but their comprehension of English is nowhere near their grade level. I'm learning that I have to be checking if they understand the words I'm using (like sapling - from a short story we read - and ironic and emphasize). I have a LOT to learn. Already I could write a short essay on the things I KNOW I've done poorly, let alone those I haven't yet discovered.

That is my life. It's crazy; it's stressful; it's full of strange new social mores; and I love it.

If you are reading with intentions to pray for me, here's were I see my need:

1. I am stressed from all the new things being thrown at me. I'm beginning to have times I can slow down and relax, but they are still few and far between. I can keep this up for a little while, but it's not a healthy way to go about life. I'm asking God to help me get on top of my responsibilities so I can have time to recooperate.

2. I don't yet have the funds I need to stay here all year. As I stand right now, I can stay through December (with some cheap, college style living - you gotta love those big bags of rice), but I won't be able to stay beyond that. I am asking God to provide the funds I need if I am to stay here for the full year.

3. I've been so overwhelmed with trying to just make it through the school day (we didn't find out about my two extra classed until the night before classes started), that it wasn't until today that I was able to remember some of the students' names. I want to get to know my student. I am here to make a difference in their lives, and I would like to begin doing that now by getting to know them and trying to understand who they are as individuals. I suppose this goes along side my first prayer, but I want mental clarity throughout the day as I teach (the kind that comes from being at ease with what you are doing, so that you can look elsewhere - like into the lives of my students).

4. We have entered the Muslim month of Ramadan. They fast during daylight hours from food and drink (and have various get togethers and meals into the night). I hear the call to prayer all hours of the day and night; this is an intensely spiritual month for them. You know how I would ask you to pray.

And here are a few pictures of my apartment:

The first thing you see in my apartment

(I don't have furniture yet...)

In the meantime, this is my bookshelf

My front door

you just don't see doors like this in Israel!

(because there's no wood in Israel)

The local soccer field

- a view from my window

The Second Go Round in Israel

When I came to Israel two and a half years ago, my mind was almost always in a state of shock over the foreign world around me (full of bizarre foods, strange languages, and the occasional religious zealot walking around in priestly robes and prophesying over the city and those in it) and amazement that I was living in the very lands where God had worked out His redemptive history. Every aspect of life was strange to my senses: ancient roman ruins lying about unnoticed; arab pizza made with goat cheese, goat cheese, and topped with a few eggs; devout followers of the three major monotheistic religions; radically different geography; a blur of unknown languages constanstly buzzing around me; and all in the backdrop of the city and streets where Jesus walked 2,000 years ago. Everything seemed to possess a strange mystical beauty - as though at any moment the supernatural might just show up in the middle of the day... and that such a thing would be perfectly normal.

Now that I am back, the sense of the strangeness of the world around me has faded as quickly as it came, and I am left sitting in a world rather unlike the world I first visited. A few days ago I thinking about the house in which I grew up. As a child, our house seemed like an enormous maze, full of endless nooks to explore and hide in. I have a distinct memory of going often into our backyard WAY back into the woods, across a wide river (over which we built a small bridge out of branches), and around a thorn bush wall into a secret hideout that no one else knew about. Six years ago my brother and I drove back to see the house again, after being gone for ten years. The house was exactly the same as they were before, as were the woods, but now they seemed less imposing and overwhelming, less of a world to get lost in. The woods (much to my dismay) did not go on endlessly into a wild world, nor was my secret hideout remotely invisible from the house (my mom could have stood by the window and watched every move that I thought was so well hidden. The experience was strange to me because everything was exactly the same as I remembered it to be, but I had changed in such a way that it was all completely different. Now in Israel the streets are the same streets and I can still see all those things I remember, but they are less overwhelming and shocking. The world I left was foreign and mysterious; the world I have returned to is familiar and close. It is natural for me to be here. I talk with arabs and israelis and bedouins, with muslims and jews and christians, and it all seems strangely normal.

In coming here for these five weeks I subconsciously expected the awe and wonder I previously felt in seeing the Holy Land. Instead, I have found myself returning to the home of an old friend, who welcomes me briefly and then immediately begins to pick up right where we left off. I love being here.

Partially because of this and partially because I think the anxiousness I have felt the past year to move overseas and live in an arab muslim community is an anxiousness from God (and possibly a means of moving me into a different stage of life), I am considering an opportunity to volunteer as a teacher at a school here in Bet Jalla (a town in the West Bank next to Bethlehem). If the opportunity works out, I'll be sending out support letters with more details about the school and my position, as well as about the local community in Bet Jalla. If you're interested in receiving a letter, send me an email or leave a comment below so I can be sure to include you.

Wadi Kelt

While studying at JUC we did a hike down the Ascent of Adumim, the road Jesus talks about in his parable of the good Samaritan. That hike was enormously insightful into how the robber could have been lying in wait for the man, as well as what it would mean for the others to pass by on “the other side of the road.” The other day, I hiked the road again, but this time from right near the top of the hike (as opposed to the last sixth we did through the school). The hike begins at a beautiful spring, randomly bubbling out in the middle of the desert, and goes 15 miles to the city of Jericho. The first few miles are spent walking through the stream created by the spring. The land is such an amazing contrast along the way: barren, rough mountains running high on either side of the valley, and a cool, green stream running along the bottom. There are waterfalls, pools, fish, enormous reeds – everything you might expect from a small river. The pools feel great to swim in when there is a blazing sun beating down on you at 100 plus degrees.

After about seven miles, however, the water disappears and desert takes full control of the valley. Then there is 100 degrees of sun, only without any water for relief. I took 2 liters of water with me for the hike, thinking it would last me through the ride back to Jerusalem as well. Instead, it lasted me through about half the trip before I had to begin seriously rationing my water so I wouldn't run out and become dehydrated. The desert hike was comfortable at first, even without the pools of water along the way. But the comfortableness of the hike soon wore off as I my feet began to ache from the rocky path and my eyes grew tired of constant sun (cataracts from the intensity of the sun is a widespread problem among the Bedouin and Arab peoples here in Israel). As I walked, I slowly began to realize just how idealized my initial impression of the difficulty of the wilderness was. My mind grew tired before my legs did and my mouth was dry long before I would have expected from my hikes through the North Carolina mountains.

I have seen this roughness often these past two weeks of being here. The world here is harsh. The geography is hard: it is full of dust and rock filled roads, it is hot and dry, and there are remarkably few consistent sources of water for those who live outside the comforts of modern society. And the society is hard: so many people here are vehement about their beliefs, religiously and politically, leading to constant dispute and dissention. Having grown up in the peaceful serenity of North Carolina, I find this world abrasive to my calm way of doing life. I think I am coming to appreciate why the concepts of peace and rest were so essential within the promises that God made to the people of Israel.

Still, the roughness of life here adds a strength and richness to life. The diversity here strengthens the society, even while it undermines it.

the hike:

the Judean wilderness. in the bottom of the picture you can see the trail I hiked down into the wadi (valley) this is the contrast between the stream along the wadi and the barren wilderness all around it my poor attempt to set up the camera and timer without dropping it in the water the local fish, which tried to eat me while I swam I have never seen so many animals in the wilderness oh man, this place was so awesome what is a waterfall and swimming hole doing in the middle of the desert? "Remember the command that Moses the servant of the LORD gave you: 'The LORD your God is giving you rest and has granted you this land.' - Joshua 1:13

Israel with the Pope

Two days ago I saw the Pope ('s car... I think). Because I so badly wanted to see the Pope, I sat on a rooftop overlooking the Jaffa gate for three hours without sunscreen (airport security confiscated it for being too large of a quantity - something about "if there's a difference between weight ounces and fluid ounces, we don't care. You only get 3 fluid ounces, so you only get 3 weight ounces. This isn't a science fair..."), so I'm a little more than slightly sunburned. The upside of the whole "waiting on the roof for hours" is that I have gained the following picture, which definitively shows the vehicle in which the Pope may have been riding around Jerusalem:


The Pope's presence in Israel has stirred up a number of mixed responses from the various political and religious groups in Israel and the West Bank. He presents a strongly pro-Palestinian argument in most of his speeches, and yet he speaks out against Islam as an enemy. He spends a significant portion of his time here in Israel visiting religious leaders from Judaism and is establishing good relations with Israel, and then he criticizes Israel for their treatment of the arabs. It will be interesting to see how his visit influences world opinions and relations between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.


Today is the last day the Pope is in Israel. He is visiting the church of the Holy Sepulcher - the traditional site where Jesus was said to have been crucified and buried. We'll see if I can manage to get close enough to see the Pope's cool hat and snap off a picture or two.