Here is the lovely account of weeks past, as dictated by Taylor and Sophia...
Before coming to Israel we had assumed that the average
weekday here would involve working at a camp with kids who barely spoke
English, meeting other staff members and volunteers and seeing all the
holy/historical places that make Israel famous.
Well these last two weeks we were able to experience it all!
By the time Friday (July 6th) came around we were
all pretty tired of work. Julie had
spent the week working on miscellaneous jobs in preparation for the Hebron camp
the following week, Emily had been working on a paper about Palestinian and
Israeli Youth culture, and Sophia and I got the privilege of spending the
majority of the week in Salim Munayer’s basement, where we were shredding
papers, cleaning shelves, etc. Even
though there was mold in the basement which may or may not have caused the
occasional laughing fit, it was a very interesting experience to be there
because we were able to talk to Salim’s wife, Kay. This woman is so cool! She completely reestablished the way that we
will choose clothing for the rest of our lives.
She does this thing called Color Me Beautiful, where she tells you what
colors look good on you and which ones don’t(based on your season: Summer, Winter,
Spring or Fall). She also entertained us
with many stories, among which she told us about Israel’s rules regarding
Israeli Arab citizens in the army.
Apparently, Israeli Arabs do not have to serve in the army. One reason why is that they wouldn’t want to
make Arabs enforce checkpoints for other Arabs.
Also, Israel feels that it would be a security breach to have them serving
in positions of power. After hearing
many more stories from her regarding questions we had for her or her family, we
were finally able to end work for the week and start the weekend.
By the time we left the Musalaha office it was around 2 p.m. and, since we were all a little
tired Emily suggested that we get mangos from the market and rest on some grass
under a tree near Damascus gate. 
After resting, we were ready to visit the “14
Stations of the Cross" that are the representations that depict the final
hours of Jesus. 
We ended our route at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 
since this was the place of the last 5 stations. The first time we had been to the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre we were overwhelmed by all the different Holy sites and
symbols and didn’t know what most of them were so it was a nice change to have
more of an understanding going into it this time. After spending some time and taking pictures
in the church, we then headed to the Church of the Nazarene for their Friday
night service that our New Zealand (Kiwi) friend/coworker, Jemma, had shown us.
When
the service ended, we met one of Jemma's friends, Michael, who invited us to a
birthday party at a hotel in Bethlehem.
After dancing and socializing for a little while we finally called it a
night and took a taxi back to Beit Sahour, so that we could rest up for the
next day.
SOPHIA’S PORTION OF THE BLOG HERE:
Our co-worker, Sarah, had invited us
on Saturday to go to her congregation, and the beach. (Messianic Jews prefer to
use the term congregation, opposed to church.) We were very flattered by her
invitation because we had, until that point, not many opportunities to get to
know her. The service was longer than I expected (about three hours) and I will
admit that I stepped out for a half hour break. It was helpful that the pastor
had a translator on stage with him during his message so that we heard it in
English, and were thus fully equipped to mull over his words.
After congregation we drove to a
beach south of Tel Aviv. During the summer months these beaches are filled with
jelly fish. This knowledge didn't stop us from attempting to go in the water on
four different occasions (we are an optimistic and persistent group), each
occasion resulting in jelly slash marks on our legs. But, friends and
family, do not worry, these jelly wounds were nothing more than small red marks
on our skin which lasted a little over a few hours. Finally, we opted to
stay on the sand and to observe the jelly fish from behind our camera lenses.
Their death by sand was our camera's joy. After laying peacefully on the beach
for many hours, we concluded the day early -- driving home with our backs to
the sunset, and looking forward to tomorrow's sunrise.
On Sunday, the four of us got to experience our first
wedding.
The
ceremony was held at an Orthodox Church in Beit Sahour and was packed with
people. After the wedding everyone went
outside in the courtyard of the church to have desert. As we left, we went through a line with most
of the other wedding guests to shake the hands of the bride, groom and their
close family, saying “mabrouk” (congratulations) as we went through. Later that night Emily and I were able to go
with the parents of the family we are staying with to the after wedding party.
It
was an amazing experience, filled with dancing, dinner, a dance that the women
all did together
and then a dance that
the men did together.
It is nights like these that I begin to
realize how much we are all going to miss the families that we are staying with
when we have to return home.
The next day we were back at work, with our main focus of
work and morning prayer being on the Hebron camp that had already started by
now. There were many last minute things
that needed to be made or organized for the camp so we were all very busy on
Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday night
Emily, Sophia and I went to a film called “Exit Through the Gift Shop” at the
Alternative Information Center in Beit Sahour.
It was a documentary about a filmmaker who found and befriended an
artist named Banksy. Banksy is very
famous for his art, a lot of which can be found on the controversial Wall that separates
the West Bank from Israel.
It was an educational experience to hear the
story of Banksy, and then listen to a local Bethlehem resident talk, after the
film, about how he had met Banksy.
On Wednesday we were up earlier than our normal work time,
because it was our first day of the Hebron camp! After taking a little local bus that was
pretty old and rickety (but so fun), we met up with Safa Awwad (who was the
camp director and sister of the father that Emily and I are staying with) and
the Bolton group (a church from the United Kingdom), got into a big airbus and headed to Hebron. Once we got there, we were separated into
different groups with different assignments.
Julie joined with Helen to do all different kinds of craft making
projects with the kids,
I went with the
sports team to help with different outside games,
Sophia went in another craft room and helped the kids build different
crafts like mirrors with frames made out of different colors and tiles,
and Emily assisted Safa in setting up
things in different rooms and making a gallery of the children’s artwork.
The
kids were broken up into four different age groups, each wearing a group color.
Within
the different groups, they were split in half, with half the shirts having
“thunder” written on them and the other half having “lightening” written on
them. This made it so that the kids were
able to compete with each other to earn points for their team. Some of the kids knew English and some didn't know any and, even though there were a few interpreters, it was a little bit of
a challenge, at times, to interact with them.
However, for the sports part of the camp at least, knowing how to say
1-10, hurry up, good job and stop in Arabic were almost all the words
needed.
The camp was held at a Christian school, but with all Muslim
students, and was run like a pretty typical summer kids camp. The day would start with each group going to
a different station (like the ones stated earlier that we were helping
with). Then, after the groups would
rotate stations two times, there would be a snack break. Snack breaks would usually involve eating
(obviously), playing tag with the kids, dancing and any other things that they
would want to do with us. After break we
would do one more station and then all the groups would head to a large room,
where all the groups would participate in worship songs, story time and a
competition or talent show. Then the
camp would be done for the day and the kids would wait in a shaded courtyard
for their parents to pick them up. After
all the kids got picked up, all the staff and volunteers went into a room for a
debrief of the day and to talk about the upcoming day. Then we all had lunch together in the school
cafeteria. During this time, we started
to realize how completely awesome the Bolton group was! We shared many laughs with them (mostly about
our accents versus theirs) and really started to build relationships with them.
After
lunch, we took the bus back to Beit Sahour and all went to our homes to rest up
for day two of camp.
The next day started out the same, taking the bus to Hebron
and then going to our different stations, except this time we felt more
comfortable there and the kids now remembered us and were happy to see us! I am really bad with remembering names, so
the previous day I had written down all the names of the kids I met, which was
nice because they were really happy when I greeted them by name. Also, even though I hadn’t learned anymore
Arabic over night, it was way easier to interact with the kids because we now
had built relationships with each other.
It was day two and also the last day of the camp, so our jobs were
slightly different for the day. Emily
and Sophia were setting up the kids crafts in the gallery room for the parents
to see (since the parents were going to be coming at the end of the day), Julie
was making different types of clothing and accessories out of newspaper and
tape for the kids to wear 
and I was
helping with sports for the first half of the day and then helping Julie with
crafts for the second half.
Because it was the last day for the
sports station we had the “Olympics”, where every game was worth double
points. One of games was where people
are holding a bed sheet with a water balloon on it and try to toss it to
another team’s bed sheet. I definitely
think this was the game that the kids liked the most. During the part of the day where the
kids would do a competition or talent show, the parents teamed up with their
child and did a competition against each other.
It was a really nice way for the
parents of the kids to feel included in the camp and to see the love and joy
the kids experience from their time here.
When the camp was coming to an end, we had to say our goodbyes to all
the kids that we had grown close to, which was very hard to do, and then head
to the cafeteria for our last lunch with the Bolton group. After lunch we took the bus home and spend
the remainder of the day resting until it was time to go to the staff/volunteer
BBQ dinner that Safa had planned for us.
The BBQ consisted of us playing many games of Ninja,
eating, and then saying our goodbyes and
exchanging contact information with the Bolton group. Hebron camp was now officially over, but we
now had many new wonderful memories and relationships to leave with.
The next day at work, Friday the 13th, we took
some time during our morning devotion/prayer meeting to thank God for keeping
all the children safe and for blessing the camp in so many different ways. Spirits were high in the office that day, and
memories of camp were on all of our minds.
After work the four of us plus Michael went into the Old City, where
Michael gave us a little tour of places he had previously seen, such as the
Church of All Nations,
the Garden of
Gethsemane
and the rooftop of a hostel
where almost all of the Old City could be seen from.
Also, somehow, Pinocchio was seen
sitting on top of the Dome of the Rock.
How he got up there is still a mystery.
We then ended our day the same way we
end most Friday nights here, by going to the Church of the Nazarene.
On Saturday, we had planned to head to the Dead Sea and
Masada area, but since we were unsure of how we wanted to get there, we decided
to postpone it till Sunday and spend our day seeing more places in the Old City
area. We started out our day by taking
advantage of a free tour that was offered of the Old city.
It was a
very educational tour and we learned a lot about the history of the different
quarters that make up the Old City (Jewish, Christian, Muslim and
Armenian). After the tour we went to the
Garden tomb, where we were given another free tour by a tour guide who we had
met at the Church of the Nazarene the previous night.
The Garden tomb is an alternative
possibility for the location of the tomb where Jesus was buried. Although there is apparently more evidence to
point to the actual place being in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Garden
tomb, for Christians, gives a better feeling and visual of the place and is
more of an emotional experience. We
approached this place with more of a calm, peaceful attitude and after spending
some time praying in the tomb, I really felt the weight of the fact that we
were currently in “The Holy Land”.
We woke up early Sunday morning, took a bus into Jerusalem,
rented a car and headed for the Dead Sea.
As we were driving, we all talked about how nice of a change it was to
not be dealing with public transportation and to be able to have the freedom to
come and go at places as we please. The
first place in the Dead Sea area that we stopped at was Ein Gedi.
I can’t
say enough about how nice it was here.
And who would expect to be in a lush green area with waterfalls in
Israel? I can safely say that Sophia
enjoyed this place the most though. Next, we went to Masada.
This place is so radical! It is a whole city built on top of a rock
plateau. From seeing all the old ruins,
to yelling and making noises that echoed in
the canyon below, it was a very memorable time.
Our last place for the day that we wanted to see was the famous Dead
Sea.
My
first encounter with it wasn’t the best.
As we were heading down to the shoreline, Julie warned us to make sure
that we didn’t put our head under the water, because of the ridiculous amount
of salt.
However, when a guy walked by with mud and told us that it is at
the bottom of the water farther out, I decided to try to dive down to get
some. Not only did I bob right back up
like a life vest would when you try to submerge it, but I also realized that
Julie wasn’t kidding about the salt. My
eyes started burning badly and rubbing them with the salt water on my hands
definitely didn’t help the situation.
After I put fresh water on them I was back in action and ready to find
some mud. Julie had talked to another
person and figured out where the “Dead Sea Mud” was, so I went with her to find
it. After spending some time floating in
the water,
licking salt
and walking around with mud on us,
we washed off and drove back for the night,
using our car horn very generously in Beit Sahour, since that’s the normal
thing to do while driving there.
Between spending time with our host families, the preparation
for Hebron camp, making new friends, working at the camp, seeing many more
parts of Israel, and growing closer as a group, we were all very tired but at
the same time we all felt that we were now getting the full experience of
ISRAEL.
