Oh, Mist.

This entry is dedicated to the teacher with the yellow bow tie, who was a picture of responsible adulthood, and Sven, who got mugged in Mexico.

I spent yesterday evening at the Cair Paravel Latin School Junior Varsity Scholars' Bowl Invitational Tournament with a group of brilliant and excitable teenagers who mostly were there for the free cookies. We careened around the tiny building from room to room, each classroom slightly more absurd and endearing than the last. From the medieval theme wall paper borders in the classrooms, to the plastic candelabras in the hallway, it was either everything that a Narnia-themed school should be... or everything that a Narnia-themed school should not be.

We ended up tying for 3rd place, but since we had beat the other team 110 to 20 in a breathtaking 6th round, I drove home with a van full of happy kids and a shiny red plastic trophy. On my way to gas up the van before returning the keys, I noticed a Dillons grocery store Grand Opening (where I didn't recall there having even been a building the night before!), and decided to join the throng of people experiencing the blessed event. How exciting, all the same products, made anew by the clever rearrangement on new shelves and the strategic placement of signs and lighting!

I made a beeline for the merchandise I had come for--a pack of Orbit Mist gum. Today I taught my students a list of culturally appropriate responses to anecdotes. This included the phrase "So ein Mist!" This is German for "That sucks!" but literally means "That is crap." Hence why I needed a pack of Mist gum as a prize for our "So Ein Mist Award." The students voted for who could tell the most embarrassing or most painful anecdote about something that happened to him or her. The student who won had been mugged while on a youth group service trip in Mexico. A close runner up was the story from the kid who broke his foot skateboarding, then broke his other foot soon after, while trying to skateboard home on crutches. So ein Mist.

I reached the gum aisle in record time. My self congratulations ended quickly as I scanned at least 50 different varieties of gum sporting all varieties of cool names and fruitamintalicious flavors, all except for the one I was looking for. I had a flashback to the scene in the movie Goodbye Lenin when the main character enters his corner grocery store for the first time after the fall of the Berlin Wall and stares blankly at the newly-Westernized shelves, containing a world-wide selection of pickle varieties, all except for the local East German product, Spreewalder Gurken. It was "ein buntes Warenparadies"--A colorful consumer paradise!

Finally I spotted the Mist. It was hiding behind a hot pink product called a Fuzzy Wuzzy hanging off of the shelf above. I didn't stop to investigate what a Fuzzy Wuzzy was doing in the gum aisle.

Ultimately, though, I did allow myself to be swallowed into this glorious land of endless product choice. Feeling guilty about putting a three-dollar charge on my credit card, I wandered the store until I came up with a decent handful of things, and finally emerged into the cold wet mist outside a half-hour later.

My car was not hard to spot for once, as I was still driving the giant white van with USD 501 on the side. I trudged towards my "car," meanwhile reminding myself to return the school's gas station credit card first thing in the morning (or risk the friendly wrath of Debbie, Topeka West Bookkeeper Extraordinaire).

And I reminded myself not to leave the scholars' bowl buzzer system in the van when I checked it in. The last time that happened, I realized it at 5 am, jumping out of bed with an "oh shit!" and speeding to the van service center on the other side of Topeka so I could retrieve the buzzers before our 7 am Scholars' Bowl practice. The expletive was well deserved for that trouble, but I had immediately afterwards resigned myself to the fact that that was just the way things were; It was my error that forced me to wake up a half-hour earlier, and it was my initiative that would solve the problem.

As I walked from Dillons to the van, my arms full of toilet paper, canned soup, and Mist gum, going over a mental litany of do-not-forgets, I realized that at some point in the last few months... I became some version of what people might refer to as a Responsible Adult.

For anyone who knows me fairly well, this may not seem to be a particularly surprising transformation. After all, I was an exemplary Responsible Teenager; and I was wonderful at being a Responsible College student, or at least keeping up with a long list of responsibilities in spite of certain irresponsibilities on the side.

The difference in the switch to being a Responsible Adult is that you may do many of the same things as Responsible Not-Adults, or likely even more of the same things, but people stop being quite so impressed and appreciative of your responsibility. You're not particularly outstanding in the world of Responsible Adultss, and anyway, all of the other Responsible Adults are so busy being responsible for so many things, that they do not necessarily have reason to know or to care whether you are doing your responsibility or not.

I don't feel negative about it. There's a little bit of excitement involved. There's a little bit of "ha, I'm meeting up to a challenge" involved.

Maybe, in the end, there is a little bit of pride involved, the pride of a martyr, when I roll into the dark parking lot, see the children safely to their parents' cars, unload and clean out the van, and finally leave, unnoticed, in one of the last cars left at the school...

Ich bin Deutschlehrerin? Na ja...

You are invited to my life!
Where? Topeka West High School
What? German teaching/ Scholar's Bowl Coaching
When? "Serving USD501 since 7/30/09"

I am sitting in the Extended Learning Center of Topeka West High School. Theoretically, some of my students who were concerned about their quarter grades will be taking advantage of my offer of extra credit in exchange for working through an hour of one-on-one tutoring. So far, though, I haven't seen a single student of mine.
Not that I'm complaining. I get paid an extra $14 an hour to sit here and do my own thing, and there are many of my own things to do. Writing in my blog has been on one of my many to-do lists over the past few months. Until now, it has gotten pushed to the bottom of the list in the midst of my flailing attempts to keep my head above the rising water that is my new profession.

Today, though, my continual attempts to organize myself and get ahead have failed, as I have forgotten to bring the things I meant to get done during this hour. My remaining options were either to stare at my to-do list, nervously adding more and more details to keep track of... or to hand-write a post for my blog. Writing my blog seemed better for my state of mind.

I have been reluctant to publicly reflect on my teaching so far. I'm self-conscious of my stories, either that they're overly idealistic, or, as is more often the case, that they're very negative. If you've asked me about my job in the last few weeks, you might have heard something like, "It's stressful, I'm underqualified, the kids are hateful and ungrateful, the paperwork is ridiculous and overwhelming."

When I tell these stories to other teachers looking for empathy and identification, they usually grin ominously, and cryptically respond, “Ah yes, I remember my first year of teaching. Well….. you’ll learn.”

It turns out, though, that being stressed out and depressed is just... stressful and depressing. If I'm going to survive this year, I'm going to have to summon my inner Pollyanna...

For one, yes, I'm continually exhausted by trying to come up with exciting and entertaining ways to force kids to memorize German grammar, but hey, I get to spend my time coming up with creative ways to practice my one of my favorite hobbies, it's really not a bad gig for me. And there is nothing better than realizing that one of my ideas worked, and worked really well. It's maybe the best feeling ever.

It's true, I work and stress out way more hours than my .75 part time position pays for. But at least I have a job, at least I get to use my degree right out of college, at least I can pay for all of the things I need, including a great living situation in Lawrence.

Yep, I've already been called a bitch to my face, and heard from other teachers that several kids have confided their hate for me. What a meanie I am, expecting people to bring work to study hall. But I also have kids who say things that sound like a chapter out of Chicken Soup for the Teacher's Soul, like, "Wow, that was actually a really fun activity!I could actually FEEL myself learning!" and "I already know Spanish, why would I take it again? I wanted to learn another language instead!"

Yesterday I had a personal victory when I had made some changes in class structure, and one of my most challenging students (Miss Sits-in-the-back-and-sleeps-and-consequently-has-a-20%) participated happily in everything in class. She left saying, "I actually understood what was going on today. That was awesome!" ...I know, crazy. Not even I think German grammar is "awesome."

So, in summary: My feelings about teaching are a pretty big rollercoaster. Depending on what day or minute I consider my feelings about it, I might be convinced it's my life's work, or convinced it's ruining my life and my sanity.

Moral of the story: When you ask me how my year of teaching is going, ask me specifically what's been going well. :)

Beets today, apples tomorrow.

I spent part of this evening canning pickled beets in the summer kitchen that makes up the other part of the enclosed porch where I sleep. I had a great view outside, I was enjoying new music, my brother Isaiah was working on his 4H photography projects next to me, and I was experiencing the exciting rhythm of accomplishing a new skill confidently, for the first time. The moment is one I will miss and remember; the knowledge is hopefully something I will take with me.

Kim asked me yesterday, while we were breaking our backs weeding rows of corn: What do you think you will miss when you leave here? This has become a more pressing question for me in the last few days because I've suddenly found that my summer is a couple of weeks shorter than I thought it would be. I was recently hired by Topeka West High School to teach German! This could be a whole blog entry in and of itself, but I'll stick with Kim's question for now...

One of the things that I will miss most about my summer is my connection to the land, connection to what I do with my hands, living and working so intimately with the process of feeding myself and others. Today as I was enjoying the first sweet corn, I was thinking back over all of the seasons I have seen come and go just this summer.

I was remembering particularly the last day that I picked strawberries, carefully combing over the patch to find the last eight quarts needed for our CSA shares. It took me two hours and the entire strawberry patch to painstakingly pick the eight quarts, where only a week before I sat in one place and picked two quarts just from the strawberries within reach. I had to shake my head at how precious the few strawberries suddenly were. It wasn't that we were taking the strawberries for granted, per se. We always knew that the bumper crop was just a "flash in the pan," as my dad referred to it. But we had gotten so spoiled, so used to having infinite amounts of strawberries at our disposal. For example: at the height of strawberry season, slightly damaged strawberries were even considered appropriate weapons for throwing at the obnoxious rooster who lurks around barn corners waiting to attack, or even for throwing at each other. Kimberly discovered the fun of squishing strawberries on the back of my neck.

It made my head spin a little bit to think about how quickly we had come to expect strawberries at our fingertips; how adept we had become at incorporating strawberries into every dish we cooked. And then suddenly the strawberries were gone again. But something else was coming into season and we just as quickly adjusted to the strawberries' absence and welcomed the next harvest into our diets and work load.

That last day in the strawberry field, I was thinking about human nature, that humans are incredibly adaptable to changes in our environment and lives. Even as I mourned the end of strawberry season, I realized I would survive; the cycle scarcity and plenty would repeat itself again and again; and I will long for strawberries and the other multitudes of variety trickling through the garden's harvest calendar until each item appears again next year.

I realized I actually like experiencing this ebb and flow of seasons. It is like stretching; maintaining my flexibility to adjust, and to appreciate something to the fullest. When I enjoy something from the garden, the taste and the availability itself have borders, concrete beginnings and ends in sight. The foods appearing on my plate seem all the more marvelous and special knowing that the very consumption of the dish brings me closer to the end of its availability. I feel like I'm getting very wordy trying to capture this concept, but is it even possible to put it in words?

Imagine buttery zucchini in the peak of its season, exploding on the vines, plucked from the vines faster than we can eat it. I love zucchini, and I have the luxury of zucchini and carrot casserole; chocolate chip zucchini cake; zucchini chowder cooked in a cauldron over a fire to feed a crowd of 40. But even to enjoy the zucchini is to anticipate the next season's special foods. In a matter of days perhaps, those mid-July comfort foods will only be a memory, phantom recipes we skip over in our excitement on our way to recipes for sweet potatoes, or winter squash.

And so this, I suppose, is my personal testimony to the concept of eating seasonally. It's an exercise to flex our human nature, to practice our ability to adjust and keep our minds open; to understand and even begin to appreciate the parts of our lives that seem unfair, the boundaries on our lives that seem unnecessarily restrictive.

It is a tiny practice for the seasons of scarcity and richness that we experience throughout our lives:

The simultaneous disappointment of letting things go and excitement of new things to come.

The times of longing for something or someone, knowing that you will simply have to wait.

The patience required to live through an empty time, knowing that sometime, somehow, your life will be filled, and filled full.

**********************

Today we picked apples from a friend's farm, and Kim is baking an apple pie with the first of the apples.

Hurrah!! Apple pie!!


July 2 CSA Shares

Filley, NE 68357

This is my first post since returning home in May. Home, for the time being, is my parents' sustainable farm in Filley Nebraska, where I am an "intern." It's been a great opportunity to reconnect with some of the most important people in my life. Including the other two interns, my sister Rachel and my college roommate Kimberly. During the day I pull weeds and work on my tan, and plant or harvest vegetables for the CSA boxes or farmers market. I live on the screened in porch with my sister Rachel, and my college roommate Kim Schmidt. I cook with fresh herbs, play with kittens, water blueberry bushes, and generally enjoy a fairly picturesque albeit hardworking existence here.

I do spend a lot of time thinking about things while out in the field (and just as much time staring blankly ahead thinking "I hate peas... I hate peas... I don't ever want to pick another pea in my life...") and I definitely intended to write blog posts while I'm here. The problem so far has been that I write letters and posts and memoirs in my head while I am outside, and by the time I come inside they have vanished, or I've used up all my energy and have no interest in spending what's left of my evening staring at a computer screen transcribing.

Here is my first attempt.

The sky was still black when I woke up to lightning, and I sat straight up, wide awake. I was facing the view out the windows that make up one wall of my summer home. I can see the sky and two windmills, nothing else, but, following that sinister or promising flash of lightning, I didn't need to see anything else. The sky was darker than it should have been at that time of morning--the western windows behind me were turning sunrise pink but the windmills were outlined against dark sky that was a different texture of darkness from usual. I was excited and couldn't get back to sleep. Some days a storm wouldn't be my favorite thing, I tend to love sunshine and blue sky, but all I could think of was the possibility of power and water that this storm might bring.

I wouldn't normally be woken up by a solitary lightning bolt at 5:30am, but it was just the three of us (Rachel, Kim, and myself) running the farm while my parents were on vacation. I was feeling very responsible for the things of the farm, and we had watched the plants dry out over the previous several days--hot, dry days, without any rain. This is not always a big terrible problem, but it was compounded by the fact that there had also been no wind. For water we rely on an old fashioned Dempster classic windmill, so no wind is no water pumped, and we were worried, watching the water level in the storage tank drop as we leaked water slowly and carefully out onto the dry field.

And so my first thought when I sat up in my couch bed that morning was that maybe there would be wind, and that was the thought that kept me awake--watching the windmill sit silently. Then, finally, over a time that could have been five minutes or could have been two hours, I watched it slowly creak and start to turn, nearly imperceptibly at first and then eventually faster, reaching a speed attested to by a comforting creak and click sound each time it turned around. It was only then that I could get back to sleep, knowing that we would wake up on our way to a full tank of water. Even better, the storm brought with it a slow steady rain that would mean we wouldn't need to water the garden for several days, saving us gallons of worry and water.
There are all kinds of things to be worried about with weather changes--everything from the water pump by the pond flooding and being ruined, to strong winds blowing the greenhouse away... So many things that can go wrong, that it is an unbelievable relief when the weather works in your favor.

I like being in such close contact and dependence on the weather, the ground, the sky. I'm painfully aware of the possibility for good and the possibility for bad that each change in weather brings. I'm not sure why this seems like a good thing but it seems healthy, just like putting my hands in a batch of bread dough, cooking food I just picked from the garden, and feeling my body flex and ache with hard work. I can't think of a neat summary or lesson or moral of my post so I think I'll end with a few of my favorite farm pictures so far this summer.


Rita and Kim woman the farmers market booth.




Pest control involves collecting and squishing lots of gross bugs. And yes, having perpetually gross hands.





Ginette, Chad, and Reid pick strawberries during their visit from Vancouver.





Rita and Merlin assemble Tuesday CSA boxes.

Sweet Thames Flow Softly

Thanks to the fact that there is a Ryanair airport less than an hour from Hirschfeld, I was able to take a short Ausflug to London from Sunday to Tuesday afternoon. I have never been particularly driven to see London, but I did want to see my dear sister Rachel, who is currently there with the May term group from Goshen College, taking in the arts and sights that London has to offer.

Claudia also wanted to take some time in London, so we traded places at the airport. She got on the same airplane to London that I had just flown back on, and while she is gone for a couple of days I'm taking care of the kids. This seems to mostly consist of following them around trying to get them to clean up after themselves, and thinking up activities to distract them from whining to me that they want to watch TV. At the moment, however, they have shut me out of a room and are whispering excitedly together... I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt and not assume that they're plotting against me (turns out they were practicing a magic trick to show me... Sometimes they actually can be darling).

Tomorrow evening I will pick Claudia up at the airport and drive to Leipzig to catch a night train to Frankfurt, and then from Frankfurt fly home!

But, anyway... London was really nice. My favorite parts were sharing some lovely conversation over delicious Asian meals with my Rachel, and watching "Death and the King's Horseman," a play about cultural conflicts and power struggles between British colonial power and local African tribes--very well done and thought-provoking. I spent part of my time just riding buses around, getting to know the layout of the city, and exploring the London Underground and bus system. Great theater, great museums, great food, great people-watching, great public transportation... Lucky Rachel. I'm clearly going to have to go back some time!......

Chocolate for breakfast

What should I be doing right now? Probably finishing up some job applications. What was I doing? Failblog.org.
Feeling a little bit like a fail myself, I decided to strike a happy medium by writing a blog post.

Today I did laundry, washed dishes, sorted out kids' clothes, organized boxes of random household things, dusted bookshelves. As you can imagine, these kinds of tasks give me some time to think about things. What kind of things? Oh, you know, just the normal things, like my ever-present task of adjusting to and trying to understand and fit into whatever cultural practices are currently around me.

(My favorite find in the kids' clothes so far:


David wore this shirt today and came out of his room beaming to show it to me.)

Certain differences stand out very starkly, and since I have spent a lot of my time around kitchens, preparing and talking about food, and eating, something that has become representative of cultural differences to me is.... food.

I spent the last three months adjusting my stomach to the Israeli schedule of a light breakfast around 11, a light lunch at around 2, and then a heavy supper between 8 and 11 pm. Sometimes American tour groups came through who wanted lunch (and a chicken lunch, at that!!) at 11:30 am. There were always gasps of suprise and disgust. How could people be so barbaric, so unnatural? I was often asked to defend this practice, and I found that in that context there didn't seem to be a logical explanation for why we would do things so differently, since the system at hand seemed to be working out pretty well. One conversations went something like this...
"So, if you're already eating supper at 5 or 6, don't you get hungry later?"
"Well, yeah, I guess so, sometimes."
"So you get hungry and eat again later in the evening again? You eat four meals in the day! HA! THAT's why Americans are so fat!"

Here in Germany the eating schedule is a little bit more like what I grew up with: Breakfast before starting the day, lunch at noon, and supper at 6-7 pm. The food itself bears zero resemblance to meals eaten in Nazareth, or at home in the states, for that matter. In this family, at least, lunch is the hot meal of the day, while supper is "Abendbrot": evening bread, very simple sandwiches in fairly small portions.

And breakfast... well, Nutella plays a big role, which is great because Nutella has played an important role in my life as well.

I first became acquainted with Nutella by the name of Nuss Nougat, when Harald and Claudia (yes, the very same ones I am staying with now) visited my family in Porcupine, South Dakota. The introduction of that jar of Nuss Nougat marked a turning point in my life. I remember the reverence with which I thought of that little white plastic canister with round brown lettering. Even though we must have rationed out it's creamy chocolate nuttiness very carefully, I knew the Nuss Nougat era would be a special and short-lived time in my life, and I treasured every moment. My six-year-old eyes had been opened to the bigger world, specifically the bigger world of chocolate eating.

And that world was more amazing than I had been capable of imagining.

At that stage in my life, there were many things that I liked which only were available on very rare or one-time-only occasions--we were on a voluntary service budget, and our main grocery store was a 2.5 hour drive away. So I accepted it at face value that my relationship with Nuss Nougat was bound to be a fleeting albeit sweet affair. And there was a few years lag between when Harald and Claudia imported that much-treasured bread spread, and when my mom discovered Nutella on the grocery-store shelves. One day it reappeared on our table. There was much rejoicing.

But this was still an expensive and rare item in our house, not to be spread on too thick (you had to have just enough to enjoy the taste, without any wasted). And, as my father once sternly pointed out to my sister Rachel, it was not a breakfast food. We had recently been in Germany as a family, and as seems that every German knows, breakfast is not breakfast without Nutella. My dad had to concede that point, but we were not in Germany, we were at home. So for us, Nutella maintained its status as a special food, with the extra distinction of being in the "dessert" category, and therefore (mostly) banished from the pre-afternoon consumables.

In this household, however, these children might have ceased to exist by now if it weren't for the attraction that Nutella gave them to eat at meal-time. I think it might be a main staple of their diet. It's not that Harald and Claudia are just easy going and let the kids eat whatever they want--believe me, there are rules dictating what foods are appropriate for what meals, just like their are rules for what time you eat, and what kind of meal each meal will be. Nutella at breakfast is just one of those rules.

Having experienced a few different styles of eating recently, I've seen how each of the cuisines can represent a balanced diet when treated with the proper respect, cultural wisdom, eating traditions. Let me insert here a little of my one of my favorite authors:

"Once upon a time Americans had a culture of food to guide us through the increasingly treacherous landscape of food choices: fat vs. carbs, organic vs. conventional, vegetarian vs. carnivorous. Culture in this case is just a fancy way of saying ''your mom.'' She taught us what to eat, when to eat it, how much of it to eat, even the order in which to eat it... How you eat is as important as what you eat... The lesson of the "French paradox" is you can eat all kinds of supposedly toxic substances (triple crème cheese, foie gras) as long as you follow your culture's (i.e., mother's) rules: eat moderate portions, don't go for seconds or snacks between meals, never eat alone." Michael Pollan, "Six Rules for Eating Wisely"

With that in mind, and a little bit of caution and moderation, I might feel comfortable letting the dangerously delicious delicacy of chocolate hazlenut spread onto my breakfast table sometimes. (In addition, I might every once in a while also be incorporating breakfasts of Arabic bread, cheese, fresh vegetables, and laban with olive oil).

But at some point you have to draw the line. One thing that I still don't feel the need to have at breakfast is this product:



I thought it was a joke when I first looked at it, or at least that there had to be something special that made this chocolate particularly breakfastey. Nope. It's just chocolate, in very thin slices. It's little chocolate bars to lay upon your bread and call it breakfast.

Logically, is there really any difference between spreading your chocolate on your bread, and laying it on your bread? Not really. I love chocolate, but there is something in me that instinctively rebels against the idea of this as a breakfast food. My Mom (and Dad!) taught me that breakfast is for eggs and toast, healthy cereals, maybe some fruit. Something tells me that for the most part, that's what I'll end up sticking with...

Voll Cool, baby!

My current situation for the next couple weeks is as a guest at the home of Harald and Claudia Funck, who have a strawberry farm in Eastern Germany. I spend most of my days trying to pitch in help wherever I can around the house and farm, in exchange for room and board, and the opportunity to speak a little German. That is, a lot of German. My German is improving in leaps and bounds, especially with the help of the three kids. It took them a little while to understand how it was possible that I could speak to them, but I didn't always understand them, and I just sounded so funny. They now take their jobs as my German teachers very seriously.

I spent much of today with 7-year-old David at the Freizeitpark Plohn, a theme park that has been around since the DDR era. This park rocks. It's got animatronic dinosaurs, self-service soft service ice cream machines (I had a Waldmeister flavor ice cream, David held out for chocolate, which was in another part of the park), a Wild West area, and a story book land that tells the classic German fairy tales through creepy dioramas with moving parts.

David confided to many of the workers and other kids around that it was my first time at Plohn, and that, although I know some words in German, it was his job to teach me more words. The words I learned today were grueselig (ghoulish/ghostly), Achterbahn (rollercoaster), Schien (tracks), Rutsche (slide), and Volcan (volcano). David also took it upon himself to narrate each of the sites we saw, and made sure that I got to ride all of the rides at the park, just to make sure I got a really good introduction to the place. David's sole grasp of English language, on the other hand, seems to be his tendency to add the word "baby" (with the requisite sassy attitude) unexpectedly at the end of some of his sentences. "Let's ride the roller coaster, baby!" David can't count the number of times we rode his favorite spinning cow ride today, and I can't count the number of times today I just burst into laughter at his antics.

...I have had a little bit of a difficult time finding my bearings here, knowing where I fit into the family, and also struggling to relate to and interact with people in a language that still leaves me tongue-tied and awkward most of the time. But things are looking up.

Besides, it only took one ride on the roller coaster with a 7-year-old to restore my belief in life's excitement and awesomeness.

Detour: Ireland

Last week I was so fortunate to be able to take a vacation with my dear friend and college mod-mate Kate Larson, who is living in Germany for a year as an au pair. After meeting up in Bordesholm, Germany, to celebrate Kate's birthday, we did some "final" planning (that is, the only thing we had planned before was to buy our plane tickets) and flew off to Ireland.

Day 1 & 2: Dublin
It seems that the main things to do in Dublin are eat and drink, and oh yeah, spend money. Kate and I wandered the city, getting lost a couple of times, taking pictures of lots of pretty buildings, and chatting up art gallery owners, but mostly counting down the time until we got our rental car.

Day 3: Giddy first day with the car
Kate turned 23 two days before we came to Ireland, which allowed us to rent a car! At the time we planned to do this, it seemed like a good idea, since public transportation in Ireland is not very widespread and, being the uppity tourist we are, we wanted to get off the beaten path. But by the morning we were to pick up the car we were a little nervous about it, especially Kate because she was the one who got to drive her first rental car for the first time on the left side of the road. The first challenge was getting out of Dublin, which we survived through 5 wrong turns, a little hyperventilating, and maybe some cursing as well.
Once we got out on the open road, though, we were super excited. We were instantly seeing beautiful countryside, and I, on the left side of the car, had a map. I love maps. I'll be citing lots of names in this summary because for some reason I think that other people love maps just as much as me and might want to follow along.



Soon Kate settled into driving, and did a beautiful job of it the whole trip. I directed Kate towards Belfast via the green stripes of "scenic drives" marked on the map. We stopped for the first of many roadside picnics in Greenore. It became clear that scenic drives were what we had come to Ireland for. We made our way up the coast, stopping where and when we pleased, oohing and aahing at cute bounding baby sheep and incredibly picturesque roadside views. We made it to Giant's Causeway for a beautiful sunset, and to a couch-surfer's house in Limavady to stay overnight.





Day 4: Mind the Sheep
Natalie, our couch-surfing host, suggested that we explore Donegal before we left the north. We decided that we could get an early start and take the first part of our day to do so. We obviously hadn't learned about the roads yet. The Irish translation of "really tiny road with pot-holes and hairpin curves and lots of beautiful distracting scenery, which by the way you have to share with semis and sheep" is "scenic drive." We decided to take those roads reeeeal slow, and we spent all day driving through the mountains of Donegal. Along the way we made stops in Letterkenny (to check out a restaurant recommended by our guide book), Garton Lough (for a museum on St. Columcille and illuminated manuscripts, which was closed but a nice lady let us in for free), Meenaneery (to refill the air in our tire in the middle of nowhere) and Glencolumbcille (to slog through a rain-soaked field to look for St. Columcille's well). Need I say... gorgeous.



As we didn't have any music to listen to (and our choices on the radio were American pop music or Gaelic talk radio) singing became a very important part of our trip. Along the way we taught each other songs and did some sweet harmonizing as we took in the lovely Irish landscapes. Kate complied a list of the songs that we sang at some point in our trip.

We stayed in Sligo overnight at a hostel where we managed to arrange for the last two beds. One of our roommates was Nadia, a girl from Switzerland. The three of us stumbled upon a pub with live music, and it ended up being just a bunch of people sitting around playing, which was exactly what we were hoping for. Nadia ended up joining us the next day.

Day 5: Connemara to Doolin
Nadia joined us and we drove south out of Sligo and skipped part of the West coast in favor of spending the day a little further south. We met up with our favorite scenic roads in Westport. From there we followed the coast, did some hiking in Connemara National Park, collected seashells at Coral Beach in Carraroe, mildly panicked when our car pooped out on us for a few minutes in Spiddle. Just some battery issues, we got it worked out... or at least figured out how to work with it.



We left Nadia in Galway and headed further south to the tiny tourist village of Doolin. To save money, we had decided to camp in our car that night. "This," as Kate put it the next morning (after a miserable and sleepless and COLD night), "was maybe not the best idea we've ever had."

Day 6: Cliffs of Insanity!!!
We were obviously the first ones awake in the region. Apparently tourists like to sleep in or something. But we had noticed signs for a craft fair in a neighboring town, so we headed that direction, had an amazing breakfast when restaurants finally opened up at 9:30, and checked into our hostel for the night as soon as we possibly could.

I have to say that the Ailee River Hostel in Doolin is the best hostel I've ever stayed at. The owner gave us a personal tour of the facilities, which included free laundry, free internet access, super clean sunny rooms, and a really nice kitchen. He also drew us a map of a special not-so-heavily-travelled hiking path along the Cliffs of Moher. We embarked on a 5-hour adventure with perfect weather. We absolutely loved it, and felt a little smug when we got to the other end and found that the other tourists were not even seeing a fraction of the sights that we had just taken in... and clambered over.




Day 7: Happy Easter!
Our rental car was due back in Dublin at noon, so we headed back East to Dublin, where we stayed with a couch surfing host Conor, who by now we considered a friend (he also hosted us while we were in Dublin the first time). Since we didn't have any other way to celebrate Easter that day, we sang classic Easter hymns to each other along the way, and ate the Cadbury eggs provided by Karl the friendly hostel owner. After dropping off the car, we invaded the deserted University College Dublin campus where we napped and had a patchwork picnic of the odds and ends left in our backpacks.

After so much wonderful weather, our last day was rainy and dreary, but Conor showed us some beautiful spots in the Wicklow Mountains anyway.


Before we left Germany, Kate's hostparents scoffed at our plans to make a road trip of the entire country. "That is such an American thing to do. Ireland in 8 days. Boh..." Well, what can we say, we're American. In the end we didn't make it around the entire coastline and we heard that the parts we missed were the best parts, but I think I can speak for both of us when I say we couldn't have cared less. I have to say that this trip to Ireland was one of the most memorable weeks and amazing times of my life.

In Wuppertal

Yesterday morning at 2 am, after a very long day of travel, I arrived at the very cold bus station in Wuppertal-Barmen. Shortly afterwards my good friend Tobias Ruhle arrived on his bike from his nearby apartment. Toby is always a welcome sight, but especially when one is cold, a little panicky about not having anyone to contact if this plan falls through, and exhausted.

It was a long day for several reasons. The day started with tears and goodbyes to my coworkers at Nazareth Village, and then a quick clean of my apartment. It was hard to say goodbye to both the friends and the apartment. I didn't realize I would get attached to Nazareth so quickly, and I had very mixed feelings about leaving.

To get to the airport I caught a bus to Haifa, and then the train to Tel Aviv. I got through security in Tel Aviv in only two hours! Airport security didn't ask me many questions, but I somehow scored myself a #6--you can only get numbers 1-6, with 1 being the lowest risk, and 6 being probably a terrorist. I asked Morag, my personal security guard (I mean, this is all for my own safety, right?) if she knew what I might have done to deserve a 6, but she said it was a security secret. We were friends by that point, now that she had completed an exhaustive examination of the contents of my bags, and patted me down in a back room. I spent the whole time chatting as if this were a normal way for people to get to know each other, but all the questions I was most curious about, she wasn't allowed to answer.

After the flight I still had two trains to catch between Frankfurt and Wuppertal, and I thought that German trains were always on time but this was the night that proved me wrong. My second train was an hour late, so I sat in the cold train station, and pondered my transition to a completely different world. Cultural differences were immediately apparent: the couples making out in the train station seemed shocking to me, and the other people standing around with bland expressions on their faces, as if they weren't offended by the blatant PDA, seemed even more strange.

Another strange thing: reliving all the memories I have of Wuppertal and this area. These memories aren't so old, but life has taken me in unexpected directions since then. I recognize it's cliche but I'm saying it anyway: I feel in some ways like a different person than the me who explored Wuppertal 14 months ago.

At the same time, I also feel overwhelmingly privileged to be able to visit friends so far away, so soon after the last time. Life has been good to me, too.

I'm staying at Toby's apartment for a couple of days and trying to catch as many other friends in the Wuppertal area as I can.
Then my schedule for the next few days is as follows:

Friday April 3rd--catch a ride to Kiel, where I will join in on my good friend Kate's birthday party, and relax in her Garden House for a few days. It will be SO good to see a modmate, and I can't wait to see what Kate has been up to this past year.
Mon April 6--Kate and I fly from Luebeck to Dublin, where we will do as much exploring as we can in 8 days on a very low budget. (Kate and I wanted to study together in Ireland sophomore year but life got in the way. Now we actually get to take an Ireland trip together!)
Tuesday April 14--fly back from Dublin, catch a ride to Berlin?? This part is a little fuzzy still...
Thursday April 16--arrive in Zwickau, where I will spend the rest of my time here with Harald and Claudia Funck, who own a strawberry farm.
Friday May 8--fly home.

A world not quite fatal

“Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good?”

On Tuesday I sat in the shop owned by Raghida, one of the Nazareth mamas who has taken me in, who regularly fills my social life with introductions to her children and acquaintances, and fills my plate with delicious food. I was gluing rhinestones onto the front of a dress Raghida was preparing for a customer, as Raghida finished sewing a shawl to match. Rhinestones are an essential part of fashion here, and Raghida discovered that I have a small weakness for shiny things as well.

As we worked, Raghida wheezed a huge sigh and looked at me, through eyes heavy with black eyeliner and lack of sleep. She nodded to the TV above her desk, and explained her worry over the news of the last couple of days. In the nearby Arab city of Umm Al Fahm, right-wing Israelis had been marching and “demanding loyalty to Israel,” resulting in counter-protests and violent clashes. I hadn’t heard about it. So I shared with her the news I had been following, about the celebration for Arab culture that had been banned this past weekend in Jerusalem, resulting in clashes, protests and arrests.

“I don’t want to live with this violence all the time,” Raghida said after a pause. I didn’t know how to respond. This is a successful and wealthy entrepreneur, with a strong role in the lives of her doting children, who travels all over the world for business. And yet, she feels powerless in this situation. Can you blame her for feeling frustrated? But life has to go on, what else can you do?

As I read the news every day, I find a few signs of hope, reconciliation, or moves toward a better future for Israel. But most things indicate exactly the opposite: steps if not leaps and sprints in the wrong direction. There are not words to express the increasing desperation and heartbreak.

But people just want a normal life as far as possible. Humans are remarkably adaptable—what is one more breach of human rights? What is one more violent clash in a city nearby? What is one more report of continuing violence in Gaza? The frustration is internalized and life goes on.

If it’s this easy to get used to close up, it’s no wonder we have trouble feeling moved by the stories far away, let alone standing up against it, and finding ways of standing with the people here.

“Have we fallen into a mesmerized state that makes us accept as inevitable that which is inferior or detrimental, as though having lost the will or the vision to demand that which is good? Such thinking, in the words of the ecologist Paul Shepard, ‘idealizes life with only its head out of water, inches above the limits of toleration of the corruption of its own environment… Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?’ ” Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Pray for Rain; Act for Peace

Yesterday I had one of my tour groups look down into the cistern at Nazareth Village, which is almost empty of water. I was about to remark on the sad lack of rain this winter when the cloud above me dropped about five drops of water on my head, and then moved on.

I looked up and felt like this was a cruel thing for the sky to do, to ruin my bit about needing rain, without actually giving us any water to work with.

It has been a couple of weeks with no rain, during the season in which the region gets their entire moisture for the year, and this does not bode well for the coming months. The poppies in my back yard already hang their heads in exhaustion.

People have described to me how the land starts to dry out from green to brownish yellow, as soon as the winter rains end. But I had no idea it could happen so quickly. I am used to green, so I take the green of winter here for granted. Besides, I love blue sky and sunshine, and feel pretty down on dreary days. Last year studying in Wuppertal, Germany, I woke up every morning to rain, and groaned.

Rain means something different here. I spent last Tuesday hiking on Mt. Arbel, and ate lunch overlooking the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret), which is Israel's main freshwater resource. My friend Mike pointed out the various pumping stations along the coast of the lake, whose water levels reached a record and dangerous low last fall.

It is difficult to find information on the water crisis here without an obvious political slant. "Middle Eastern rhetoric often portrays the issue of water as an existential, zero-sum conflict - casting either Israel as a malevolent sponge sucking up Arab water resources, or the implacably hostile Arabs as threatening Israel's very existence by denying life-giving water," explains a BBC article, which summarizes the complicated issue much better than I can.

What I can say I've personally observed, though, is that Israelis have much greater access to resources than Palestinians, whether that resource is land, roads, building permits, or municipal trash pick up. The imbalance holds true with water as well.

Water resources--even the aquifers under the West Bank--are used at a much higher rate by Israelis than Palestinians. And although access to land is a constant sore point, access to water is a matter of immediate survival. And every bit of rain is a blessing.

Last night I went to sleep to the sound of heavy, driving rain. I dreamed of running through the rain, and woke to thunder. It can rain all day if it likes.

In the long run, no matter the political conflict, what this land as a whole needs is solutions that increase the sustainability of life in a dry land. As the BBC article states, on the issue of water, "Israel and the Palestinians must work together, because they cannot survive as combatants."

Tuesdays are my day off...

Last Tuesday I went to Haifa. I caught the bus 331 in the morning and arrived successfully at the central bus station.
I should note here that I really love exploring places by myself. I like being able to stop and take pictures, people-watch, change my plans minute to minute, and talk to strangers. So far this has been more or less impossible in Nazareth, where it is strange to see women acting very independently, and there aren't many women on the street. I feel very conspicuous.
So Haifa--an Israeli college town--seemed a good choice for exploring last Tuesday. I set out with a map from an outdated tourist information book and an abstract plan that would hopefully lead to a jog on the beach at some point.

The first sight of the day was the Dagon Grain Elevators, which are pretty fancy for storing grain if you ask me. Maybe they felt the need to pretty them up because of the other close-by attraction, the Baha'i Shrine and Gardens. These perfectly manicured gardens are breathtaking, and take up an entire hillside. Or perhaps I should say mountainside, considering this is Mt. Carmel. To add to the centuries of conflicting religious claims on this region, the Baha'u'llah (who founded the Baha'i religion) pitched a tent at the base of Mt. Carmel in 1891 and claimed it as a holy site for the Baha'i faith.

I stopped by the tourist information office, and the woman at the counter took a break from her lunch to say "Today is Purim. There's a childrens festival in Carmel." She headed back to the break room, satisfied that my needs were met, and I had to call her back out to find out what bus to take.

I had a few misunderstandings with the bus system, but at the first incorrect bus stop, I met an American Jewish couple staying with relatives during a conference in Haifa. They helpfully gave me directions to the festival. As we waited for the bus together, the couple remarked what a new and exciting feeling it was for them to be in a place where the majority of people are celebrating the same holidays and traditions they are.

I can identify with that feeling to some extent, and I understand how great it feels. Growing up as a Mennonite I felt a bit like a minority in the surrounding culture, until I went to Bethel College, that precious little microcosm of Mennonite life... Suddenly everything in my life revolved around a Mennonite-friendly vocabularly and set of traditions. Not only did I not have to explain that, no, I don't drive a buggy, but I was surrounded by other people raised on peace, justice, and zwieback... It's certainly exciting and pleasant to have a place where you feel so at home and so understood.

But any community with a strong majority cultural identity faces the challenge of how to celebrate the culture without excluding or marginalizing the minorities cultures. I think back to the number of conversations I had with people frustrated that, as much as Bethel touts "community," that community didn't usually seem to include them.

I will assume that your thoughts are going in the same direction as mine, thinking about this within the context of Israel, and I don't want to belabor this point, but I will just say: as much as I can understand the good feeling that comes from that feeling of belonging, the majority culture always needs to be sensitive to the exclusion, separation, and frustration for the "outsiders" that can happen as a result.

Oops, tangent. Back to Haifa.

Eventually I figured out it was time to get off the bus when I started seeing parents carrying tired little kids in costume. Just a block off the main street, on the promenade overlooking the port of Haifa, was what appeared to be a giant Halloween party, but we're not in the US, we're in Israel, and this is Purim.

Purim is the Jewish holiday celebrating the story of Esther. Esther hid her Jewish identity from the evil Haman, and so today this is a festival when kids dress up in costume. There was face-painting, a circle of little kids banging on giant drums, a stage where a woman dressed up as a fairy encouraged kids to share their singing and breakdancing skills, carnival food, an inflatable castle with a ball pit, and lots of awesome costumes. I was jealous that I could only be an observer, not a participant.

I eventually made my way over to the churches on Mt. Carmel, where a 70 year old man named Odi adopted me and insisted on giving me a tour of the entire church, including a maze of different chapels with statues of Mary, Jesus, or St. Elias. Sometimes all three. He insisted that I take pictures of all of the statues, and I obliged, but I won't share them all with you here. Our only language in common was my little bit of Arabic, and it took me an hour to gracefully extricate myself from his attentiveness. It was only later that I realized that, with my limited understanding, I nodded and smiled to a question he repeated over and over, and I had accidentally agreed to visit Odi again...

I took a cable car down from Mt. Carmel. I still wanted to take a run on the beach in Haifa, but the sun was down and it was time to head home (so yes, the picture at the top of this post is a lie, that was from a different trip to Haifa)... I wandered around looking for the train station marked on my map, and finally asked a local where the train station was. "This I can tell you with certainty," she answered, which seemed like a hopeful sign.

Unfortunately, her directions didn't work out so well for me. I ended up joining forces with a group of Chinese tourists also lost and looking for the train station, and then taking the train the wrong direction, pleading with the railroad management to let me go the two stops in the opposite direction with my one-trip ticket, waiting at a dark bus stop for an hour, and finally boarding a bus back home. I was the only one on the bus since it was the very first stop on the route, and I used my five words of Arabic to break the ice with the bus driver. He was very friendly and helpful, and after finishing our conversation, I promptly fell asleep for the drive home.

...Tomorrow is Tuesday again. What adventures await?!

Confessions of a German Major

It was Monday morning, and Razan greeted me, “Hi, we have a German group at 2:30. They don’t speak English. Can you do the tour?” Surely I can do it, I thought, with my usual self-confidence. I mean, there are some people I work with who give tours in several languages.

Rodrigo, for example, a 20-year-old Brazilian volunteer, gives better tours in English than I do. He also speaks Portuguese and Spanish fluently, and today he gave his first tour in Hebrew, which he has been studying for less than a year. If he can do that, surely I can do a second language, right?…

Secretly, though, I had been dreading this moment. On my application to work at Nazareth Village, I listed German as one of my abilities, and since I did not claim fluency, it was not quite a lie. And yes, I had had the German script for a few weeks now, but I was kind of hoping that my German skills would never be really needed.

I didn’t want to back down from a challenge, though, so I spent the rest of the morning stretched out on a couch in the break room studying the script, or wandering through the tour mumbling German phrases to myself.

The time came for the tour, and I had been giving myself little pep talks all day, in addition to cramming my brain with new, specific vocabulary such as “Oberflaeche,” “Schriftgelehren,” and “Aufruhr.” But only moments into the tour, my resolve broke down. I noticed people exchanging amused glances as I struggled over sentence structure, word recall, and adjective endings—pretty sure they weren’t being mean, they just felt embarrassed for me. I was feeling pretty embarrassed myself, and as I got more nervous, my errors increased… I foundered.

The group’s pastor came to my rescue. “I can translate into German if you would like…” I still wasn’t quite ready to accept defeat, so I tried again, only to collapse into nervous giggles after yet another roadblock in my speech. Yes, nervous giggles, it was that bad. “Would this be better if I just said it in English?” I asked the group. They agreed enthusiastically, a little too enthusiastically for my pride, but I had no choice but to swallow my humiliation and try to finish the rest of the tour on a positive note.

I was able to use my German to some extent during the rest of the tour—giving directions, answering questions, carrying on conversations with individuals. But when it comes down to it I just have to admit that there is a limit to my German language, and I am currently just not up to the task of appearing as an expert in front of a group.

But why, several coworkers asked (with only friendly intentions and curiosity, I know), didn’t I end up doing the tour in German? These are people who spend their daily lives alternating between Arabic, Hebrew, and English, and it shamed me to say that I am really only competent in… one language.

I am spoiled, I realize, by my own academic abilities and do-it-myself attitude. I am just not used to being unable to do something that other people can do. I can remember having this feeling of failure only a couple of other times in my life. Once was in seventh grade volleyball. As competitive as I was and as much as I enjoyed the game, my mediocrity compared to the other girls was a hard truth.

There was also the moment I gave up my dream to become a translator. I realized at some point in high school that other people in the world were learning so many more languages than I was, and I wouldn’t be able to compete.

That’s not entirely true, though. Yes, I was far behind, but let’s face it, I wasn’t working very hard in Madame Tour’s high school French. And that’s where my spoiled nature gets in the way of actually excelling: I am terrible at studying, and I often rely on natural talents rather than hard work to get me where I want to go. I love learning languages, but memorization and practice are just necessities for achieving fluency, and I can be seriously lazy when it comes to those two things.

…So these days, I’m trying to accept my lack of language accomplishment, and to feel like I’m still an ok human being in spite of it. It’s good lesson for me to be reminded of my weaknesses and shortcomings, but it is intensely embarrassing for someone who is used to doing things right, the first time, by myself.

The other day Rodrigo made an analogy for spiritual discipline and following God’s commandments, but it struck me for its truth in and of itself: In both learning languages and playing instruments, he pointed out, freedom to express yourself stems directly from your level of ability. And your level of ability results from the discipline to practice and to train yourself.

Training and discipline--> freedom of expression. …I had a flashback to standing in front of the group, seeing a mental image of where the word I wanted appeared in the script, but not being able to quite grasp it. Frozen, knowing what I wanted to say, and knowing that if I had studied just a little bit harder, I would have known how to say it too.

This reminder of my own shortcomings is a good prelude to my month in Germany. I really want that freedom to of fluency in a second language, so my goal is to speak only German the entire time I am there. Maybe the lessons I’ve learned from language challenges I’ve faced here in Nazareth will be the catalyst I need to make that really happen. Ha…Maybe.

I learned a new trick.

I'm experimenting with hyperlinks. Let's see if this works.
I really like this image. On first glance, it looks like the people are going to kiss, but as the caption explains, it is a confrontation.

Of course it's a confrontation!
But I love the split second of mistaking the intimacy of conflict for the intimacy of love. Someone remarked to me the other day, "How can these people not get along? They live so close to each other?" It is true--the people affected by the Israel-Palestine conflict are neighbors geographically in a very small land, and are sharing space--coexisting--in every aspect of their lives. As a result, the actions on either side are so personal, and so intensely felt.

This is not the kind of positive intimacy that the word "coexistence" brings to mind but... Just for a split second, reset your image of this place, and imagine the awesome possibilities that the intimacy of these shared communities could bring, could they coexist in tolerance, cooperation and peace.

This article was the picture's original context.

What happens at the table

[It's another long one. I apologize in advance]

“We have a barbecue on Sundays. You will be staying for that.”
It was the first topic of conversation of the day, after having spent Saturday night at my friend Razan’s house. Razan’s grandparents arrived at 1:00, and her grandmother promptly posted herself in the kitchen chopping parsley for tabouleh, joining Razan’s mom who was elbow deep in cabbage salad. I looked over her shoulder at the kitchen counter, which was stacked with plates of meat ready for the grill. “Most people only barbecue one kind of meat at a time, but we like having lots of kinds. You will try a little bit of everything, ok?” I agreed to the challenge.

At about 2:30 we sat down to the table, and I scooped up what I considered a decent portion of salad, anticipating the need to pace myself, but Razan picked up the serving bowl and advanced toward my plate. “Ok, Miriam, I know that Americans don’t like to be served, but I’m sorry, I just have to do this,” she said, laughing at herself, as she increased the size of my serving of salad to a small mountain. Next to me, Razan’s younger brother’s plate held a few French fries and a small puddle of tahini. This was acceptable for a picky eater family member, but not a guest. In this culture hosts are responsible to make sure guests are provided for, to a nearly excessive level, and the primary symbol of provision and hospitality is food: lots of food.

In addition to the salads on the table, there was lebaneh, hummus, olives, vegetables, tahini, bread… And then the food from coming inside from the grill: kebabs, chicken, vegetables, fish, grilled sandwiches… By the time the last of the meat came in, Razan’s older brother leaned over and charitably confided that if I didn’t think I could finish everything that had been placed on my plate, he would be glad to lend a hand. I took him up on his offer.

While we ate, the table was a constantly changing landscape as various family members removed, replaced, and rearranged dishes around me. I thought that this indicated the meal’s approaching end, but it was actually just preparation for the meal’s next phases. At about 4:00 Razan’s aunt and uncle and cousins showed up. They joined us around the table as the last of the main course was removed.

The next course was nuts and seeds, and then fresh dates, and finally trays of fruit.
These are foods that have rituals of preparation and sharing at the table. The fruit has to be cut up and peeled and divided. These foods take time, they are eaten in limited portions as each piece becomes available, each person participates in the preparation and serving, and the passing and offering of food is an important part of the process (the actual eating seems almost an after-thought).

Meanwhile, the project at hand serves as an excuse to sit and spend time together. This feast is a weekly family gathering, where the central context for interaction and bonding is an entire afternoon of preparing, serving, and sharing food. The family commented on each other’s recent activities. They explained to me each others’ eating habits. They heatedly discussed the challenges that Razan’s brother and his fiancé—both doctors—will face in marriage. (“I don’t tell my kids what to think,” Razan’s dad told me. “But—I will not hesitate to tell them what I think!”) During the meal, Razan received good news about her recent university exams, which called for hearty congratulations and another round of beer from the family’s store downstairs.

And did you think that we were done with this meal? Silly you, we haven’t had coffee yet. Razan brought Arabic coffee and cake to the table, and by the time we finished, it was after 6:00 pm. The aunt and uncle and cousins said their goodbyes, having sat and talked for a couple of hours already.

That evening, I sat in the kitchen with my journal. Razan’s parents wanted to know what I was writing, and I told them I was trying to remember everything I had eaten. They laughed and groaned, shook their heads and held their stomachs. But they were more interested in the project when I told them I was trying to write down recipes and ingredients for each dish. It became a cooperative project as the family helped me make a list of the English and Arabic words for the ingredients.

I felt the formality of the guest-host relationship melt as we tried to reconstruct the meal we had just eaten, and I realized I had found a way to connect with Razan’s parents through—what else?!—food. In light of my struggles to communicate around the barriers of language, culture, and general shyness, food often has ended up being the agent of communication when all else fails.

And so, on that day, and many other times recently, I have been so grateful for the amount that can be communicated through the symbolism of preparing, eating, accepting and sharing food.

Yom asal, yom basal.

Some days are honey, some days are onions.
About half of my days are really great, and half I feel sort of a mix of depressed, lonely, and frustrated. I finally realized that how well I feel about any given day at work is directly correlated to how good I feel about my ability in Arabic language on that day.

Ilyom asal: I had a great day today, and as I was reflecting on the Arabic that I (try to) use at work, I realized that these phrases are a pretty good representation of my typical day at Nazareth Village…

Kutor ittikrar be’alem lehmar
I can’t remember why Mira decided it was important that I learn this idiom: “If you repeat something enough times, even the donkey will be able to say it.” …But afterwards, she had me peform my new trick in front of some of the other workers, and ever since, this has become a near-daily occurence. It never fails to amuse everyone around me. All they have to say is… “Hey Miriam! Kutor…….. come on, yalla: Kutor…..” And then they are not satisfied until I repeat my little Arabic-language stunt in an enthusiastic chirp. This is now my best Arabic sentence, and… come to think of it… I feel like I have repeated this enough that even the Nazareth Village donkeys must know it by now.

Bidik musaa’idi?
On one of my first days I memorized the phrase “Would you like my help?” so that I would have an excuse to hang around at the Nazareth Village kitchen, which has since become my comfort spot at the Vill. I really enjoy Mary, the main cook there, and I love the food and am trying to learn how to make everything so that I can recreate the meal when I come home.
Mary is not comfortable in English so I have a lot more motivation there to use Arabic than other places. Plus, she beams and tells me how “shawtra” I am when I come up with something useful to say in Arabic. It’s a good ego booster (even if that is the same word that my friend Razan says to Jimmy, her dog, when he fetches a ball).

‘andi?
This can mean “my place” or “I have” depending on the context. In Nazareth Village, this is the question that comes from Nadiim/Abu George/Joseph the Carpenter, who wants to know if I’m going to have time to bring the tour group to the carpentry shop, the last stop on the Parable Walk tour—sometimes groups have a strict time constraint and I never know if I’m going to be able to get all the way through the tour before they need to rush back onto their tour busses and on to the next holy site. So it’s a legitimate question. Sometimes Joseph the Carpenter gets skipped.

Ilmejmu’ah mitakhri. / Ilmejmu’ah ajat bakeer!
Is the tour group late, or did they come early? Either situation is worthy of much consternation. Either people have to hurry into costume and a guide isn’t prepared to take the group, or the people on the land are annoyed and waiting around the village doing nothing, when they could be doing more important things, especially when those more important things happen inside where it’s warmer.

These sentences must be pronounced with either annoyance or urgence. Maybe both.

Enti mish bardaani?
“Aren’t you cold?!” It’s winter here, and it’s not nearly as cold as it is the majority of a Kansas February, but my coworkers are convinced that if you don’t bundle up in this weather, you will surely get sick.
I, however, know for a fact that this is not true (I think surely someone once gave me some scientific evidence proving that you do NOT catch colds from being cold). So, I scoffed yesterday and bravely wandered about without extensive warm layers, much to the shock of my coworkers.
This morning… I woke up with a sore throat, which is sure enough developing into a full-blown cold. I almost called in sick to work, but then realized that would be admitting defeat of science and logic, so I went to work and pretended to be well.
Rani, who just returned from vacation in Texas, confirmed that perhaps the laws of nature function differently here. “People call me crazy, and maybe it’s not true in the states, but here it’s true! You always get sick from being too cold!”

Mejaneen!
Speaking of calling people crazy, this was one of the first words I learned at work. The guys at work will often point to one another in my presence and say “Mejaneen!” Which is often accompanied by pointing to one’s head as if to say, “Look at this guy, I think his brain is gone.”

Nadiim told me that when one of the volunteers before me was having trouble remembering another worker’s last name, he “helped” her learn it, and then quizzed her on it later. “Wait wait, I know,” she said triumphantly, “your name is Simon Mejaneen!”

(In a related note, when I read the word “mejaanen” on advertisements, I thought that there were either a lot of crazy sales or a lot of crazy products available to buy. Finally, my Arabic teacher explained that this is not the case, that in fact this slightly different word means “free.”)

Maryam Maryamti!
This is a phrase often performed for me in a singsong voice when I enter a room. Seems to be the general fallback when people don’t know what to say to me, or whether I will understand them in Arabic, but they want to acknowledge my presence anyway.
I have always wished that I had a song with my name in it (It’s so unfair that there are, like, five songs about Carolines, and even a song about a Rihannon… come on, Rihannon HAS to be less common than Miriam).

It turns out that Maryam Maryamti is a famous Arabic pop song, and I can’t even express how happy that makes me. I always reward them singing to me by doing a silly little dance in place.

Here is a version by the original singer Mohamed Hussein (Wow, I feel like I’m saying “BOO!!!” just by saying that name to an American audience). There are lots of versions--I like this one because of the sweet instrumentation… but I recommend fast forwarding to about 5 minutes in, unless you want to know the song’s complete history and background AND you understand Syrian Arabic.

Good news!

To my delight, last week I graduated from Woman at the Well, to the position of Tour Guide (Oh, and also Substitute Weaver.  But I embarrass myself when I try to spin wool, and Evon was not shy about showing me that she had undone my weaving and done it over again herself.  So I need a little more training before I can claim that title). 

As a tour guide, I have a wide variety of tasks... I of course facilitate the movement of tourists through the Parable Walk, an attempt to give people an idea of the physical objects and locations behind the parables that Jesus used to teach first-century crowds, and show what a working first-century farm might have looked like. 

I also help Ibrahim in the gift shop, and when my groups have paid for an authentic first-century lunch, I help serve it and clean up afterwards (in other words: I help eat the authentic first-century left-overs).  

Today I gave tours to two groups of 40+ people.  On the second one I got to use a nifty mike system that allowed me to speak into a headset and directly into earphones of all 40+ people. The great thing about that is that you can speak in a normal tone of voice to the whole group even as they're meandering s l o w l y along the path, but the bad thing is that when you try to talk and climb a hill at the same time they can hear all of your labored breathing... How embarrassing. 

One thing I'm especially grateful for is my recent student teaching experience. Last semester I got some practice making my voice heard in a classroom full of not-so-enthusiastic 7th graders... I'm not sure I ever quite succeeded with that task, but I didn't realize until now how much my confidence and public speaking skills had improved over those months.  Besides, thanks to my 7th graders, eager groups of Christian pilgrims seem like an awfully easy audience.  ...I'm pretty sure that's also where I picked up the highly-specialized skill of bossing people around while keeping a smile on my face.  This comes in handy.  A lot. 

So, Mr. Ewert's classes, any success I have here, I owe to you! 

Another great thing about being a guide here is getting to hang out with the real guides, the locals whose job it is to show tourists a good time in the Holy Land. As a group they seem like a great people, friendly and very knowledgeable. When I hang out with them I get to laugh knowingly about the entertaining tendencies of tourists, and pretend for a few minutes that I'm not a tourist myself... That is, until they say something like, I've been doing this for 25 years, how long have you been here? er.... uh..... Let's change the subject. 

My favorite part of the parable walk is actually the part when I take the groups into the synagogue in Nazareth Village. At this stop on the tour I get to talk about the inaugural speech that Jesus gives in Nazareth, after traveling around the Galilee. Bear with me--I know it doesn't sound exciting...Yet! 

Luke reports that Jesus's reputation had preceded him to Nazareth, and the people there were eager to hear what he had to say on this hometown stop of his Galilee tour. Jesus, as the last synagogue reader that particular day, chose to read a passage from Isaiah 61, and included his own editorializing:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has annointed me
to preach good news to the poor
to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
(Luke 4:18-19)

He then sat down and proclaimed, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." and Luke reports that the people are amazed and excited (albeit skeptical about the likelihood that their town, and Joseph's house in particular, could produce a Messiah).

But, Jesus doesn't choose to read the rest of the Isaiah 61 passage, the parts that promised the "day of vengeance of our God" or that he would "rebuild the ancient ruins." He doesn't read the section that promises the Jews that "Aliens will shepherd your flocks; foreigners will work your fields and vineyards, and you will be called the priests of the Lord... You will feed on the wealth of nations."

Instead of reading those parts of Isaiah 61, Luke tells us that Jesus recalls two examples of Gentiles who God worked through--the widow from Sidon to whom Elijah was sent, and Naaman the Syrian who Elisha healed of leprosy.  

...Amazing, isn't it?

Justice and freedom--but not vengeance, or a continued cycle of oppression.
Justice and freedom--not only for a select few, but a promise that would extend to all the peoples of the world.

To be honest, so far my time here has given me a lot of direct challenges to my faith and ways to get discouraged about Christianity (and religion in general). But in the face of all of that, the message of Luke 4 is something that I can feel confident about--and a message that gives me hope.

On Belonging

I realized looking back over my blog posts that every one has ended in a quote. This is probably because much of what I learn and think about here comes directly from conversations with people who live here or visit here. If I could simply record all of my conversations, and play them back for you, I would. I’ve been trying to write this posts for a few days now and I finally gave up on trying to organize my own thoughts, and decided to just recall the conversations themselves.

First thing Thursday morning, a guest in my apartment asked me the question, what do people in Nazareth prefer to be called, Palestinians or Arabs?

This is a question I hadn’t quite settled for myself, and as a favor to myself and the other Americans who like to be PC and polite, I decided to try to find the right answer... So, later on in the day, I repeated the question to friends of mine at work, hoping they would be able to clear it up for me. As best as I can remember, here are the main points of the discussion that followed…

Me: So I was wondering today, what do you guys prefer to be called. Palestinians? Arabs?

R: Yes.

K: Arabs.

R: No, Palestinians.

K: Palestine is not even the traditional name, but the British name for the
Land.

R: But you wouldn’t call yourself Israeli.

K: I have an Israeli ID card. Arab Israeli, why not?

R: But we’re not really a part of this country. I want a country whose flag I can wave, a team I feel like is my team to cheer for.
Would you feel comfortable waving an Israeli flag?

K: No, I wouldn't. It's not really my flag… We do feel like unwelcome
guests here. You know, we have stars on our ID cards to indicate that
we’re non-Jews? And they check that, and they treat you differently.

R: For example we don’t feel at home at our university—they treat us like they’re
doing us a favor by allowing us to be there.

K: Ok, Arab Christian, that is I would want to be called, Arab Christian living
in Israel.

Me: But then, that still doesn’t say what place you belong to, or what ethnicity you most closely represent.

[Arab: a: a member of the Semitic people of the Arabian Peninsula b: a member of an Arabic-speaking people. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arab]

A lot of people want to use Palestinian because it indicates that you belong to a place. People are not just “Arab” they're Egyptian Arab, or Iraqi Arab… What are you guys?

R: See, “Palestinian” describes that for us. That’s where we’re from.

K: But what is Palestine? Palestine doesn’t exist. And the West Bank is not a country. We are citizens of this country, Israel… But, it’s true, we don’t feel like we belong here. …It’s not that I don’t identify with the people of Gaza and the West Bank, I do, I really do identify with them! But Hamas also identifies itself as Palestinian and I don’t want to be associated with Hamas.


...The conversation went on, a calm discussion between friends of a simple reality in their lives, but nevertheless a reality whose existence is for me fairly shocking.


When I arrived in Nazareth, the Nazareth Village volunteer coordinator proudly reported me that Nazareth is isolated from the political conflicts in Israel, that the people here don’t really feel involved in them or even identify with the people in the West Bank or Jerusalem.

To some extent this is true. But you don’t have to scratch the surface very hard to find out that the people here face their own set of challenges relating to Israel. Obviously this simple question of semantics is not even solved.

The people in Nazareth, as Israeli ID-card holders, may at least have all of their human rights taken care of, yes, but the creation of Israel in its current form has denied the residents of this place the right to an identity, denied them the right to a sense of belonging, in their own land where their families have lived for generations. This, I believe, is also unjust.


Later that day I met a young American woman who is planning to relocate to Israel. Her parents are of Jewish origin, but she is Christian in her religious beliefs (a fact that she will have to carefully hide when she applies for citizenship here in Israel). When I asked her what it is that made her want to come here, she explained to me the connection that she feels to the land of Israel. “Someone who is not Jewish can never understand this draw. I can only describe it as God calling me here.” She looks forward to serving the military term that is obligatory for all Israeli Jews at age 18, and “defending my country from the enemy.” (As an interesting side note, she would not, she said, have ever considered serving in the U.S. military...).

This woman just exuded enthusiasm for Israel and her place in this society. So confident is she of her belonging here, that she would relocate across the world, leaving family and home behind. In spite of the fact that neither she nor any of her family has ever lived here, and the fact that Israel wouldn’t want her if it knew of her religious beliefs, she will soon hold a card indicating that she is a full-fledged fully-welcome Israeli national.

Nazareth’s Arab/Palestinian residents, on the other hand, have yet to find their way through the identity crisis that the formation of Israel around them forced on their families 60 years ago. For the foreseeable future, they will have to deal with the fallout of being unwanted in the only land they have ever known.

P.S. Some info about Israeli ID cards...
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Israel-211/Israeli-Identification-Card-teudat.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teudat_Zehut