Life in Nazareth Part II: Village life

I know, I promised pictures in 1st century clothing. Well, my internet connection is not cooperating with me, and only uploaded one picture--the one that was supposed to have been an experiment to see if it would allow me to upload pictures this evening.

Working at Nazareth Village so far is quite a trip. The morning routine at the Village is quite overwhelming, and is probably the biggest cultural difference I have encountered so far. I am used to quiet mornings at work, where everyone comes in slowly and warms up to the day, and there is a general consensus that no one should be overly excited or make any sudden movements before an hour or two has gone by. Here, on the other hand, the morning routine in the staff gathering area is a flurry of greetings, often accompanied by loud and demonstrative conversations.

In fact, much of the down time during the day is made up of such conversations. In my normal life I might think of them as altercations, but my coworkers often assure me that they are not arguing, only discussing. It drives me crazy not to know what all of this ado is about, because it always seems like it must be something awfully important to deserve that much heated discussion...

Luckily there is not time for me to get in a word edgewise--after all, the conversations is in (very fast) Arabic, and I have nothing to contribute. I hope I don't appear antisocial by not talking, but I really don't want them to feel like they have to include me by speaking English. I actually really like sitting on the sidelines and trying to catch words as they fly by me. When I do, I get really excited. Every day I am learning more words and today I even deduced that one heated conversation occurring around me was (drum roll please) trying to determine which house a mutual acquaintance's sister currently lives in. I have a suspicion that most of these conversations are about similarly mudane arguments, after all. My stress level would probably go down considerably if my vocabulary was about twice as big as it currently is.

There have already been a couple of times that I've gotten overwhelmed and gone outside in costume by myself, usually to sit quietly on a rock until someone comes outside who I can tag along with. I really like being outside in the village, it's pretty unexciting really, but you never know when a baby sheep will need to be bottle fed or a donkey will escape and gallop in circles around a tour group, or the carpenter's roof will have collapsed in the night (and you will get to witness an ensuing melodrama as the "carpenter" bemoans the loss of his house, and, he claims, weeping fake tears, *insert dramatic voice* a part of himself).

I will start training for giving tours next week, but being a villager is my main job for right now. My main most important contribution as a villager is to be a young woman sitting at the well. All of the tour guides give the same spiel about young men coming to the well to checkout all the young ladies and pick out a wife. My job, therefore, is very important. Without me, none of the tourists would have a young lady at the well to pose for pictures with, or to wink at and cleverly wish "Good luck on the husband search!" ...Yes, it's a tough job, but essential to the ministry of Nazareth Village.

But anyway, back to the break room, the time between tours, arguably the most interesting part of my day... The great thing about my coworkers' culture being so loud and outspoken is that they are openly friendly with me and do not hesitate to draw me into their circle. They have a great playful sense of humor, and I am more than willing to play along in return for them accepting me and my language/culture barrier. They also don't hesitate to give me commands such as "follow me." "We're going now." "Go there." "Stay here." This is awesome, because otherwise I would probably feel rather purposeless wandering around on the first-century village. And also, these are exactly the kind of short sentences in Arabic that I can handle right now. At least if I have been given a command, and understand, and am able to carry it through I have a sense of accomplishment. "Where are you going? Stay here." Ok! I can handle that!

"Eat some food." Well, I can probably do that too. "Do you want some coffee?" No thanks, I just had some. "No, no, it's cold, have some coffee." ...Ok, ok. You're right, I need to have some more coffee.