Best Day Ever

Well, I'm in a jolly good mood tonight, so it must be a good time to write.

This evening we went to a synagogue and celebrated shabbat dinners with local families. I'm ready to move in with mine. Bob and I were sent home with this family and I had one of the best nights of my semester. It was so nice just to be inside a home, and the family had five kids and one dog, Pepper. The kids were a riot, and we had a blast. The youngest girl was 11 and totally milked being the baby. She was nearly my height, but was walking around with two braids and those ridiculous fuzzy pjs with footsies that Beppe used to buy us. Margaliet was 13 and reminded me a lot of Cristina, which was nice; she was preteen and dramatic. The one boy kept trying to regugitate his parent's views on things, then the 17 year old boy would disagree with him. The oldest daughter had just finished her mandatory Israeli service working at the zoo, and earlier that year they had raised a baby monkey in the house.

It was interesting to do Sabbath with them. In Israel, orthodox Jews don't do a number of things, including write, turn lights on or off, drive, or use the computer. Bob turned the light off in the bathroom after he used it, and the dad had to ask him to go back upstairs and turn it on. Ah, cultural mistakes!

Both the parents emigrated from the U.S. in their adulthood, so they made a Thanksgiving dinner to celebrate with us. It was fantastic, since we had all been missing Turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. It was the best American meal I've had in ages.

The family was very intelligent and empathetic. They had a lot of understanding for the Palestinian situation and people, yet they were Zionist. They were really interested in our experiences with the Arab Muslim world since they haven't been able to get too close to that, so we had a great time, and I got to debrief a lot too.

They told us a bit about their experiences and why they came to Israel. The dad was raised in Pennsylvania, but his family was from Slovakia and had all been sent to Auschwitz. His grandparents died there, but his parents both survived and moved to the U.S. afterward.

And then on the way back we had a really rad Palestinian cab driver who talked about trying to have hope. And he had gone to a small Christian college in Kansas City, Missouri. Random.

Yesterday was fantastic as well. We went to the Sea of Galilee, Mount of Olives, Jordan River, and Nazareth. We had dinner in Nazareth at the KFC (we wanted mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving) where there was both a Christmas tree and Ramadan lamps up for decoration. On the walk back to the bus, we sang Christmas carols loudly on the street. Wonderful times.

Pray for peace here, okay? There are lots of good people on all sides.