Time out (middle) East

Oh, how I long for milk and honey. And water actually. We used the washing machine the other night and now there's no water for showers, toilet flushing or drinking. Hopefully it'll come back soon…

Everything is mighty better at the school. I’m not teaching a full English class and am just doing Drama 8 classes (40mins each) a week and have no classes on Tuesday and Wednesday so I'm going to go to the University and volunteer with an NGO days or something.  I've got my hands full at the moment with the school library which was, when I first arrived, a huge pile of books on the floor, English and Arabic. I've been given a huge list which is following some sort of system that makes limited sense. So I'm sorting and labelling about 600 hundred books and putting them on shelves and that's only the English Section! It's quite satisfying but I spent 6 hours one day all on my own just hunting for books and alphebetizing. By the end of the day my mind was so scrambled - I could hardly figure out where letters were in the alphabet. So, once that's done I'll work on the arabic section and then make an awesome system and I will have created a library. Done.

I'm also planning for the school play, which my boss wants to be a musical... and involve 30 kids. That's a challenge for high school students in English speaking countries, but hey, this is Palestine. Let's be crazy... So I'm directing "Peter Pan" which is going to be awesome. Hopefully going to go up in January. This is part of the after school activities programme, in which I'm also doing the 'Spelling Bee'. Crazy. It all starts after Ramadan though so I've got two weeks or so to plan everything.  Although, Lana (my boss) has also got me writing grant proposals as the school is independent and relies on school fees and donations alone. So I'm applying to lots of funds for money. Wee. Wow, I really hope I get to stay all year. It would really suck if I had to leave in two months.

I've seen two of my friends from last year already. I went to see Ahmed last Friday who lives in the countryside and has ducks and chickens and geese and a lovely mummy and daddy who can't speak much English so I was exercising my arabic. They also made me drink during the day (as opposed to fasting), which made me feel so bad as they can't. Tasted good though. Mmmm. Everyone eats at 6pm here as that's when the sun officially sets and the mosque declares "Allahu Akhbar" so there's mass preparation to have everything on the table so everyone can just dig in. And then you can't stop the food and drink - tea, coffee, sweet pastries. His mum packed me up with home-made tzatziki (amazing) some pastry things and home grown grapes. Bless. They also decided that I should get married in Palestine and Ahmed is on the quest to find me a hubby...  I saw my friend Mais two nights ago who was lovely as always and took me shopping before going home with her. Her mum is the most amazing person ever. It's so nice to be in a family environment. Her mum would hardly let me leave and made me promise to come back again and again.

We're all heading to Jerusalem this weekend for a much needed Nablus break i.e. we need some beer. There's NOTHING worse than coming home after a long hot, tiring and stressful day and not being able to have a cold beer. Really sucks. Am really excited to go out clubbing and drinking and generally having a blast. Weeee!!!! We're leaving straight after school tomorrow. My friend from the US who's working in Bethlehem is prob going to meet us there which is super cool as i haven't seen him for a year. He got through airport security with nothing more than and smile and 'enjoy your stay'. Freakin' Yemen.