Easter Email Correspondense

On Mar 31, 2013, at 8:29 PM, Mike Longenecker wrote:

Hi Becca,

I thought of you today. I wish you could have been here with us. Jenna and Sarah are making Easter eggs and then planning to watch Les Mis.

I was reading the paper and saw the attached photo from Jerusalem old city. That would have been fun to see. Do they do the same thing in Nazareth?

I hope you're having a nice Easter.

Love you,
Dad

:::

Hey Dad,
I wish I could be home for Easter too. I was feeling homesick for the annual Easter breakfast and service at church this morning at 5:40 when we left to hike up Mt Precipice for the sunrise. Linford overestimated our group's ability to speed walk at 6am and underestimated the length of the hike we were making to a nearby hill, so we practically had to run there uphill half asleep. That's all we did for Easter here. The Christian community in Israel is Orthodox, almost exclusively, so they aren't celebrating Easter this weekend. And we're in Nazareth, which is a predominantly Muslim city, so it's been an uneventful Easter. The picture from the paper is actually something we saw a couple times in the Old City. Pilgrims come to visit Jerusalem and carry a cross down the Via Dolorosa (the way of suffering), which I think at one point was believed to be the road that Jesus carried his cross down, but there's a more up to date theory on the table about where that happened now. Anyway, those groups were really frustrating clogging up the market when we were trying to get from appointment to appointment the week we stayed at Ecce Homo.
I'm currently finishing up my thesis paper about Palestinian and Israeli culture. It's due before we leave for Turkey tomorrow night at 12pm. We fly out of Tel Aviv airport at 5am for Istanbul and then fly from there to Eastern Turkey somewhere. It's going to be a long day. But after just 6 days in Turkey, it's off to Greece and then Italy and then HOME! I can't wait to see you all. Pass on a hello and a hug to everyone for me.
Love you,
Becca

Sent from my iPod

Eilat continued

The rest of the week was significantly less eventful. Thursday we went to Coral Beach, an Israeli National Park. We rented snorkeling gear for the afternoon and enjoyed swimming with fish of every size shape and color and swimming next to the coral reef. That night we made our dinner in the apartment: hot dogs on white bread with tomato paste that we mistook for ketchup when we saw it in the grocery store and canned peas. The worst dinner we've eaten this semester by far. In fact it was so bad that half way into the meal we were all overcome by laughter. It didn't stop us from eating every last hot dog and all of the canned peas. Lydia and I have Jake and Hilary to thank for finishing the latter.
On Friday we took our books down to the beach closest to our apartment and spent the overcast afternoon reading. The book of the week was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I brought the first two books of the series along on the trip, and as I finished them I handed them off to Hilary who in turn handed them off to Lydia. I ended up buying the third book in the series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, at a beachside bookstore so that on all three of us were reading one of the books in the series as we sat on the beach that day. Finding a place to sit on the beach was an experience. We tried several times to join the other sunbathers on the lounge chairs that were set up on every inch of available sand, but each time we sat down, a beach bouncer would approach us and ask for 20 shekels. Eventually we figured out that the free seating was the rocky shore just before the water, just enough room to stretch our legs out and touch our toes to the waves.
Saturday was more of the same but the weather was delightful. I spent at least an hour swimming down the coast and back again. The water was saltier than the ocean at home. I swam effortlessly and could float on my back with my face fully above the water. If I closed my eyes, I could almost believe I was floating in zero gravity, that the sky was down and the water was up. That evening we had McDonalds for dinner, a patriotic gesture, and walked to The Ice Mall, a shopping center constructed around an ice rink on which amateur figure skaters performed for the shoppers at regular intervals. We ran our fingers over the expensive merchandise, sipped on overpriced cappuccinos that kept us from peaceful sleep that night, and watched the figure skating performance with both amusement and anxiety. I had never appreciated the perfection of Olympic figure skating until then.
Sunday was our travel day back to Jerusalem. We spent half of it napping on park benches and the other half napping on the public bus. Somehow, and despite a directionally challenged deaf taxi driver, we made it to Ecce Homo, a convent in the Old City where we spent the next week.
And so it was that March began.

Free Travel: Eilat

This morning Jake, Hilary, Lydia, and I walked to the Jerusalem central bus station and each purchased a ticket for bus #444 direct to Eilat. We departed promptly at 10 am, and with the help of our daredevil bus driver, we were looking out at the Red Sea at 2 o'clock that afternoon, an hour earlier than projected. I had pulled up a walking route on google maps on the bus, using the complimentary wifi provided on the Egged public transport bus. Unfortunately, the map disappeared the minute we walked off the bus and away from the wifi, so we walked out of the bus station without a map. Luckily Jake, who had been planning on finding his own transportation to Eilat, was with us and had his own hand drawn map of the route from the bus station. We followed it as best as we could until we felt sufficiently lost and hailed a cab. We landed at a gated corner house maybe 100 yards from the spot where we had been standing.
The house matched the address I had found on the website. Success! But when we rang the bell, no one answered. We realized that our hosts were probably not expecting us for another hour, so we camped out on the steps in front of the gate and read for an hour, maybe an hour and a half. At 4 we decided we should try something else. Jake and I found a neighbor and asked to use his cell phone to call our host, but as we were dialing, the neighbor-man told us that the number we had was not an Israeli number, kin fact it was not a cell phone number at all. Who are you trying to call? he asked. Violette? Yes, she lives here, but she is at work, and her husband works at the UN. She will be home later tonight.
Jake and I returned the phone, thanked the man, and reported back to Hilary and Lydia. We were relieved to have confirmation that we were at the right address. We wanted to see the beach and the town. So I made the executive decision to throw our bags over the gate and go for a walk. We tossed and dropped our bags as gently as possible and made our way down to the shore. We found what a typical American might expect at a beach: saggy boobs, burnt skin, short shorts, ice cream, a mall, and salt water. There really wasn't much beach. There were buildings, a buffer of dirt and rocks, and then water. We put our toes in the water. It was much less romantic than it might have been on a full stomach.
Feeling slightly let down and very hungry, we began the search for food. We ended up at a falafel stand and too exhausted to keep looking, ate our dinner there. It was incredible how much food improved group morale. We practically skipped back up the hill to the apartment. To our disappointment, there was still no answer when we rang the bell on the gate, so we resumed our reading positions on the stoop, ready to wait again. Jake was feeling too restless to sit and wait, so he and I decided to look for another cell phone to borrow. We had another phone number for our host, her husband's number. At 6:30 in the evening there wasn't anybody walking around, so we went back to the falafel stand and asked the shop owner if he had a phone we could use. He did and the number worked! I talked very briefly to a nameless man with a Hebrew accent. He asked if I was Becky. "Becky?" Yes. "I will be there in 10 minutes." Okay! So Jake and I ran back to the apartment, where Lydia and Hilary were still sitting, to tell them the good news. We waited with anticipation for 10 minutes, then 20 minutes, then 30. We started to wonder what was going on, so we jogged back to the falafel stand one more. The shop owner saw us and asked "Did you find him?" What? No! "He was just here, looking for you. He ask me if I know where you are." We were waiting up at the apartment we say pointing up the hill in the direction of the apartment. "No no no, he is wait here," said our falafel friend, pointing down the hill towards an apartment complex. We thanked him and jogged in the direction he had pointed. A lone man stood on the curb, watching us approach. We looked at each other for a long moment. I realized I didn't know the name of the man we were looking for. "Excuse me," Jake said as we got closer. "Becky?" Just as I opened my mouth to give this illusive unnamed man a piece of my mind for keeping us waiting all day, he leaned toward me and barked "where have you been? I wait here since 2 o'clock!" It caught me off guard. I hadn't imagined that he would be angry with us. We were at the right address. I pulled out my iPod and showed him where we were and where the address appeared on the website. He shook his head, "It's not true. I don't know where you got this address "
Well to hell with it you old fart! Let's just get into the apartment. We ran all the way back up the hill for the last time and fetched Hilary, Lydia, and our luggage, which Jake rescued from the other side of the gate by jumping over. By 8:30pm we were alone in the apartment. The only sign of the illusive unnamed man was a stalk of a weed, which he handed me when we met him back at the apartment with our luggage as a welcome. On any other occasion I would have thrown it out, but it was so symbolic it felt unholy to dispose of it. Instead we filled an empty beer bottle with water and kept it as a centerpiece for the rest if the week.

Last month...

Yesterday we left Beit Sahour and drove for maybe 20 minutes into The western world, West Jerusalem. We'd driven through Jerusalem before, so I should have been prepared for the change in atmosphere, but I wasn't. People of every race and walk of life were out on the streets. There were dogs and bikers (I counted 27 in two hours) and businessmen and trams and mopeds, newly paved roads, purposefully planted trees and bushes. Walking through the market later in the afternoon I met an American couple. They were Jewish, originally from Washington D.C. When I told them I was from Lancaster, they said that they had family there, and we threw out names for a bit to see if we had any mutual acquaintances, which we did not. They were buying tulips from a flower shop in the market, and I commented on how beautiful the tulips were. The man replied, "Flowers in this country are beautiful." I don't know who that man was or why he was in Israel or how he feels about the situation between Israel and Palestine, but something inside of me flamed up at that reply, and I wanted to yell "This isn't your country! These aren't your flowers!"

National Poetry Month: Round 3

Here on the kitchen table:
A cake platter and Nescafé coffee
In a glass mug,
A notebook that opens backwards,
Filled with black ink mandalas,
Smudges from sweaty palms,
A pile of papers,
The victim of a pigeon's target practice.

"It used to be funny when people got pooped on," he said to me,
"Now it's just normal."

More from Palestine

That first night unfolded in slow motion, but since then the mornings have been blurring into evenings and the days into weeks. Erin and I are slowly becoming part of the family. Our host parents are Shifa and Basem, and they have three children living in Beit Sahour: Shems, who is in the last few weeks of her pregnancy, Shadi, the only son of unknown age who apparently lives here at home but rarely makes appearances, and Sherrihan, the youngest daughter who lives a short drive away with her husband and 2 year old daughter, Tulai.
We've established a daily pattern that goes something like this: Marimba alarm sounds at 7am. Erin and I stay in bed waiting for the other one to get up first. becca out waits Erin, and Erin goes into the bathroom to put her contacts in and do her hair. At 7:20 we ate breakfast, which is waiting for us on the table: four hardboiled eggs, hubez (or as we call it at home, pita bread), olive oil and zata for us to dip our bread in, something that resembles cream cheese, apricot jam, and a pipping hot pot of black tea with mint. At 7:45 we leave the house and walk up the hill (our cardio workout for the day) to The house where Lydia and Laura are staying. Laura has a couple more olives or finishes off her glass of tea and Lydia brushes her teeth, and then we're on our way. We sing our way to The ATG office where our group meets every morning at 8:30 for Arabic class. For the next 3 and a half hours, we practice bending our vocal chords in new and mysterious ways with our respective teachers. I am in a class with nine other students and one Nadia, our Arabic teacher. She's maybe 65 years old, a retired teacher, and she has no sympathy for our tongues, molded for 18, 19 years by the English language. She demands quick answers which usually means someone ends up responding in Spanish. One of her favorite remarks to make when we fail to pronounce well or remember the new vocabulary is, "It's easy." Another comment she likes to make is, "I don't know why you don't study." Most of us are going a little crazy or have completely shut down by the time class is over. We are on our own for lunch, so for convenience sake we buy lunch at the same place every day - a small falafel stand down the road from ATG. The second half of the day is usually free time and then a late afternoon lecture or a small day trip. We take longer day trips on the weekend when we don't have Arabic class. Then around 4 or 5, Laura, Lydia, Erin, and I walk home together. When Erin and I stumble back into the house from our walk down the hill, I open the gate, Erin opens the glass door to the porch and holds it for me as I walk through, and the. I open the door to the house. It happens this way every day. Shifa is usually right inside the door, in front of the TV. She always looks a little bit stunned when we walk in the door. she just sort of squints at us, warming her hands over the space heater until we say, "Hell-o" to which she replies, "Hell-o" and smiles. This greeting happens as we are walking past her on our way upstairs to our room. The rest of the family lives downstairs, so Erin and I have a nice secluded space to escape to. We change out of our hiking boots and into the house slippers that Shifa gave to us on one of our first nights, grab our journals and latest reading material (and I, my sketch book), and descend the flight of stairs to our favorite daily question "You want to eat?" From the moment that question is asked until we fumble into bed at night, we are eating. First the two of us are served a meal fit for six, helping size decided by our host. Then fruit: an orange, a couple of tangerines, and a banana for each of us. Then we have tea and biscuits, which are cookies from the bakery. After tea there are nuts and olives and glasses of wine and an Arab version of Fritos - deep fried chips covered in garlic powder. Everything is so sinfully delicious and so hospitably and forcefully offered that Erin and I have eaten absolutely everything that they have offered us at this point. I have never been so close to bursting for so many consecutive days in my life.
Most of our days are scheduled and for the most part predictable in this way - taking Arabic classes, eating 4 sheqel falafel sandwiches, visiting checkpoints, and touring refugee camps - but when we arrive back home in the evenings around 5, the real learning begins. One night, during the Feed Them Till They Burst game, Shifa brought out a bowl of baked and seasoned pumpkin seeds. Someone from our group had just been talking about eating pumpkin seeds, and recognizing them, I excitedly grabbed a big handful and put them all into my mouth. No no no! Shifa scolded as I crunched down into rock solid shells. "Like this", she said, and taking one seed in between her teeth, she bit down and cracked the shell to reveal a small flat seed. I chomped through the mouthful of shells and seeds already in my mouth and swallowed it down to try the new technique. The entertainment for the rest of the evening then was not the Turkish soap opera that we usually watch, but me attempting to pry the small seeds from their shells. When Sherihan walked in the door later that evening, Shifa retold the story of my first encounter with "bizzer". I could tell it was the story by the hand motions and the use of my name "Beeka" several times. As the week went on, I found myself being offered bizzer quite often, and each time Shifa enthusiastically pointed me out as I struggled to snack to everyone in the room. Normally I don't enjoy being the butt of a joke, but this joke was okay because it broke the language barrier and was a way for me to feel like a part of the conversation. Being talked about isn't talking, but it's better than sitting silently in a sea of language you can't decipher. For that reason, I've continued to eat bizzer whenever their offered.
More stories to come!
Becca

First Impressions: Palestine

Marhaba from the House of the people who stay up late at night; that's the literal translation for the name of the town where we are currently staying, Beit Sahour. And Marhaba is hello, one of the few Arabic words I know at this point. Hopefully by the time we leave Palestine, I will know a bit more. Last Tuesday night we arrived in Palestine after crossing the border from Jordan. Crossing into the West Bank with a group of thirty students was quite the ordeal. I think altogether it took us about 4 and a half hours and 6 different passport checks to get through security. After reuniting with our luggage, we took our first official steps on The Holy Land in a parking lot full of tour buses, which felt anticlimactic to say the least. The herd magically drifted toward the tour bus labeled EMU and we began the loading routine, which includes successfully storing all of our luggage under the bus, calculating the probability of carsickness based on the visible capacity for recklessness demonstrated by the driver, and then making a mad dash for a favorable bus seat companion. Sadly, I failed to complete any part of the loading routine. My suitcase, being rather large, prevented several other students from fitting their luggage into the belly of the bus. One of the stronger males in our group kindly removed my bag from where I had placed it and rearranged a few pieces so that in the end all of the bags, but one, did end up fitting. Feeling responsible for the packing problem my bag was causing I stayed outside the bus, standing on the sidelines in what I suppose I meant as solidarity. Well intentioned as it was, I missed the opportunity to take a good hard look at the bus driver and assess the risk of car sickness, not that my assessment would have mattered. By the time I got on the bus, the only seats open were in the back. I sat with a friend, which should have been a success, but after a long afternoon of waiting in a sterile white building with sweaty armpits, I wasn't in any condition to be chummy, which squelched our bus seat companionship.
Soon enough, we were crammed into a classroom at ATG (Alternative Tourism Group). A tall lanky Palestinian man with curly grey shoulder-length hair stood in front of us. He told us his name, but the unfamiliar sound washed over my ears as per-usual with Arabic names, and I was left only with an impression of curly hair. Then names were called and the room started to empty. "Beeka and Air-een!" the curly haired man announced. I stood and squeezed past the surrounding empty desks to follow a short stout man out the door of the classroom with Erin. We gathered our luggage and fit it into the back of the small mustached man's Volkswagen Polo. "You can both sit up front with me," he told us. So I climbed in, and Erin sat hunched over on my lap so that her head wouldn't hit the ceiling.
We made small talk on the short drive back to the house and during our dinner of eggplant, tomato sauce, a strange but delicious rice that I've begun referring to as noodle-rice.
After we ate, we were introduced to hot pink walls and cheetah print bedcovers, our room. I think Erin and I were both a little overwhelmed at the femininity of the room. After living in the blank walls of the EMU dorms for three semesters, hot pink was frightening. We returned to the ground floor, where we met a family friend and had evening tea. After an appropriate amount of polite conversation, we returned to our room to get better acquainted with the cheetah print bedcovers.
We slept and left the next morning for a tour of the city, where we saw the fields where the shepards are believed to have been watching their flocks by night when the angel of the Lord appeared to them in the Christmas story. Beit Sahour was named for these fields and the shepards who stayed up late to watch their flocks at night, as I said earlier, the house of those who stay up late at night. Ironically Erin and I have been going to bed around 8:30 or 9 every night.
At 8:00 on Wednesday night, we hiked up he stairs to our room, ready for the welcoming warmth of sleep and cheetah print covers, but we were surprised and slightly disappointed to find new covers on the beds. Rather than cheetah print, two tan teddy bears each sporting a blue bow and a fishing pole smiled up at us from our beds. We weren't entirely sure why're covers had been changed, but since our host had taken the liberty of cleaning up and unpacking our things for us, we figured it was just part of cleaning the room.
It has been a week and a half since the bed covers were changed, and though our things continue to end up in new places as the result of daily cleaning and our beds are made regularly, the teddy bear covers remain. I strongly suspect that after meeting us, our host mother, baffled by Erin's and my lack of femininity, decided that the cheetah print was so far past ironic that it was approaching inappropriate and changed it out for something that better represented us. Sleep hungry tomboys that we are, I think she did a pretty good job. And now, for another night in the teddy bear blankets. Until next time...