Getting to Nazareth

(1) A view of the road from the hospital. Our legs are getting a work out on the hills! (2) At the door to our apartment.

We made connection with a driver from Nazareth early Wednesday morning at the Ben Guiron Airport in Tel Aviv. Our flight from London went well. Only about 4.5 hours. Nina and Zoe decided not to sleep, but watched "Horton Hears a Who" and "The Game Plan." Lily watched a movie that she'd missed on the first flight, "Spiderwick Chronicles." I was trying to sleep. I think Eldon watched something as well as dozed. . .

We were delivered to Apt. 264 at the British Hospital, just up the hill from Nazareth Village. Shirley Roth (our former northern VA church friend who's the director at the Village) met us with breakfast foods and showed us the right door to our place before she was off to work. It was a warm and steamy day. Our apartment has six rooms, three of which are bedrooms (Zoe and Fat Baby are sharing the twin beds at the back. Zoe was quick to label her "suite" -- the back hall that also has its own sink. She and Nina were soon busy drawing pictures for their walls with markers and glitter glue they found left behind by the last family that was there from Canada with two small children.

Lily and I zonked by mid-morning and Eldon and the other girls went exploring. Eldon found a barber (after having conferred with our van driver on what a reasonable price would be: 30 shekels), an ATM (hard to find!), some ice cream. We all shared some lunch in the apartment, then the morning explorers crashed into a dead sleep while Lily and I were taken for a few basic groceries by Lisa Moore, the volunteer coordinator at NV.

Lily and I then bopped around the hospital to try to find tokens for the washing machine (one of the five of us, we'll let you guess who, had already had a little accident that needed attention), but found that most folks were gone for the day. We were befriended by an Australian woman who allowed us to use the washer in her apartment. She (Joy), had summoned help from another apartment dweller, named Sebastian, who often uses the machine we had our clothes locked inside of, but as he poked and prodded and tipped various levers, it shorted out and smoked a bit. We learned that Joy and her husband David were in on the early years of unearthing the parts of the "Land" at the Village that are the most ancient -- an existing wine press, for one, and for 11 years have been gardeners at the British Hospital. My guess is that they are also possibly doing a low-key ministry of sorts, but I'm not sure. I needed to get my wet clothes out of her machine just before 7 pm, since they were hosting a meeting of some kind. Our clothes dryer is a rack on a pulley that hangs in the bathroom above the tub (no shower, but a hose that you can switch on for doing hair).

So, the apartment is all tile floored, or sealed concrete. The walls are plaster and the ceilings, to our best guess, are 15 feet high. The kitchen has the most basic of basics in it, but we're making do. Gas stove top, electric oven. No microwave. We found some mouse doo in one of the lower cabinets but haven't seen any rodent action. All of the faucets are mounted much higher than we're used to, which can be pretty splashy.

Nina's comment in general, after having walked around town with Dad, was that Nazareth is really dirty. Yes, there's trash everywhere. Someone had started a trash fire on the hill across from the hospital/Village and one fire truck eventually showed up. The fire was re-started Wednesday, too, and burned thick, dark grey smoke all day long. Noxious. Yet, after a day here, Nina was able to say that the apartment was fine, and that even if it was really different from our own house, "it's kind of nice to have tile floors and unpredictable furnishings." :)

So, next time we'll tell you about our first tour of the Village and our two days on the land as villagers. It's hot, it's dusty and dry, but it's great. Neat folks that we're meeting and very cool stuff to learn, including orientation to the culture, which at the village is Arab Christian.

Masalaami! (which means goodbye)