A Greek Tragedy

My students have been learning about ancient Greece and when we got to the arts the boys wanted to write their own tragedy.  I thought seeing that they did such a superb job we should perform it in the downtown amphitheatre which is actually Roman but the same stye.  It was awesome.  The girls (including me) recited poetry!

Don't we look great!  (and to think there were some tourists there snapping shots to take home.. and me looking weird like this!)

The Jesus Trail

Bruce, Brandon and Justin went to Israel for 5 days to walk the five day trail in three days.  They ended up taking a short cut to Tiberias instead of walking to Capernaum.  They got a taxi in Tiberias to take them around Capernaum and back to Nazareth.  Then they got the bus down to Jerusalem and stayed overnight with our friend in Bethlehem.  They had a great time.  Here's some photos:

Wadi Rum visit

Wadi Rum is in the south of Jordan and we went for a 2 night stay.  This is where the Bedouin people have lived for years and still live in much the same way they have for centuries except they now live in brick houses.  It was such a lovely soul refreshing time - mostly because of the absolute quietness and peacefulness.  Here's a selection of photos:

 Our sleeping arrangement

 One of our Bedouin guides.

 I love camels... so weird.

 This is the eating tent of our camp.

 How awesome is this?

Bruce doing his run down the dune.

Fall festival

I dressed as a self cleaning yard bag (not just an old bag)!  I won the prize for

the funniest.  :)

This student is a very creative person too - he was a 'kitchen warrior'.  He won for most creative!



Friday Photo Log: The Friday Souk

Friday Photo Log: The Friday Souk

The Friday Souk

There were both recycled and new clothes plus anything else you could think of for sale here.  We love this kind of shopping.  (Good for the planet as well)  Lots of stuff from USA and Europe. There is also a great vege section so I bought ingredients for chutney and went right home and made some.  YUM.

How I stay healthy

We want for very little here!  Those grapes are truly enormous and so tasty.  Bruce does most of the shopping and cooking.  He's so wonderful to me.   x  x  x

This is all I have time to do now work has begun.

This is the corner where I have my classroom 'office'.  I end up here for hours after school, marking and planning.  Yes, it's still hot enough for a fan.

On tour in Jordan

The Dead Sea was a highlight, I think - or Petra.  It's the weirdest sensation trying to get under the water.. you just can't!  The mud is full of minerals and is kinda oily but your skin feels great fr days.

Petra is one of the seven wonders of the world.  It is surely an amazing achievement.  The Nabateans created these buildings hewn out of the rock.  Later the Bedouins lived here.  Now the tourists have taken over - Jordan uses it to pay the national debt @ $nz66 per head.

Whitman Academy

So this is where I'll be working for the next 2 years.  The 4th grade class is second floor on the left.  I've got some of the materials I'll be teaching but the rooms are being painted so can't actually get in and sort out the room yet. 
Not much went on this week to show but you just wait until next week....
Make sure you check back!!!

Gold souk and Bruce begins work!

This is the gold souk we visited on Thursday. It turns out Thursday is the very worst time to go visit this area because there is so much traffic on the streets it's awkward for taxis to get to. The first taxi driver just pretended he didn't know what we were talking about - except we rang an Arab speaker and it's also in the most popular part of town so we now realise he just didn't want to be bothered getting through the traffic jams. Ha!
I didn't buy anything although there were a few nice pieces. I tried on a couple of rings $NZ200-$NZ400 and that was just with zirconias.
Bruce was really blessed with a free load of timber from the construction site across the road. He's making shelves and doing some building renovations at 'Holy Land Designs'.

Amman City

Across the road from the apartment we are temporarily staying is this huge building still under construction. There has been a few holdups - the crane fell over, a floor collapsed - killing a/some workers. Whew.. hope we're safe!

This was part of the old city siq / little shops we walked around this week. No shortage of fresh fruit and veges and a little cheaper than in NZ. We had lunch in a restaurant - at the table next to ours the people were munching away on half a goat's head each. I WASN'T tempted.

We walked around City Mall for 6-7 hours one day. At one end of a floor about 1/3 of it was a children's playground with bumper cars, merry go rounds, video games, roller coaster, whizzy things etc. We couldn't believe how amazing this place was! The Mall was 6 floors high but the prices were 6 times the prices I would pay!!!!

Nablus in the West Bank

Nablus is a city set in a valley between Mt Gerizim and Mt Ebal. God told Joshua to send some tribes to each mountain and pronounce blessings and curses to remind the people of these things.

It is famous for olive oil soap (top pic) and for a delicious sweet called Kunafa (bottom pic) which is goat cheese under a sweet biscuit/cake topping liberally dripping with honey or something sweet like that. It was delicious. Finding the shop was interesting because we had to wend our way through narrow alleys in a souk.

Tel Aviv and Jaffa

Below is an orange tree growing in a ceramic tub in the shape of a seed. Very clever!

Here is Bruce outside Simon the Tanner's house. Peter raised Dorcas to life in Jaffa and staying with Simon.

Here also Jonah tried to hide out instead of going on the mission God had sent him. There is now a lovely walkway along the shore. The Mediterranian is a wild water on this coast! Not tempted to swim despite it being hot.

It was a hot day and this fountain had the children enraptured!

Masada and Beersheva

This is where WWI soldiers are buried after a decisive battle at Beersheeva. We counted 12 NZ soldiers graves. It was the last mounted cavalry charge in the world.

Of course we found the sooq - but didn't buy anything!

Mt Masada was amazing. Even the cable car was not too scarey. It happened to be the hottest day they had had this year - something like 45-50 so climbing around up there was hard work!
Around 70AD Jewish zealots held out there for 3 years before the Romans were able to make a ramp up the side. Rather than become Roman slaves almost all of them made a suicide pact. Jewish soldiers make an oath there : "Masada will never fall again!"

Bethlehem hospital

This was our contribution to the Bethlehem mental hospital.

This is Nabih who is in charge of the hospital laundry. Whenever we went to the hospital we would visit Nabih and have a chat and his workers made us delicious tea.