Sexyback

It is hard to believe that I am inching my way to the halfway point of my trip already. Time seems to be optional here. When invited to juice or a coffee, the outing can last hours. Laura and I stumbled into our neighbor’s garden by accident one day, and the owner, a kind elderly woman named Mona, sat us down for lemonade and sweets. There were no questions, just persistent hospitality. “No” is never an option.

At about 3:45 every morning, I wake up to the call to prayer. Out of the five made throughout the day, this one seems the longest. I fall back asleep at about 4:30 and wake up again at 7:30 when Laura rolls out of bed for work. Now that we are on different schedules, the alarms and snoozes are all meshing together, and it is just a grumpy mess in the morning.

Laura started teaching English, yoga, and arts and crafts with a non-profit organization called Project Hope. Today they are going to refugee camps. She loves it. I am incredibly proud of her.

I have started taking the servis (group taxi) to the Near East Foundation, the organization I work with. I walk a few blocks over to the center and go to the taxi station beneath the mall. My new friend at the station directs me to the right lane, I jump into a taxi with four strangers, and show the driver a blue sticky note with a few lines of Arabic scribbled onto it.

Prior to the brilliant sticky note ordeal, I took a regular taxi with Laura and attempted to communicate where this building was to previous drivers in about four different ways, and failed every time. Each time resulted in me having to call my friend, Hadeel, to serve as my interpreter via mobile. Even though I said time seems to be optional, they understand it is money. I would be charged an extra five shekels for causing a delay.

Now, with the sticky note and servis, the trip is two and a half shekels, which amounts to about 65 cents.

Nablus, Palestine, is a very beautiful place. It rests in the middle of a bowl, a valley in the middle of mountains. The only way out is to take one of the winding roads up and over the steep slopes. The old city down the street contains a market within its narrow roads, and here you can find street vendors shouting about prices, fresh apricots and zucchini, halaal meat, and the newest sunglasses that everyone is wearing in Europe. The smell of freshly baked bread in this area is intoxicating.

Guys are strewn about and use their broken English in an attempt to get Laura’s attention.

“Hi! Vat is you name?”

“Hovar you doings?”

“Vat is the place you are from?”

Last week, there was this kid, no more than 15 years old, who blatantly said, “So sexziii,” as she passed by. My initial reaction was to ask where his mother was, so that I can tell her to spank her child. Good grief. So sexziii.

So a few things:

-  Greetings in broken English are considered pickup lines

- Giving passengers exact change while weaving through traffic is a skill

- Tea and coffee are drunk throughout the day, even at noon when it is scalding out

- Kids want to play, even when they cannot understand a word you are saying

On a side note, ever since Laura signed into her GMail my home settings are now in Spanish, and since I'm logging on in Palestine all of the settings on my blog are in Arabic. This is getting out of hand.