Week Two In Israel--Homesick??

The second week...ah, internet is down at the kibbutz so Charlie can't post the photos or give you his update. I'll tell you that he is loving his course and learning a lot while trying to figure out why he hasn't been able to hear out of one of his ears ever since we've arrived. Our doctor friend Jason, who is taking the class and rooming with Charlie, thinks that Charlie has a growth in his ear that he only noticed after having shoved an earplug in there for the plane flight, thus packing a bunch of earwax around the growth. Yes, I know, try not to think about it too much--poor Jason, he committed himself to helping Charlie find ear drops for wax removal and ended up digging around in there with a flashlight and crab pick. We are not eating crabs again for a while and are looking for an ENT specialist. We'd appreciate your prayers.

The kids and I have wandered off the beach and out of the pool this week to explore the city a little. At Shalom Tower we enjoyed two gorgeous huge mosaics, one celebrating life in Tel Aviv and the other the history of the city, and learned about the architectural history of Tel Aviv through old photographs, a model of the city, and a documentary subtitled in English (Paul: "I can't read that fast.") The documentary had a lot of old grainy footage from the twenties and thirties. This led to comments like, "Is that lightning?" "Is it raining?" from Thomas and "Why are people walking so fast?" from Elise. We've also been to two parks and found an open air market close by. There are lots of stray cats.

Tuesdays and Thursdays the market also hosts an arts and crafts fair, so today we saw plenty of pottery, jewelry, toys, and other creative and cheerful handcrafts including ostrich egg luminaries and sculptures made from flatware. As much as we were loving the artists' tables, especially watching the blown glass and wire sculpture taking shape before our eyes, the day was hot and humid and all of us were teetering on the brink of dehydration and heat-induced fatigue. I plopped the kids down in the first restaurant that had English on its sign, thankful that it said "pizza," which one of the kids had been rooting for, and took MasterCard, as we had spent all our cash at the market. I was surprised to hear the owner speaking Spanish as she waited on one of the other tables. When she seated us we thanked her in Spanish and proceeded to speak in Spanish with her and her husband. They are from Argentina and used some different words with a different accent, but mostly we understood each other. Madeleine and Elise were delighted to speak Spanish again and listen to the Spanish songs that were in the background. I have been studying Spanish a little bit, and have known that we all miss Peru, but I surprised myself by totally choking up with feelings of longing and sadness as I attempted to order my pizza! The only way I kept the tears back was by realizing that the next table was watching and listening to my bad accent while the owner was straining to understand me. Also, I didn't want to unnerve or embarrass the children, but I could have really wept, especially when Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up" came on. (The tears dried when Joan Osborne's "One of Us" came on and one of the kids asked if it might be a Christian praise song.) Is this homesickness? I don't feel scared or uncomfortable about being in Israel, but having Spanish on my tongue just brought on a rush of the good, comforting, and familiar. I certainly don't have a home in Peru, but then I don't have a home anywhere right now.

Greetings from Kibbutz Tzuba

While Rae and the kids are enjoying the beaches of Tel Aviv, I am tucked away in the Judean hills here at Kibbutz Tzuba studying Hebrew. An old college friend (Jason Dausman) has met me here from Afghanistan to take the class with me. We are in class for 4 hours each morning with all instruction and discussion in Biblical Hebrew and then we spend the afternoon studying and listening to recordings. There are people here from all over the world taking the class with us and I was surprised that some of them are BibleWorks users that I already know via email (including the guy from the Czech Republic). Kibbutz Tzuba sits on top of a hill just a few miles west of Jerusalem. The ruins of a crusader fortress looks down on us from an adjacent hill. We eat in the kibbutz dinning hall with the kibbutz residents and other guests. We are the only non-Jews here. It is very interesting but so far studying hasn't left us much time to explore. Tomorrow we will go on our first field trip to the Dead Sea and Qumran. I am really looking forward to that but even more I'm looking forward to seeing Rae and the kids this weekend in Tel Aviv. I missed the last hour of my first class because I came down with a fever. I went back to my room and slept for the next 16 hours and woke up feeling much better. Our number one assignment each day is to get 8 hours of sleep, so I guess I'm actually ahead of the class now. I miss you all.

Jet Lag

You know your family's got jet lag when you're giving your kids Coke with their 10:30 AM breakfast.
You know they're jet-lagged when you have to hurry up and sneak into bed at 1:30AM, hoping to get to sleep before they wake up.
You know your kids are more jet-lagged than you are when you let them call your parents at 2AM, because you're ready to go to bed and they've woken up and are ready to talk.

Well, we've been in Israel 3 and 1/3 days and are feeling pretty settled in. Still a little groggy in the mornings, and actually I have fallen asleep every afternoon for a bit, even while watching the kids at the beach and the pool! (there was a lifeguard and I made sure little people were out of the water) We've been to the beach twice, the pool once, the grocery store twice, and fast food once. Perfect weather for eating on the balcony!

Since I don't know any Hebrew and can't read the script, I am enjoying relative ignorance and anonymity. My observations of cultural differences thus far (gathered at the beach and the little mall downstairs): more people here smoke, more people wear Crocs, a lot of people bring dogs to the beach, indignation is an acceptable form of communication, and it is also acceptable for men to go swimming in bikini brief underwear or boxers. They go swimming in Speedos and swim trunks, too, but the difference is pretty noticeable.

I know there's much more to see and learn about the culture, the city, and the people. The history and archeology are enormous. But for this week I am very content with anonymity and time with my kids. Our host family has many great photos of their adult children throughout the apartment. The last time I saw the youngest of these kids he was in elementary school, now he's just returned from eight months in Iraq with the Marines. So I've just been looking at my own children and wondering who they will grow up to be and how fast the time will go by...

Update from Virginia

We have had a great two weeks visiting friends and family here in VA and we leave Richmond for Tel Aviv tomorrow afternoon. (In addition to packing, Rae is helping her sister-in-law here in Richmond who just had a baby boy at 3 this morning.)

I have posted the last of our Peru photos in the May album (see link on the left) and created a new album which contains a few of our June photos thus far. I love maps so here's the start of a map of our Israeli Odyssey. Stay tuned for news and photos from Israel...

I have one image I really must share from months past while we were in Peru. What you see below is a loving letter Thomas wrote to his ama (Chinese for grandma). He's accustomed to receiving money every year in a birthday card from his ama and this year because we were in Peru she couldn't send it. Apparently we forgot to explain this to Thomas. So when the time came to write ama, he got right to what was on his mind. I think I'll have him write my fundraising letters for me.

More goodbyes

It's hard to believe but we will be leaving Trujillo in just two hours. I can't really explain our feelings tonight. Homesickness is what it feels like, but that sounds strange since we've only been here three months and we haven't even left yet, but that's the best way to describe it. We have said goodbye this year to a lot of people very dear to us. We love you all here in Trujillo. We didn't think any place could feel like home again when we left Norfolk just three months ago. Our time here has been a tremendous blessing to our whole family.

And at the same time we are so excited to think that next Sunday we'll be back at Trinity Presbyterian in Norfolk. We can't wait to see you all there in Norfolk, and yet we hate to say good bye to Trujillo. We're a bit emotional tonight.

We'll be in Lima for two days where I'll be teaching a BibleWorks training workshop at Seminario Evangelico de Lima. Then on Thursday we catch a plane back to Virginia. Good bye Trujillo. Norfolk, here we come. We dearly love you all.

...and Traffic

Traffic is about what you'd expect for a third world country in a smaller city. There's very few actual traffic jams, because all drivers ignore lane markings and just edge forward or squeeze around. Taxi drivers especially don't hesitate to drive the wrong way, even on the other side of a median, if a lane is blocked due to construction, or to back into oncoming traffic. Interesting to us, (irritating to Charlie), is the constant honking. Drivers use their horns to talk to each other. Just as some people talk incessantly, some drivers drive with one hand on the horn at all times. The honking can mean, "I'm approaching this intersection," "Get out of the way," "I'm not stopping for you," "I'm not stopping for you either," "I'm passing..." "I'm turning..." "Don't turn, I'm passing." There are regular sounding horns, but also a couple of variations--some R2D2-like beepers and an alarming kind of croaker.

Taxis also talk to pedestrians with their horns. All morning and evening there are plenty of available taxis, so instead of you trying to hail a cab, the cabs are trying to hail you by beeping. "Wanna ride? Wanna ride?" They will keep honking, too, until you lift and shake your index finger to say no, or totally ignore them as they slow down and pass you. I've even had taxis try to hail me while I'm jogging in running clothes against traffic. I guess that tells you how I look when I'm jogging!

Noise

Well, things have gotten a little quieter around the apartment lately because the weather has become cooler and everyone's windows are shut. Before that we could hear everything and now we just hear a lot, but tune it all out. There's the daily chatter, music, and activities of our neighbors. (There's a baby somewhere in the building and I can distinguish his middle of the night cries, "sounds fussy," "sounds mad and tired," "tonight is different--maybe he's teething," "sound like he's been woken up by the other neighbor's music") More confusing is when we hear their doorbells and telephones ringing and think they're our own! We even heard Charlie's cell phone ringing and tried to answer it, only to realize the ringing phone belonged to someone in the street below. Given that everything is built with tile and concrete, all noise is sort of echoey. Sometimes I can't even tell which room family members are in when they're calling for me. If I answer, "I'm right here!" it definitely doesn't help.

Street noises include car alarms a couple of times a week, the advertising calls of the newspaper vendor, the whistle of the knife-sharpening guy, and the screeching and ka-thunking of vehicles approaching the speed bump in front of our building too fast.

We've had countless Friday or Saturday nights that were party or concert nights. This starts at 10 to 11 o'clock and goes to at least 3 AM. There was at least one that went to 5 AM. The concerts involve an MC and applause between songs, the parties are endless dance mixes. It is so loud that it doesn't matter whether you shut the windows, wear earplugs, or take Benadryl--you can still hear it! Amazingly, I've slept through every party so far, though I did wake up to enjoy the "Grease" soundtrack, and the rest of the family is starting to not be quite so perturbed. Early on in the string of party weekends we were awakened at 3 AM by Paul. He was standing by our bed, crying out of sheer frustration and reflecting everyone else's maybe-this-is-the-last-song hopes, "I keep thinking they're stopping and then they start again!"

Since noise doesn't seem to be an issue for anyone else around here, we've done things we might have thought twice about in the States, like playing music and sermons at 6AM to help everyone wake up for school. I also let Paul and Thomas play soccer with a soft ball inside the apartment and let everyone toot endlessly on their zamponas (Peruvian pan pipes).

What? I'm not a gringa?

How ignorant can I be? I just realized this week that I'm not a gringa--no, I'm a china, even a chinita. Why it took me two and a half months to realize this, I don't know. Also this week, I bought a watch for Paul. It's very colorful--blue band, green face with red numbers. Oh, I forgot, he's color-blind. Not winning any Most Attentive Mother Awards over here. I guess Thomas will be inheriting a new watch pretty soon.

I just wanted to thank everyone who is praying for us. This week we took a drive in the mountains with a family from school. We stopped to take pictures at a waterfall and Elise skidded on some gravel, falling and gashing her knee. Nothing a little gauze, tape and antibiotic ointment couldn't fix, but when we looked at where she had fallen, we realized that if she had just twisted or rolled, she would have gone over an edge! Thanks again for your prayers. We also have yet to experience any stomach trouble, though many of the Americans around us have.

Mother's Day is a huge holiday in Peru--on par with Christmas and Independence Day. The children's school had a big assembly for all the students' mothers. Each class in the primary school made a presentation. Thomas was Moses in his class's reenactment of the oppression of the Hebrews by the Egyptians. Paul threw flower petals while some of his class sang and danced. Elise sang and danced with her class. It was a great time for Charlie and me to see our kids on stage. They all did well. In between class presentations, various mothers were called up one at a time. At first, I thought they had won some sort of raffle, since I had heard that some schools did this for Mother's Day. Pretty quickly Charlie caught on and set me straight. These women were winning prizes--"the happiest mother," "the prettiest mother," "the nicest mother." Each woman got a certificate and what looked like a large chocolate bar. There was another class presentation and then more awards. As they announced "the most enthusiatic mother," then "the most conservative mother," I considered the event possibly blog-worthy and started taking notes. After "the most protective mother" was called up and awarded, Charlie, who had been translating, leaned over and said, "You could win the award for 'the most confused mother.'" That was funny, but then they began to announce an award that I could understand. It seemed that they were getting ready to present an award to the mother that had the most children enrolled in the school. I thought this really topped the cake and began taking more notes, thinking "that poor woman, what a strange award, I mean, how many children does she have??" Then, my question was answered when they called my name. So, I walked up there in front of 240 students and most of their mothers and 41 staff, thinking about how small Peruvian families are. I didn't win a chocolate bar, but came home instead with a sizable flower arrangement. I missed what awards were announced next as I just tried to make eye contact with my various children and Charlie as I stood on stage. This will be my second most memorable Mother's Day ever (the first involves vomit, diarrhea, the sugar bowl, and a toddler).