I like clouds…. a lot

We’ve almost here for a full month!! It is crazy, on one hand this past month has gone kind of quick, it seems like we rolled in only a week ago… on the other hand, it seems like it has dragged by painfully slow.  When we look at the larger time scale, our return flight home seems sooo far away, and there is plenty that we miss about home to remind us of that.

Coffee, simple drip coffee, it just doesn’t exist here. It’s either instant, or this weird gritty spicy stuff, which apparently is pretty high class, but doesn’t really taste very good… at all.

Grass and trees, oh I’ve always known I enjoyed a little greenspace, but never realized how much I loved till there is none :(  We did however, spend today in Jerusalem and spent an hour or so at a park!  With grass! and Trees!  Oh it felt so right to lay on the grass in the shade of the trees and get that itchy prickly feeling all over your exposed skin while you’re slapping at flies and gnats cause they tickle when they walk on you.

Hot showers.  I’ve only taken a handful of showers since I got here, and they’ve all been cold.  Not that it’s completely horrible because it’s generally pretty stinking hot outside, however, it’s still nice to have some sort of heat when your washing up.

Oreos.

Not having stupid checkpoints.  I used to get relatively annoyed driving into California from another state and you had to stop at those agricultural checkpoints… well these are way different cause they’re staffed by 18 yr old Israelis with guns, texting their significant other on their cell phone.  They make life really, really, really, inconvenient.

Fruit!  Or rather, affordable fruit.  Fruit in the west bank is not cheap.  What you can get is small and expensive.  So you have to go into Jerusalem to get fruit.  Which means you have to go through the check points, and then pay so much for parking that you can’t buy fruit anymore and then your whole trip was in vain, except you can cruise by the park, with grass, and trees.  That helps. 

Weather.  Stinking hot and not a cloud in the sky.  Everyday.  All day…. that’s not entirely true.  We actually had a partly cloudy day a few days ago, that was such a treat, it had been three weeks since I’d seen a cloud.  I didn’t realize how much I like them. 

But from what I understand, this whole process is pretty normal.  And we are adjusting, albeit difficult sometimes.  We can’t wait for the cold to come.  Right now it’s hard to imagine ending your day and your clothes ARE’NT stiffened with your dry sweat. 

Oh and the other day I had my first Shawerma, and kike, both great foods. I like the food.  I really like the food here.  Even if we end up coming away from this totally burned out on the area, I have a feeling I’m gonna miss the food.