1.  I am eating a sandwich with an olive oil-based mayonnaise.  It tastes exactly the same as “regular” mayonnaise, except it has less fat and is slightly less thick.  Lovely.

2.  We watched a blue jellyfish float by at the beach on Friday.  This also means that going in the water is a risky endeavor.  I felt rather brave. 

3.  Everything here is a constant hello and goodbye.  Pilgrims, family visitors, and staff.  It makes my head spin sometimes.

 4.  We are going to see Harry Potter tonight.  By “we” I mean a group of 25 people or so.  This has become the “thing to do”.  One of the guys always organizes an expedition…and I do mean expedition.  We have instructions, synchronized times to meet at locations, ticket-buying, job titles, hiking through snow and over mountains, sacrificing members of the group to wolves howling outside the cave where we huddle for shelter…

So far we have seen Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Die Hard, and Transformers.  Other movies I’ve seen in the theatre have been Fantastic Four and Ocean’s 13.   Sometimes it feels like I haven’t left the USA at all.

 5.  It is official: I have begun spelling in the British style (the BWC uses British spelling for the most part).  I knew it would happen eventually, but now I do it in MSN conversations.  I’ve also begun developing a bit of the “BWC accent” (which is basically a generic mixture taken from dozens of languages).  I am amused: this is the 4th accent I will have acquired in my lifetime.

6.  Summer slows down my pace of reading, mostly because I do not want to be indoors when it is so wonderfully warm outside.  (Yes, I AM enjoying the heat.  I know I am crazy.)  I finally finished all of the Jane Austen books, as well as a few fantasy novels, and am working on a few books simultaneously.

1. Junk mail is just as bad here as in the USA. Walking into my apartment building, it was like an advertising blizzard had struck the foyer.

2. I’ve never had a taxi driver try to cheat me here…until the last two weeks. I was at the hotel a lot with my family, and sometimes I would catch a taxi by the hotel. Never again. I got into AT LEAST 3 shouting matches with taxi drivers…to the point of making them pull over and getting out.

3. I love that the girls are wearing these flowers in their hair…it feels so tropical.

Last night the storm took over my sleep, and I only wish I could have been awake to enjoy it. Instead I drifted in and out of sleep, imagining it was an earthquake (the thunder was so powerful it shook my bed…at least I think it did).

An hour ago the skies were blue with white clouds, and now again the rain is drenching the trees outside my window into a dark dark green color. And now again the sun is struggling behind the white/gray fluff to shine through my window.

But sometimes I think that thunderstorms are better appreciated when asleep. It makes dreams so much more interesting.

(the view out of my office window this morning)

-Abdu’l-Baha

I’ve been feeling rather like this animal recently:
(On the Terraces, Thursday night)

It is starting to be spring here in Haifa, with the accompanying crazy weather patterns. Yesterday there was hamsin, today torrential downpours.

I think people think that I’m a rather busy person. Perhaps I am…my Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are usually quite booked with classes. I guess I just don’t see things as busy here…maybe that will change.

– I injured my hand a little bit doing a cartwheel last night. I haven’t done one since this summer (on the soccer field) and since I did it in a living room…well, I was nervous about hitting the TV or chairs, so I messed up my left hand. Which also happens to be my dominant hand. Ah well. I really wanted to do a cartwheel, and now it is out of my system. 🙂

– It rained for the first time today since I’ve been here. The view outside my office is dark green with a tiny bit of gray sky. I feel like I’m in a jungle.

– On Christmas Eve I heard a loud boom, followed by more loud booms. I looked out the window, and down by Ben Gurion Avenue were fireworks going off. My first stray thought upon hearing the sounds was “Gunshots?”.

– I’m looking forward to running into pilgrims here and there…their shiny happy faces upon their arrival in the Holy Land makes me smile.

Check out this bee on a flower…I got chased by that bee soon afterward!

I had fun on Friday…we packed our lunches to eat at Bahji. Well, I made this potato and carrot dish, fried in olive oil and tumeric. Unfortunately, it spilled a bit in my purse, and my prayer book got some yellow spots on it. Yet another instance of food + Sholeh + purse = BAD NEWS. You’d think I would have learned my lesson by now.

Luckily, I don’t have a cell phone yet, so nothing electronic was damaged.

____________________________________
A flower is a flower.

Paths at Bahji