by Markie

Hi kids!

Kathy and I had to kind of rush away on Saturday, but we spent the last two days visiting with her friends Ya’alah and Netanel.  And our friend Laura is ALSO visiting them so we got to visit with her, too! Hurray!

In one picture Laura’s face looked silly and in another Ya’alah was scratching her head, so Kathy cropped them out. In this picture Laura is sharing her sweetie with me. They are a cross between a grapefruit and a pomelo.

One of the things Kathy and I have enjoyed doing most this month is feeding the team’s compost to the ducks and geese from the shop that is the only other building on our street that isn’t locked up.  They really like rotten tomatoes and they REALLY think the parts of cauliflower that humans don’t eat are yummy.

On Friday, Kathy, our teammate JoAnn and I went out to the Beqa’a Valley to visit her friends Atta and Rodeina Jaber and their children.  Their daughters Dalia and Lara were helping them make dibs.  At the end of the grape harvest, all the grapes that aren’t the very best grapes get put in a pot and boiled and boiled into syrup called dibs and it is YUMMMY!  Especially when you mix it with tahini.  Normally you visit, and then tea comes out and some snacks and maybe a little dinner and then coffee.  Well for our visit, tea, thyme bread and coffee all came out in the space of about 20 minutes, and then Atta’s brother called to tell him that soldiers were shutting down the roads because so many Israeli settlers were coming in for a special occasion in Hebron, and JoAnn and Kathy and I  had to leave right then.  We missed out on a lot of yumminess and a good time with our friends!

Well I guess Kathy and I had better finish packing.  I hear there are storms in the Netherlands.  Hope they’re gone by the time Kathy and I land.  Goodbye Palestine! Goodbye Israel!  We will miss you!

I don’t know why Kathy decided to take a picture of this earlier in the month when she was in East Jerusalem. But Kiwi-fried chicken doesn’t really sound all that yummy.