A little bit of England

One of our home churches is St Georges Cathedral in Jerusalem. It really does look like a bit of England has been dropped into Israel. We enjoy going there and being at ease in the familiar services and prayer meetings. Oh and I expect you know (because his website is probably one of your favourites) the AB of C popped in this week, I think we must have been out when he called on us

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/releases/071030.htm

Not one off the most exciting blogs in the world but we have to keep the AB of C, vicar, PCC and CMS happy, and show that we haven't gone totally off the rails!

P

You should see the one that got away!

I had my first taste of fresh fish since being in the middle east. My Omega 3 levels were somewhat depleted so we popped into the Jerusalem Shopping Mall and ordered a St Peters fish. These are traditionally from Galilee. At this time I didn't particular care where it came from I just ate the thing. The mall was fresh and clean and most importantly air conditioned. P and I are not know for having an interest in shopping but its funny the things you do when you are an expat abroad. The only things we bought were 25 envelopes and a clip for P's new Mp3 player. We attempted to by a rather large Rubric cube but it was totally non functional! We would be grateful if somebody could send us out one, surface mail would be fine, it will arrive before Christmas. J

Returning after 23 years

23 years ago my father and I visited Israel. We stayed in Jerusalem for a few nights and I remembered roughly where the hotel was located (East Jerusalem!!) so last week we searched for it, and eventually we located it. My father spent hours on the hotel roof looking out over the Old City and the Mount of Olives, the receptionist allowed us to visit the roof so that we could take some pictures:

It was just as I remembered it, the view hasn't changed, you will have to come to our slide show to see the view of the Mount of Olives. We then continued to wonder through Jerusalem - the old city is fascinating to walk through and there are no cars, which is a welcome relief from the rest of Jerusalem. You must come over sometime! P

Another quiet Sunday night in the W B

Today has been a good relaxing day, we went to a local church just up the road. We took a big yellow taxi because of the piercing heat which is taking a little while to get used to. I constantly have a bright red 'beetroot' coloured face, which provides much amusement to our new P friends. For lunch we ate out - some beautifully flavoured lamb chunks with salad and pickled yellow cauliflower, I then had my first Arabic coffee which was dark and strong and for a short while gave me a raised heat beat. However I still managed to have a Sunday afternoon dose after saying Goodbye to 6 Americans who had stayed at the guest house.
Tomorrow a new week starts, we will plug on with the gift shop products, Christmas is coming and we need to get sorted - one of the elves has been spotted in the store cupboard a long way from Lapland!!!!
My sisters bday this Tues. Happy bday S. Birthday cards are not part of P culture so people are getting different scenes from B. Hope that will suffice. J

Just another manic Saturday

Our second weekend and our social life is taking off!! On Saturday after saying farewell to guests in the guest house we got a lift to W Jerusalem with J & S. We went to an international church (they meet on a Saturday because Sunday is the first day of the working week in Israel). Following the service we walked to a park where we picnicked with some of their friends before heading of to an English pub 'Mike's Place'. On one screen was the Man U game but more importantly the rugby world cup was being shown in the basement - the only place to see the England vs Australia game for miles around.
We then raced home to get ready for a house warming party given by a teacher at the college.
and next Saturday it's the semi-final!!