goats

Another hilarious thing about living here is that you can be speeding down a busy highway,like between Nazareth and Haifa as we were today,and suddenly the road will be blocked by a huge herd of goats plus goatherd!!!!! The kids of course LOVE it....but it really is bizarre.....you are in a 21st century car in a modern ,VERY Americanized country and suddenly you are surrounded by bleating goats.You feel like you just stepped back in time oohh..I dunno...say 2000 years.......honestly you half expect Jesus and his disciples to come walking around the corner.........these things I will never get used to here!!!!!!!..............

living in the bible...........

I think most of the time I really take for granted where I am actually living.I remember at school singing hymns about Jerusalem and Israel....reading about weddings in ca'na,the banks of the sea of galilee,fishermen,fishing boats,capernaum.........mystical,far away places.Now of course these are everyday places for me.At home if I mention somewhere like Can'a,people are like...WHAT?...but thats in the Bible....does it actually exist now??......and I'm like oh yeah it's just up the road from me! It really blows people away.It's easy for these epic landscapes to become commonplace,but every so often as I'm driving around ,I'll suddenly notice them again.Spectacular violet and red mountains across in Jordan.....breathtaking.The sea of Galilee is another of my favourite places here.It is sooooo peaceful........and blue and beautiful and really calms the spirit.Then theres the simple everyday things.......the olive trees.....very important in Arab culture,each tree with its ancient twisted branches has a soul.The lemon trees........now i never get bored of the lemon trees.You see in England a lemon tree growing in your garden would be a thing of rare wonderment! Here,they are absolutely everywhere and I love them.They feel.........exotic.....and smell irresistible.The way the bread is baked!......it goes through the oven on a conveyor belt and comes out puffed up into round balls,then deflates into round flat pittas! Well as I keep saying .....I must sort out my photos and get them on here!!!! Still haven't gotten round to it....but I will...soon..........

sunday..........

We actually made it to church today!!!We've missed alot over the summer what with one thing and another.I feel bad if we miss it coz the kids really enjoy it.I usually take the 4 older ones and leave my toddler and baby at home with Baba!!!Needless to say he is not a church goer!!! I was brought up a Catholic but I always hated the rigidity of the Catholic church.....of course it may have changed now I have no idea....but anyway ......here we go to the local Baptist church....i was introduced to it by one of my friends here.When I first went I was really surprised at how diferent it was to Catholic Mass.There was no formal Liturgy but informal prayer and one long sermon by different preachers each week.They have alot of visitors from overseas so there really is an interesting variety of styles and it's great if it's in English as the Arabic can be a bit difficult to understand sometimes and listening to the translation through earphones can be a bit annoying!!! Anyway...I really enjoy the informal atmosphere of the church and the feeling that anyone is accepted.The hymns are also really beautiful..........Later in the afternoon I decided to take 5 children to macdonalds, baby stayed at home with Baba again! I'm constantly amazed at how much 9 and 10 year old boys can eat....sometimes my 9 year old stuffs his face so much that he ends up throwing up!! My toddler Isabel had a hissy fit in the middle of macd's and knocked a tray of cola and fries all over the floor...thank-you,great....so as I'm shuffling about the floor on all fours she starts screaming and whining at the top of her lungs.....through gritted teeth i said to my son "GET HER OUT OF HERE!!!!!"....hhhhmmmmmmm ,toddlers are tough.People always say that teenagers are the most difficult to deal with (I haven't had the pleasure yet!!) but I'd rather have a teenager that didn't speak to me than a completely irrational,moody unreasonable toddler...aaaaaggghhhhhhhh!...........

cold turkey.......

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oh no......

is it really that date again already? Has it really been 7 years since that horrible day?

this and that.......

well.......finally my washing machine has been fixed so i'm having a lovely time catching up on all that.....some of it had actually turned green so I had to throw it out!! so anyway.....I've been feeling a bit stressed and down lately so I decided that the best remedy for that would be to get some exercise.Up in Nazareth Illit there is a public indoor swimming pool open on wednesday evenings from 7.30 to 9.30 so i told my husband i was going out and thats it.His response was .......ooohhh....ok.It's not like a 5star pool or anything but that doesn't bother me.just to have a couple of hours on my own is so precious. There were quite a few people waiting at the door for it to open.All men.Russian men.I suddenly thought,"ooohh no,it's not all mens night is it??" But then i was relieved to see a small group of women as well! They were all yabbering on in russian,and of course they all assume that I am russian so they all start speaking to me in Russian! thats ok I'm used to that now! So in the changing rooms all the women are so uninhibited....they all just walk around naked as though it's all perfectly normal. I on the otherhand, being the repressed Brit that I am, was writhing and squirming under my towel trying not to show any of my bits! after about 10 minutes of this I realised how ridiculous i was being and just took the towel off and stood their.....gasp.......NAKED! It was actually quite liberating.It really felt great to be me and feel comfortable with that. Twenty years ago I would have been totally paranoid and self-conscious, probably checking myself in the mirror every five minutes to see if my mascara had run! I went and sat in he sauna and I could just feel all the tension melting away. It's quite a small sauna with really dim lighting so you almost feel like you are in this womb-like cocoon.The other womens voices are murmuring in the background and even though it's Russian, I think womens language is pretty universal. You kind of bond with these strangers for that short time. anyway my 'self-therapy'! worked and driving home I felt really relaxed and energized!! So that's where I'm going to be on wednesday nights from now on!!!!!!

skipping ropes.........

just a while ago my 2 sons got out these two skipping ropes and were giving me a demonstration......both were competing with eachother of course as to who was the fastest.You know it was really making me laugh so much.Usually I would tell them to stop it and hurry them off to bed.....but this time I actually stopped for a second and thought to myself, No......I'm just going to enjoy this in the moment...and we had so much fun! Of course then the girls had to join in as well.Their excited little faces as they were jumping up and down were just making me laugh so much.So many times I see my kids doing things and it takes me back to when i was a kid and i remember doing exactly the same things and having the same excited feelings.Then my husband walked in and his face lit up and he remembered how HE used to be good at skipping! Then he attempted to give us a demonstration....all 125kg of him!! well.......that was even more hilarious.........

I can't think of a title

There is absolutely nothing worse than feeling sick with a virus and having to deal with all your kids.OOOOHHH......yesterday was pretty bad.I begged them to be good and get on with things without me having to tell 50 times.They weren't too bad,it's just hard to keep the noise levels down.My oldest son who is ten, bless him, he did all the washing up in the evening and cleaned up all the kitchen!! that is the first time that he has ever done anything like that without being asked.Could it be that he is finally understanding the concept of EMPATHY! Boy's this age are just so selfish.I was really touched by his concern. Anyway,today I feel better.Perhaps the second worse thing when you have alot of kids is your washing machine breaking down!!!for the past week I have had no washing machine.I've had it about 6 months and it's already broken down 4 times.It took the guy a week just to come and look at it.....now he needs another week to actually fix it.I mean honestly....how outrageous is that.You try and explain to the service people on the phone and they really don't give a damn. So now i have 3 huge sacks of rancid laundry festering in my bathroom and I'm just handwashing a few things as I need them............marvellous..........bloody marvellous..........

sleepless........

I am actually writing this at 04.00am! I find that if I go to bed early like 8, I wake up in the middle of the night and just can't get back to sleep.We are in the process of choosing stuff for our new apartment and we have just been arguing so much about it! Men have weird taste...but if I stand my ground I will get my way in the end! it really is a nightmare choosing colours etc. I'm always terrified of making a mistake.I can totally understand why rich people just hire an interior designer..... anyway the kids are back in school so at least I'm getting some semblance of a routine back......