April 6, 2001

Elizabeth finds a friend.

Since it's Friday, it gave us the chance to walk around the hills near the new Arab-American University of Jenin. As we've said before about it, there are tremendous views and there are always new plants and trees and wildlife to learn about. In particular, we saw the locust bean tree - the one referred to in the gospels when it says that John the Baptist was subsisting on honey and wild locusts (not the insect, but the bean). We also learned that the spectacular red flowers which we've featured throughout our journal before are the "lilies of the field" Jesus preached about.

One of our young hosts.

After a picnic, we headed back to Zababdeh to fulfill more social obligations and to impress everyone with Alecia's Arabic level ("three days and she speaks better than you!" we are told). Ah, how a little goes a long way...