January 13, 2002

The situation has improved somewhat in our area - which, as always, is a qualified statement. What that means is that things are better than they were when none of our students could come from Jenin. Things are still worse than they were - say - six months ago, but then again, everything is relative here.

Father Hossam, the Anglican priest was able to come from Nablus this morning, a welcome change from the previous months. We worshiped with that community. It is definite now that he will be transferred up to Nazareth within the next few weeks, which will be a real loss for Nablus and Zababdeh. It's still unclear who'll be coming to take his place - the wheels of church hierarchy seem to cease turning north of Ramallah and south of Nazareth.

Sharing some gifts from our trip to Egypt.

After church, we made some overdue visitations to friends and "family" in the village, sharing some of the spoils of our trip to Egypt. The kids of one family loved the postcards from the Egypt Museum and told us the latest Khalili (Hebronite) jokes.

An actual turtle is not a legal play in Scrabble.

We then headed up to the Arab-American University of Jenin to visit a friend and play some overdue Scrabble. Her pet turtle helped us with some of the tile movement.