Shway Shway

Shway Shway! "slowly slowly" One of the many useful phrases I'm learning while trying to acquire a few Arabic phrases here and there. Sometimes it helps to have the word repeated slowwwly and other times it does no good whatsoever because as hard as I try, I cannot master the extremely difficult throat pronunciations in either Arabic or Hebrew. Luckily, for me, I still have some time left before the trip comes to a close! I have decided to stay here another three and a half weeks beyond my original departure date (now I have about 6 weeks left of the trip) and I'm so excited about this extra time. Several small excursions are already in the works (Petra, Jordan, Southern Israel - to name a few) and I'm also looking forward to furthering some awesome friendships I have going here in Nazareth.

This evening I enjoyed another delicious home-cooked traditional Arabic meal at a co-worker's home. I cannot pronounce or even really begin to describe it, but I'll post pictures soon! Last weekend and this week has just flown by. Over the weekend I enjoyed seeing more of the Galilee and spending time with some local Arab Christian friends and was invited to their extended family's home on Sunday after church. Family is extremely important in this culture as families generally live all in the same building or within the same town.

I'm just off to bed to try and get a good night's sleep in preparation for another long day of leading tours and teaching English in the evening. I have recently started doing more work on the side for the Village (marketing, writing, etc.), so I am as busy as ever. I plan to limit my volunteering the last few weeks while I'm here so I can travel and relax more before heading home. One more quick update before I sign off: I accepted the job in Peru and plan to move there (Lord willing) late April or early May. If anyone has good tips for travel in South America, send them my way! =)

Here are a few pics from recent days

On the right is a new friend and fellow tour guide, Betsy. Her and her husband have been living here for about five months and plan to stay through the summer. On the left is Daniel, a manager at the Village. 

This was Daniel's daughter's 18th birthday party. Very very fun. All kids from their local youth group. 

We made Mexican!

Max enjoyed our cooking

There are literally thousands of stray cats here in Nazareth. I took this photo because I thought "Goose x 3 " and I was pretty excited...