Debbie's impressions

Wow! What a week! Today (June 23) was a local day consisting of working on the 6th floor of the college building and touring the town of Ibilin. I succeeded in painting the walls and myself. We painted about 6 rooms, I think, finishing 3 coats on 4 rooms between today and last Saturday. We worked well together. Some of us became "specialists" in our jobs...we had Brushers, who cut in along the tile; Low Rollers, Mid-Rollers, and High Rollers, who rolled paint on their assigned height of wall; Ladder Walkers, those skilled at moving the ladder while on it (don't cringe...the ladder dance is fun to watch and they were trained by an expert); and me..."Corner Girl", able eliminate the evil missed spots where walls meet while armed only with a corner roller.

The kids are playing with some Ibilin kids as I type. The kids have been fun to watch. They interact well with the locals. We had the grandson of our guide on the bus with us yesterday. The kids all sat at the back of teh bus and learned to sing Happy Birthday in 6 different languages...Arabic, Hebrew, Italian, German, French, and Spanish. (I promised them I would teach them the Romanian version later.) Each time they mastered a new one, they came up and sang it to Christina...even though her birthday was June 18th. (We figured that if we sing to her at 6:18 it would be okay.)


Yesterday we toured Biram...Abuna's home town that was destroyed when he was a child. It was a lovely 32 degrees. (Okay that's Celsius...around 90 ish or so) Abuna's cousin, Anis, gave us the grand tour of the ruins. He also grew up in Biram. We did this without the aid of a machete through shoulder high weeds, complete with stickery souveniers in our socks. We were expecting to see Stanley Livingston at any time. Anis welcomed us into his home...which consisted of 3 walls. We were told that if we were to dig through the rubble, we would get down to the marble tile on the floor of the guest house. He did apologize for not being able to offer us Arab coffee, which is the custom when one has guests. It was quite a site to see partial walls and volunteer plants growing everywhere. Anis was a great guide, not only in Biram, but also as we traveled through the countryside. We went to the Jordan River. I went wading in the river. The song is wrong...the Jordan River is not chilly and wide. It was rather warm and only about 20-30 feet wide where we were.

Well, I'd love to tell you more, but it's time for our group meeting, so I'll sign off for now!
Love to all... Debbie