I am finally getting around to writing again. I wish I could find the inspiration to do this more often, but sadly the inspiration to write comes only occasionally (smile). This time I want to share about an outing that was a real blessing two weeks ago. School started again on the 7th of January. Monday the 13th we had another holiday and decided to do something fun. I didn't hear about this planned outing until the weekend and I had already scheduled some tutoring sessions, one at 8 a.m. and one at 10 a.m. We were supposed to be leaving at 10, but thankfully people were late so I was able to have my tutoring session with my student Ahmad and still join the others on a trip to mountains.
As I was nearing the close of my tutoring session I thought it would be very nice to take Ahmad (the boy I was teaching from Blue class) with us. We were supposed to be going to the mountains and I thought it would be a nice change for him (What 11 year old boy wouldn't like to get out into the mountains for some fresh air, rock climbing, and possibly snow). I asked Alexis (my boss) and after he called his mom to make sure it was ok, the approval was given. We finished loading everything in the cars and we were off. It was a rather big group of us. There were Mr. and Mrs. Manley with their son, Mr. and Mrs. Podbrezsky with their baby girl and young son, Mr. and Mrs. Papendick with their young son, Alexis, Suzanne, Ahmad, and me. When we all gathered in front of the center it was decided that Ahmad and the Manleys' son would ride with Suzanne and Alexis (since the boys were about the same age and might be good company for each other), and I would ride with the Manley's. I was very happy with this arrangements because I liked the Manleys and had wanted to spend more time with them. Now I found myself in the back of their car enjoying the conversation and the atmosphere that pervaded in the car, I also worked on knitting some gloves with some yarn Alexis had given me for Christmas.
After we had driven for some time Suzanne stopped to tell us that Ahmad had emptied what little he had in his stomach in her car. The poor boy had been too shy to tell Suzanne to stop and he was covered in vomit. As he got out of the car the wind hit him and only a few seconds after getting out he was shivering from the cold. We cleaned him and the seat up as best we could and got back into the car, this time I switched to Suzanne's car. The language barrier between the two boys had not been broken and I learned that the whole first part of the trip had been spent in silence, I don't have very much Arabic Vocabulary, but at least Ahmad knows me and we can sort of communicate. The Manley's boy went back to their car and I sat with Ahmad who continued to feel terrible as we continued into the mountains on the windy roads. As we were driving up we found a clothing store and stopped to see if we could find anything else for Ahmad to wear...I will never forget the look of delight on Ahmad's face when he emerged from the store about 10 min later to show me his new clothes! He had gotten a whole new outfit with blue trousers, a thick blue shirt, and a nice warm hat. His happiness seemed to drive the car-sickness away until we reached the top of a mountain with a good view and a nice place to build a camp fire.
As we climbed out of the car we could see piles here and there of snow, Ahmad was so excited about it. After we had helped carry the stuff from the cars to our camp fire spot Ahmad followed me to look for wood. I soon learned that Ahmad had no clue what wood was good for burning and what was not. I thought every boy knew how to gather dry wood and make a fire...apparently not! I found out that Ahmad had never been to the mountains before and before Alexis had taken him on a class trip to the Sea he had never been there either! I learned that he had grown up in the city and knew nothing about nature and how to survive in the bush. As we walked over the jagged rocks looking for wood he would run from one tree to then next asking if it was ok. I soon realized that he had no concept of dry wood burning and wet wood not, so I explained to him in my broken Arabic that there is water in some wood and no water in other wood, and that we were looking for wood with no water so that it could burn... He soon got a method down for finding out if the wood was good for burning or not. He would run up to a tree or branch and call out "Miss Tamara, mai hon?" (water here?) and if the wood was dry I would say "la, mafi mai hon" (no water here) or if it was still green I would say "eh, my hon" (yes, water here). Thus we collected wood for our fire :). We didn't have to collect too much wood because we had picked some up along the road on our way up and Mr. Papendick was also gathering wood.
When there was no more need for wood Ahmad convinced me to come with him to explore the rocks and play in the snow. I surprised him when I threw a snowball at him that exploded over his shoes (I didn't want to make his clothes wet again:) ), but the look of joy on his face made me see that it had been a long time since someone had done that to him...he soon got a snowball of his own but "sadly" missed me :). I spent the next 30 min or so following Ahmad around and taking pictures of him at his request, while the others got the food ready. It was such a wonderful and refreshing experience to be in the mountains with the clean air and a picture of peace all around...But the most wonderful and refreshing part of the whole trip was watching Ahmad discover a love for GOD's nature, and enjoy the simpleness that one can find in it. Below are some pictures that help to show the fun and beauty of the event better than words can.
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| Ahmad enjoying the snow |
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| Ahmad enjoying the rocks |
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| Ahmad tried his hand at photography |
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| The rocky mountain top we had our campfire in |
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| A herd of sheep came through as we were just starting to eat (there were two donkey's and a sheep dog too :)). |
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| The sheep dog kept a close eye on us as we took pictures of 'his' sheep :) |
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| Roasting hot dogs over our fire |
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| The beautiful mountains that loomed over us |
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| After we ate we hiked up two hills...this depression of water was on the side of one of those hills. Ahmad is the one gazing at the reflection in the water. |
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| Stoping to take pictures/rest after conquering the first hill |
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| The view from the second hill...notice the moon rising over the mountains on the left |
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| Me. |
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| Beautiful sunset |
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| Enjoying the campfire after we got back from our walk for a few more minutes until we had to go. |
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| Package from Southern SM dept.! Thank you all who wrote letters to me (and to other SM's) through the SM dept. I enjoyed every one of them! And thank you SM dept. for all the goodies included in the package! |
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| Our cleaner's two girls help with the work. |
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| The Sabbath of the 18th we took some of our kids with us to a potluck at a friends house...the kids have discovered one significant problem with me...there are only two sides of me on which they can sit. The others have to find other creative places to sit. |
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| Walking through a shop this last week I saw this...When was the last time you saw scuba diving cows? |
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| This morning (Sabbath the 25th) I looked out my window and saw this! |
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| Looks like they were putting a fridge or something into the window of the top floor...apparently it was easier to do it this way than carry it up the stairs! :) |
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