One Week to go :) and :(

It is a "both and" as we say at Kings. This means that something is not just either or, it is both of them, or one and the other. We have one to go in lecturing, although next week is mostly review and wiping tears. It will be quite intense from a perspective of saying goodbye and happy memories, not so intense from a perspective of heavy lecturing. This weekend we have a BBQ tonight, a huge party at Pinnocks Social Club on Saturday, a leaving BBQ on Sunday at church, 2 girls in our community group are getting baptized on Sunday night, another fancy dress (costume for all you American readers) party on Monday, a final tutor group meal on Tuesday, the end of the year formal banquet on Wednesday (I'm emceeing, sort of glad, sort of not), final chapel and community group lunch on Thursday, all class BBQ at our house on Friday and Graduation on Saturday. So that is the next week, it is quite packed and we will have some space to share with our friends. The end of the term is bittersweet, to some extent we are ready to move on in life but some extent we are not ready to. I think that saying goodbye to close friends will be the most difficult piece of the finishing puzzle, that and getting used to not being with the same group day after day. We realize that being with the same close knit group is not ultimate reality, rather it has been a great chunk of 10 months of reality for us. Processing the end is not easy, but we are up to it and continue plugging on. Do keep us in your prayers as we seek God's will for our next steps in life. As for now we'll continue going to BBQ's, parties and celebrations, and enjoy Wimbledon whilst it is on the tele. later
earl

Another Saturday, with rain

Here I am sitting at the computer, it's raining outside, this is not a surprise. Lately it vascilates (spelling?) between rain and not rain, but it seems to be humid quite consistently. Earlier today I walked into the city centre to buy materials for the church meeting tomorrow. We are sharing about our trip to North Africa, and also doing the kids work for the day. After some music we are going to do stations of having the kids and teens doing artwork, seeing God in the everyday objects, and lighting candles for friends that they want to pray for. After some time together doing that we'll have them all go outside and play a couple of games to round off the morning. We did the kids work earlier in the year and it didn't go great, I think that our plan for tomorrow sounds better than the previous one that we had, looking forward to it. Our time at East Basingstoke is quickly coming to an end, it has been fantastic. They are a lovely group of talented people that have so much to offer the community around them, and each other. We have learned tons there and will really miss the people and the gatherings. Rebecca and I are team teaching on July 1st our last Sunday there, it is going to be Revelation 8 - 11, not the easiest topic in the world to preach on, but we are up for it nonetheless. Hopefully tonight will work for a game of Settlers, looking forward to playing that some when back in Indiana, I think that a friend of mine has the game. There are some aspects of home that we are really excited about, basically they are the things that we don't get here that we do at home. I'm not going to go into all that now, a later blog will be on that particular topic, once I wrap my head around it. As for now I am going to work on music for tomorrow so that we are prepared and see God move among the kids and teens of East. Talk to you all later,
earl

Happy Father's Day

Today is June 17th that means that it is Father's Day both here in the UK and at home in the US. So with that I say to my Dad happy Dad's Day! My Dad has been so supportive of us coming to Kings this year, and for that matter has always been supportive of our decisions. He is very interested in our steps and always has been interested. I have gleaned from him the importance of spending time with God, being a friendly face consistently, and being willing to serve no matter the situation or who is being served. I trust that you are having a great day today, and that you will continue enjoy the season that you are in presently. Have a great time with some time off, don't work too hard, but also don't stop working either, I have learned that from you as well. So in closing Happy Dad's Day, looking forward to seeing you in August. Enjoy the pics

deeder
Here he is the man of the day

At my home in New York, Dad, Mom myself and Mandy Sue

Dad feeding swans at a park in Oxford

Some thoughts

I suppose I must be in a writing mood as I continue to write and think through the day. Being back at KBC for the last couple of weeks has not been the easiest weeks of my life. Extreme culture change, and then the itching for the culture I have known for the my whole life - America. England is not that different, but it is somewhat different and I am looking to be in that culture. The last week we have had a chance to reflect upon all that God has been up to in our lives over the last month. I have seen Him be so consistent in speaking into situations on the trip, in prayer since then and in insight from the Word. When God speaks I have seen that He opens doors as well, this is incredibly comforting and scary all at the same time. Our goal is to live full on for God for the whole of life, where and what that looks like has not been revealed as of yet. I am seeing life much like a wooded path and I'm holding a small flashlight that gives enough to go on, but not really enough to see everything that is coming up. I suppose I don't see all that could be too scary and to cause me to want to turn around, so God's plan is better isn't it? I don't see this path as an inadequate path, sure they might be logs that have fallen across, maybe some muddy patches, the occasional hole or wet spot that has to be navigated through. Does that mean that the path is not then traveled? While dark the God given flashlight of the Holy Spirit does lend illumination into where to walk, how to tread and what to watch out for. So I guess you would say that we are on that path, the path doesn't end either, and I don't expect that it gets any easier or less difficult to navigate. We'll keep walking, hiking if you will, much like our trip we'll keep on going, and learn from the journey not just the finish line. Thanks for listening as I get some thoughts on paper, you happened to join in my thoughts this time. later
earl

Pics from the end of the trip

This is what the mountains sort of looked like

The tallest mountain that we were to climb is somewhere behind those clouds rolling in

Our humble base camp while in the mountains is being taken down and packed up

A nice pic of our housemates Jazz and Rachel

Back home

My how time flies when you are busy and somehow it still flies when you are not. It has been almost a week since last I wrote, hard to believe because it doesn't seem that long ago. Continuing on with the story from the mountains we had another early start. This was needed so that we could get everyone and everything back to base by 1:00 on that Tuesday. This sounds relatively easy but in reality getting 57 people back "home" with all stuff, all cleaned, all put away, was not any easy task, but rather a difficult one. This required extra effort from people who walked a couple of hours, some who walked for 4 hours and then the crew who returned without walking only to clean for hours. Either way it was tough, there was no way of getting around it, by the time we all returned (all did return safely!) we were spent, physically and emotionally. The debriefing time was as good as can be when you are spent, and to be honest the reality of flying home the next didn't sound so bad at that point. Sure we had had a beautiful time, life changing, life giving and blow your socks off, but coming back to Oxford was not a bad deal either. After settling in for the evening at about 1:00 I was up again at 6 ready to go to the airport. Waiting, flying, waiting, walking, riding, riding (you know the drill) and then we were home. Getting all the home seems like a big deal, once you arrive at the airport you say "we're here" whilst that has some truth the reality you are at the airport. For us that meant a 2 1/2 hour bus ride and the hailing a taxi, dealing with our rucksacks and then unloading once home. I might sound melodramadic about the whole thing, it really isn't that bad, its just when you are tired that the whole travel experience seems compounded. To say the least we enjoyed a couple of days of next to nothing here in Oxford. Relaxation, catching up some, sleeping, etc... and then life was back to somewhat normal, if one can call it that. later
earl

Up the mountain you go

Getting up at an hour earlier than the sun is the not the norm for me, but alas I was up at 4:00 at the latest on that Monday morning. No I hadn't slept that well, with my sleeping bag seemingly sliding downhill all night, I thought I might end up like Dan, outside of the tent looking at the stars. It was not warm when I arose, the semolina and egg was though, in a wierd way it was somewhat tasty, maybe because I was hungry so anything sounded ok at the time. Adrenaline kicked in quickly as Tim, Rach and I made sure that the expedition leaders were ready to roll for the day. The extreme group was prepping to climb a rather large summit, the next group was going to climb another rather large summit and the small summit people were going to climb a smaller summit. If you know me well I'm not a climber, camper, earlybird, hiker or outdoorsman hardly at all. I enjoy the outdoors but to an extent, a quite minute extent to be honest. Anyway we were off on a day long journey headed to a town and then up a mountain and back to the base. When arriving at the town an older gentleman invited us into his home, as you do in that area. We enjoyed some sweet tea, biscuits, more sweet tea, more biscuits and then thought that we should get hiking again. After attempting to leave he called us back to the living room because they were preparing lunch for us, 9:30 and we were going to eat a full meal, not bad for a hike. So there we were eating buttered noodles and drinking more tea, we were ready for the remainder of the hike.
The summit loomed ahead of our group, it wasn't ridicuously high, but to inexperienced climbers like most of us were it was a heck of a long way up a slippery slope of rock and sand. After much traversing we all made it to what we thought was the summit, it wasn't but in reality the actual summit was not that much more. We all made it officially to the top and then enjoyed a smallish lunch while enjoying the amazing view over the valley. Getting down was next on the agenda, to be honest I was worried about that part, if getting up was that hard how would we get down. Dave our trusty leader found a great path down a different face of the mountain and we all arrived safely at the bottom in all one piece. From there I had in my head that we were close to base camp, I was wrong by probably 4-5 miles since we walked for another 2-3 hours after I thought that we were close. You know how that is when you think that you are almost there, in reality we weren't even a few stones throw from the camp, as the crow flies we were miles away. The rest of the hike is not glamorous, just long, mostly uphill, across water at times, over rocks, and mentally battling being tired and wanting to relax. We made it and all crashed waiting for the other groups to arrive from their respective hikes. I was glad to be back, Rebecca and I had made it to the top, that was something for those of you who know how much of climbers and backpackers we are. I'll write more later about the remainder of the adventure to the mountains. later
earl

You've gotten up, now get outta here - everybody that is

As stated in the last posting the remainder of the day did not go extremely smooth, at least not exactly as our leadership team had planned. That is reality isn't it? Since when does everything go as planned? Anyway I went down into town to see how the shopping was going for the trip, we had to purchase all of our food and then make it all on site, so that was not an easy task. It took many people to buy the food, bring it back to base and attempt to get a decent price on all of it. Whilst I was gone we had a notice that came through stating that the road had troubles, hence the vehicles traveling had trouble as did the time table for our plan. All of a sudden we had to shift our method of getting people and material to the site, this took everyone having to prepare quickly and before we knew we were off, all of us, all of our stuff, that's a lot of people and stuff! There were some complications with the road, some local people had poured cement that day to cover some irrigation canals, you really shouldn't drive on wet cement that's not good for it. So we needed to build little bridges across, the cement was not so wide that we could not do this, with some effort of course. Once getting to those spots we meticuously placed the rocks, planks, metal strips etc... and drove 3 vehicles over 4 different crossings, meaning 12 times we built the bridges. This caused the trip to be much longer than planned and eventually the whole troup of 36 people arrived at camp around the same time, 6 hours after the first group. We were all there, and a hot meal somehow (thank you Lottie, Jo and Steve) was served to us only 8 minutes after the deadline. Not bad for the complications of the road that we had to deal with. After eating we were all quite keen to get to bed, plus when it is dark you can't really see to do much, and when it is freezing cold you don't want to do much, and when the curfew is strictly 10:00 you can't do much. The whole camp was quiet by 10:20 so that we could have an alpine start in the morning, ready to climb our various mountains. later
earl

Get up get outta here

Sunday morning arrived after a relaxing Saturday that included much reading, some playing games, and a couple of nice meals. The morning started early as we were up about an hour earlier to start the final three days of the trip. After rallying us all around for the start of the day the brief was read aloud as to the objectives our group needed to meet in the next 3 days. The objectives were to have 8 people from our group climb three different mountains on Monday, for the campsite to be set up and a meal by 8:00 P.M. and then for everyone and everything to get back to our homebase by 1:00 P.M. on the last day. We as a group were also then to nominate leaders among us for this excercise. My name was nominated to lead the group, a little surprising to me since I have never proper camped and if I have it was not with 50 some people in a rugged area. My camping has existed of Angie taking care of everything or of us being soaked in lame tents at youth weekends, certainly not the kind of camping that we were looking at in this location. After some more discussion by the group then the leaders came back and stated stated that I was the leader, Rach and Tim were the assistants with other people on the leadership team as well. The morning was filled with decisions, ideas, discussions, questions, answers, packing, planning, shopping, a bit of relaxation, traveling and attempting to catch my breath. Our group was amazing in that they did all that they could to help, worked together as a team, were self starters, and did all tasks asked of them. To be honest there was much that we had to do in order to get ready to camp with 57 people in the mountains. If you have ever done that kind of thing you know how much planning and effort there is that goes into that type of adventure. The difference here was that we had a couple of hours to make decisions, had to start packing, and had to think of all the details needed to be thought of for that venture. For the most part the morning went smooth and the first load of people were off to the campsite by about 10:30, the remainder of the day did not go quite as smooth, you'll find out soon with the next couple of posts. later
earl

Not quite holiday - Part three

Honestly this will be the final report of the not quite holiday aspect of the trip. At times I wonder if I am too meticulously attached to detail because I don't leave stones unturned. For those of you who enjoy detail you probably have liked the blog, if you are not into detail then you have proabably enjoyed the pictures. Back to the story, it was 9 and we wanted to get back to the main city to do some shopping. We met yet another English teacher who joined us for the walk to the taxi rank, on the way we ran into the headmaster of the school once again. He was happy to see us once again, he is a very friendly man, and doing a fine job in my humble opinion. The guys helped us land a taxi with a decent price and we were off. It sort of felt like we were leaving our home away from home that we had for a couple of days. The taxi ride back was uneventful as we were quite tired and ready to chill before heading back to our homebase. While in the main city we ate some ice cream and did some shopping. The girls and Tony made some purchases, it was great fun walking through the streets and observing people. I was able to land a couple of drums for about 10 pounds total, I was pleased with that price for the drums that I was able to find. The orange juice was wonderful as were the cashews, and then we headed to the next taxi rank to get a taxi to our final destination. They remembered us from hailing one from previous days, and after another hour and a half or so we were back to the homebase. We had decided to stroll back around 4:30 which was the time that we were supposed to be back. We arrived right on time, sunglasses on and shopping bags in hand, all in all an amazing short trip where we saw God at work and had a great time building relationship with each other and our new friends.

Pics from city 2

Here we are walking down the street of our destination

Number 18 classroom after the end of our class, it was a real blast

Here we are hanging out in Hamid's bedroom, it was our bedroom for the two nights

Jamar preparing the meal for the first night that we were there, very tasty noodles in sauce

Not quite holiday - part two

At some point during the day we were looking to have some time to ourselves as a group, we needed to chat, pray and recover from the amazingness of the first 24 hours in the city. After going back to Adbul's for a while we headed with him and Jamar (another teacher) to their favorite restaurant, I don't remember the name something with lamb in it. It was all in Arabic so we didn't have a clue what was being ordered, we assumed that it would be all good anyway, the food on the trip so far had been killer so why not then? Once it was all said and done Abi had counted 23 plates of food on the table, this was salad, chips, and many different meats including; beef patty like things, beef, half chicken, sheep stomach, liver, chicken stomach, and not sure what the other meat was, it was for the most part quite tasty. After stuffing ourselves we were keen to go off and search for the food we needed to prepare an English meal. We didn't know how we were going to make the English meal, seeing that we had no ingredients, 2 sauce pans and cooking over a propane fire with nothing else, it sure wasn't like home. After some discussion and wandering we found the market and purchased rice, coffee, sugar and other bits. Then we found the fresh veggies and bought a bunch of them. The meat portion of our meal was concerning, would it be chicken, lamb or beef? We went with lamb for whatever reason I'm not sure and so we stopped by the butcher and I baaaa'ed to show that we wanted sheep. They knew what we meant and after attempting to communicate we noticed that the lady standing next to us spoke enough English that we could get by with what she knew, yet again God's provision in a time of need. We were then off to the cafe to catch some time with God and with each other praying. Sitting in the middle of a cafe reading the Bible and praying was a great catch up time and energizing as we knew that the remainder of the night might not be the easiest from a spiritual perspective.
After arriving back Abi started cooking at about 7:30 or so, to let you know how the evening went we ate at about 10:30. The three hours between were great, we cut veggies, chatted and had a blast and welcomed yet another visitor into the house. Abdul had invited the Islamic thought teacher from his school to join us, he was a very nice man who brought fresh bread that his wife had made. Conversation turned quickly to spiritual ideas, and the discussion about what we thought of Muslims, what they thought of Christians, what the view of the media was and so on. Honest discussion was the recipe of the evening, everyone involved except for Tony who was lying down, he was nackered and not feeling well. The Lamb a la International was tasty, we were somewhat surprised that it worked out, Abi did a great job of whipping it up from scratch. After supper they guys had us watch a short television program, and then we all remembered that they wanted to watch us pray much like we watched them pray the evening before. It was quite amazing as we prayed, worshipped, sang, read the Bible and had observers the whole time. We met with the Lord there in Jamar's bedroom and then all of sudden the 9 of us were dancing and taking pictures of each other. What a great way to end the time there, because we were shattered and off to bed we went.

Not quite holiday - part one

Buckle your seat belt, this could be a long ride. Picking up where we left off last time, we were all of a sudden in front of a classroom of students in room 18. The English teacher Abdul was surpised that there were English speakers in his class, and right off the bat he started to ask questions and have the students ask them as well. I answered a couple, Tony did as well and then Tash was up next. They asked her what she was studying and she said the Bible. Let's just say that we were off from there into the world of spiritual interest, questions, religion and so on. Picture it, five westerners in a city, in a public school classroom answering questions about Jesus, spiritual things, Islam, Muhammed, the Bible etc... Another prayer of ours that God heard as He set apart this teacher, school and city for us to arrive in. After about an hour and a half of interacting the students the class was over and we were invited back to Abdul's place to spend the night. He shared a flat with a couple of other guys and we saw the place. He stated that there was a surprise planned for supper, we would be meeting another English teacher we'll call him Jarid, a friend of his who lived with the computer teacher Hamed, another guy that we had met. We all headed off for the other flat where three more teachers lived together, and after chatting, laughing and settling in we enjoyed what we thought was supper around 8:00. Turned out that we didn't eat until 11:30, to say the least we were spent at that point. In the hours between food the 9 of us chatted about life, culture, teaching and spiritual things. Being devout Muslims the guys went into a bedroom to pray, and they invited us to watch and ask them questions if we would like to. I have used the term surreal before and I will again as we observed their reverance and faith.
There was some confusion around this time, one does not expect to be ushered into a room and watch men of other faith pray and worship, but it was eye-opening definitely. The noodles were ready at 11:30 and we ate some, most of us were too tired to dig right in. We were off to bed by 1:00, our friends still chatting, laughing and having a great time, us being bumps on logs who had traveled and expended much emotional energy. I don't think it is the norm to have time constraints on mini expeds, but we did. Abdul had invited us back to his classroom for 10:00 the next day, hence we all got up, got ready and were out the door by 9:50. Upon arrival to the school there was some discussion as to whether we would be allowed back in. We heard the word Christian in the discussion but also know that part of the chat was because we did not have any paperwork allowing us to waltz into a public school and speak. Out of nowhere Abdul showed up, said it was OK and we were off once again to room 18 for another English class experience. This time after talking in Arabic for 30 seconds or so he said he was going to hand it over to us to teach the remainder of the lesson on 5 sentence paragraphs. Being the primary teacher that I am my head immediately turned to hamburgers and was their colored chalk?
There was so I had Abi (an amazing artist) draw a hamburger on the board and I started talking slowly about what a hamburger was, they didn't get it until I used the universal McDonalds. Then we were all on the same page, and off we went into the Ox Bow renowned hamburger writing method of paragraphs. About an hour later after doing an example, making mental pictures, listening to our group examples and pounding home the elements of 5 sentences the students were off writing their own this time. They did a fantastic job, everyone of them gave a great effort, I knew because Abdul was so excited about how they were performing. Many read their paragraphs out and we all clapped after each one. Following a rendition of the Hokey-Pokey and a monologue by one of the girls the class was over. I had just taught 20 Arabic speaking middle schoolers a lesson that I used with my own students in the U.S. it was an exhillirating time for a teacher like myself. later
earl

Off ya go

Whilst my group and Rebecca's group were toiling in the school 4 of the other groups were out and about in the country. These outings were termed mini-expeditions, and they could consist of anything that the group wanted to do, within distance and financial reason. Of course we were on pins and needles to hear how the other groups did, because we knew the next day we were off as well, free as birds for 3 days to traverse the country and see what God was up to. All the other groups returned, some interesting stories of course; sleeping outside, not being able to find shelter in a downpour, hospitality from people who offered their home for the evening, camping out on top of a mountain and staying in a nicer hotel in the main city. The essence of this exercise was to hear from God where to go, what to do there and then go in faith, much like the disciples in Jesus's day. My little group had a couple of meetings, heard some specific ideas - a city on the map, working with children and schools, a busy commerce area, power lines, English speakers. All of these were what we were going when we set off to find our destination. (I'll call it City 2) We found the bus to city 2, it was not terribly crowded, hence most of us fell asleep until Tony woke me up right before we arrived, the first thing I saw was a large power station with many power lines coming out of it. Then we all remembered the picture that Tony had seen whilst praying about me looking at power lines, we thought that we were on the right track. Next as we passed through the city it looked and felt like what Tash and myself had envisioned while praying for the excursion. We eventually got off the bus, and decided to pray, we were there, with no further plans, no ability to communicate in their language, and nowhere to rest our heads. Five Westerners, an American, Canadian, Norwegian, and two British in a city that we found out later never saw tourists or English speakers. We saw a couple of kids coming out from a side street and decided to amble that way, realizing that many more were streaming out, it must have been a school. Lo and behold there was a school at the end of the lane, many middle schoolers were coming out, staring at us as though we were from Mars. We started to pray for the school and a couple of girls came up to Abi and started trying to talk with her, before we knew we were in a sea of students, probably 50 - 60 all around us trying to talk in English, French, Spanish and Arabic, really whatever language they knew and thought we might have a clue in. Details are sketchy but within 10 minutes were ushered into the school, standing in the office area, waiting to be taken to the English class that was happening upstairs. It was all quite surreal, within 30 minutes of arriving in city 2 we had seen power lines, commerce like area, been in a school, talked with many kids, and were about to meet some real English speakers, wow God was blowing us away right off the bat. later
earl

Pics from the walk around

Just looking out at the mountains and countryside as we walked

From atop a village

Our Sycamore family looking out over a valley

Most of our group coming back down from the top of the mountain, quite a view

A circumcision party and paint

You wouldn't expect those two things to go together but alas they do. My small team was sent to a local high school to do some cleaning, scraping, sanding, washing, disenfecting, priming, and eventually painting. The area of the school that we were eager to attack was a part of the school that has not been used for quite sometime, and now there was funding to make that area into a sick bed for the high school that has some students as full time residency. We arrived there ready to work and as customary we were immediately sat down to a second breakfast, there was no way around it, not that I was looking for a way around it. The breakfast included bread, jam, honey, cheese, olive oil, boiled eggs, cumin, salt and of course tea. We feasted and enjoyed the time, knowing that we had a full day ahead of us in the school. After being in the sick bed for a just a short while we realized that this job was bigger than us, we would not be able to come anywhere near finishing in the three days that we had to work. Like good workers we started in, 9 of our group plus 6 local students all sanding the walls in one chorus. It was loud, dusty, sandy and difficult to breathe, this lasted until lunchtime when we heard that the plans had changed. TIA (This is Africa) so plans constantly change, you roll with them, and learn to enjoy the change. Our group had been invited to an official party, that was all that we knew, of course we accepted the invitation. Come to find out there was a government type building that was the site of an area wide circumcision event, doctors from all around had come, people from all over the area had come with their sons. We arrived and they asked us if we wanted to go in or stay outside, thinking that meant lunch we said "sure we'll go in". This didn't mean lunch, before you knew it we were in a room with 10-15 doctors, babies screaming, mothers watching, and you know what happening. After a short visit we were ushered back out of the building to the back garden where a live band was waiting, dancers and many nicely decorated tables. Then about 15 minutes later we were escorted to the front of the building to the tent where the dignitaries were sitting, and we sat in the next tent over from them ready to eat lunch. Two chickens, a tagine with beef and prunes followed by alot of melon. We feasted yet again, not sure why were invited to join in the festivities. Then the dancing began by a local troupe, they were great drummers, along the same lines as STOMP, but not near as expensive. From that surreal happening we went back to the job site and sanded till our hands were rougher than a tree trunk. To wrap up this portion of the trip, we ended up working two more days, no more parties, did have a second breakfast and worked our tails off. By the time that we were finished with our portion we had gotten at least one coat and a bit more in every room and hallway of the sick bed area. Our group had accomplished much, and had a great time doing it as well, but ya we were ready for the next part of our adventure. later
earl

A Walk Around

To begin with our college group was split up to travel, 20 here and 18 there. That was quite wierd because usually groups travel totally together. After a decent day of travel our first job at our destination was to get our small group (Ellen, Abi, Tash, Tony and me) to our final destination in our little town. So off we were hailing taxis, haggling for prices for taxis, verifying prices, arranging more taxis for others, and then piling 6 people into taxis that only had 5 spots. If you have ever traveled in Africa you know that as many that can get into a car get in, so we did. About an hour later our groups all arrived together, spending about the amount that we were supposed to spend, a little haggling but that is expected. The first day was lazily spent, in all reality the second day was lazily spent as well. A little tour into the town, a shot at Arabic (Salaam Elaykoum) (spelling?) but not much other language beyond that based on only speaking English. English is not universal, as I met very few speakers on this trip. Anyway the next day the plan was to go for a walk, to some it was just that but to others it was a full-on hike. The views were astounding (pics later on) the little villages nestled in the mountains, olive groves, cacti type vegetation, little paths and so on. Our group had a great time looking over the valley as far as the eye could see and it as far. The hike back down the mountain was not easy, Rebecca and I took it slow, that was fine there was no rush. In the evening after resting a while our group enjoyed a great worship service and tagine (traditional dish). That evening 4 of the little groups found out about the mini-expedition which I will tell you all about in later blogs. We found out that we were going to work our tails off on different work projects, again I will tell you about those on a later blog. Again sorry about the ambiguousness (spelling, word?) of this blog but I have been instructed as such. The walk around was great, the view was amazing, the opportunities were astounding. later
earl