A Little Bit of West in the East

As you know, we live in the Middle EAST.

As you know, Thanksgiving was last week.

As you know, that is a 100% WESTERN holiday.

As you know, we couldn't let a holiday pass like that being un-celebrated.

So, this is how you pull off a WESTERN holiday in the Middle EAST.

{WARNING: it is not easy}

Step 1: You get very nervous that no turkeys are showing up in the local grocery stores leading up to Thanksgiving. You block out a day near Thanksgiving to drive 4 hours up and 4 hours back to the capital to buy a turkey OR you put a friend in the capital on stand-by to buy a cooler, buy a turkey, and send it on the bus down to you. But, you rejoice when you get text messages from every foreigner you know in town the day turkeys arrive to the local grocery store. You run to the store and pay $65 for an 18 lb BUTTERBALL turkey. Then you come home and try to figure out how to squeeze a frozen 18 lb turkey into your tiny freezer.

Step 2: You google a lot of really strange things.

Google Search: can I freeze celery {because celery only shows up every once in a great while at the veggie man and if you don't grab it when he has it, your celery recipes will, well, lack celery}

Google Search: what is cream corn {because your Aunt Dena's cream corn recipe needs cream corn, so if you have to 'fabricate' it you wonder if you just dump regular corn in the blender to make cream corn}

Google Search: how do you cook a pumpkin {because, gasp, there are no cans of Libby's Pumpkin Pie mix to be found this year, so, gasp, you have to get pumpkin from A PUMPKIN to home make all the pumpkin recipes}

Step 3: You have to field funny questions from your neighbors. {In our last apartment, we received a knock on the door as the turkey was cooking. The smell was apparently wafting through the entire building. The knocker was designated by the other neighbors to come and ask if we were cooking pork. No, we said. It was our Thanksgiving turkey. He explained he had never smelled either. Then asked if his family could join us for Thanksgiving. The more the merrier!}

 

Step 4: You have to look for hidden treasures in the ingredients. {It seems that all the flour here is laced with bugs. Yum. So, not only do you have to MAKE the cornbread {no Jiffy Mix} for the corn casserole, MAKE the spice cake for the pumpkin pie cake {no Betty Crocker}, and MAKE dinner rolls {no Great Harvest Bread Co}, you have to SIFT ALL THE DRY INGREDIENTS in case there are hidden treasures. I only found a few this time around.}

Step 5: You invite people over that have become your family away from family. You eat till you can't eat no more. You all crash in the living room in a food coma. Then you play reruns of Charlie Brown and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. That's what we did. {And since it was 90 degrees out the 'kid table' got to be outside.}

Step 6: You eat tons of leftovers for days and days with no microwave to heat them up in because it was an knock-off Chinese thing that caught on fire a while back and you never bothered to replace it for fear of a second more disastrous fire.

And that, my dear blogging friends is how you bring a Western holiday to the East. 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Now I'm off to figure out Christmas!

Picture for Today: Nov 21 - 26

Barfing in Ramallah

Last week we took a whirl wind tour of the Holy Land. We visited Masada, Old City of Jerusalem, Mount of Olives, Garden of Gethsemane, Ramallah, Nazareth, Cana, Tiberius, Sea of Galilee, Capurnum, Garden Tomb, Tower of David Museum, Hezekiah's Tunnels, City of David, Bethlehem, Shepherds Field, Church of the Last Supper, Davids Tomb, Qumran (where Dead Sea scrolls were found), and a hike up to a waterfall in Ein Gedi. It was Amazing!

I have debated as to how to 'cover' our trip.
Serious. Funny. Photo Journey. Just the facts. I could take it from so many angles.
Alas, because of the theme of this blog, I must go funny. {Because any trip with our family seems to have its 'moments'.} So, without further ramblings...

Our Top 10 {mis} Adventures in the Holy Land

10. This is a scientific break-down of how we spent our time:
          20% sleeping/listening to the neighbors dog barking
          20% getting lost
          10% at border crossings/checkpoints
          5% arguing about directions while getting lost
          25% at amazing sites of Christendom
          5% eating
          5% in our tiny apartment we rented (we pretended we were living in a box car)
          10% driving around while getting lost
{*none of these calculations are scientific. i just made them up. do they even add up to 100%?}

9. The Temple Mount - a holy site for three religions. Closed again. The last time we visited, tourists were not allowed up on the Temple Mount because there were riots/rock throwing over some excavating being done by one group that the other group was not happy with. This time, closed again because of the eid holiday. Bummer. We'll just have to plan another trip!

8. Apparently there is a brand new, beautiful, fast North/South highway running through the West side of the country. Apparently the Lonely Planet guide we were using was published before that brand new, beautiful, fast highway went through. We saw a lot of back roads. The countryside really was beautiful!

7. If we had not been standing directly on one of the Christian worlds most revered places, I would have had serious words with the rude Spaniard tourist that pushed my dear daughter out of the way at the manger scene. My girl just wanted to see where baby Jesus was born. Mean lady.

6. Because of #8 above, we saw the sunset in Galilee. We didn't get to see the Church of the Loaves and Fishes or the Mountain of the Beatitudes or the Church of St. Peter. Nope. They were closed. But, we saw the sunset. That was nice. Another reason to go back.

5. While approaching the Garden Tomb, my daughter told me she was really glad that Jesus rose again...otherwise we would have to see his bones in the tomb. I agreed with her.

4. We took our own car across the border and covered about 1,000 miles. We love our Hybrid...42 mpg! The border guards however, were not so keen on the hybrid. They kept asking why the only sound our car made was clicking noises. Our battery did its little hum/recharge thing while one of the guards was scanning under our car for bombs. It made for some exciting moments. They repeatedly asked us to start our car...when it was already running. Having out of country plates was also a plus so many times when we were lost and people flagged us down to help us. They all would start the conversation by telling us what relative of theirs lived where we're from and how they just felt compelled to help us. Hospitality is amazing in the Middle East!

3. Signs in English in foreign countries just make me laugh. Here are some of my favs from this trip.

I like people that don't take themselves TOO seriously.

Run out of money? Come get some free change.

What a creative name. What a creative logo. I've never seen anything like it before!

2. The culture-lover in me enjoyed our time in the Old City because you get to watch the three people groups/religions all co-exist together in that small area. Fascinating. Here is my hubby buying falafel sandwiches from an Arab guy whose family had lived in the old city for centuries. Behind them are two Orthodox Jews deep in conversation. Muslim. Christian. Jew. This does not happen many other places in the world.

1. Since we were so close, we wanted to drive through Ramallah just to get a feel for what a West Bank town that is always in the news is like. We enjoyed our little spin around town. When we started seeing soldiers posted on the road every 150 yards, we decided our spin should be over. We wound our way back to the check point at which time I realized I had not given my car sick prone child her daily Dramamine dose. Sure enough, just as we made our way to the soldiers, she barfed. In Ramallah. It was a good way to get the soldiers to hurry us through the check point!

West Bank wall artwork is fascinating!