Day 2: My first night and first morning in Neve Shalom / Wahat al Salam

December 13-14 (Mon night-Tue morning)

On my way to the village in a taxi cab, I watched the land looking flat, endlessly. (Though I know it's not all flat.) It was simply beautiful. What I felt was similar to when I first saw Iraq. So much pain on such a pretty land.

Pass the NSWAS sign, you get to the main entrance of the village. There's a circle there, which reminds me of the typical courtyard structure of Middle Eastern architecture. Overlooking the circle, you have the PR and Communication building, the bus stop and the wonderful Ahlan Cafe and Gift Shop. Small roads in between these structures take you to the other parts of the village. Cab took me to the volunteer house where I was going to meet Raida, the volunteer coordinator. She is a petite, pretty Palestinian woman, with her colorful coat and elegant hat, jeans tucked into her black boots. The houses I have seen so far made me think of the vacation villages in Turkey. The volunteer house looks like a small motel. It has a common room with a kitchen in it. There are two volunteers, both German, and a young Palestinian elementary school teacher residing there. And then me. Timou, 21, Moura 30 something, Sausant (probably in her early 20s) are my roommates (I most probably misspelled their names.) Timou works with the gardener, and Mouna is volunteering at the kindergarten. Anyway, the common areas are pushing the limits of being dirty. Caked in dirt, if you will. I have to do something about this.  The courtyard is filled with dead leaves and dirty/wet, undefinable clothes. Despite their slatternliness, they're nice people. Timou has been here for 5 months, and it's Mouna's second month. She's leaving next week. Then I'll take her room, it's much nicer than mine. The common room smells like fried food, and cigarettes. Thankfully they're smoking at the courtyard. The kitchen is too dirty for me to cook in it. 

The rooms are almost as simple as they would be in a monastery. I like it. A single bed, a desk and a chair, a closet, and an a/c unit. There's something wrong with the heater though, so Raida gave me a temporary warm air blower (I think that's what you call it.) Oh, I found 8 or 9 pieces of cat poop under the bed. Surely got rid of them right away but consider it as my introduction to our cats and kittens here at the volunteer house. These guys don't live indoors but obviously they somehow manage to find their way into the vacant rooms. Well, mine's no longer vacant.

We have wireless, it's fast enough. We also have a land line in the common room. But I still need to get an Israeli sim card for my phone. Mouna made pancakes for dinner. Now I know why the room usually smells like fried food. I had two, not more. It was too heavy for me. We have to do the groceries tomorrow. For that we fill out a form to get the car that belongs to the village. The volunteer program also pays for our groceries. 

Thanks to Raida's air blower I'm going to have a comfortable night. Otherwise I would have gotten sick. Apparently it was below 70F for the first time this year, so nobody knew that my A/C heater was broken. 

AND now let me tell you a little bit about my morning on December 14th. Going to bed at 9pm wakes you up at 6am! I didn't leave the bed immediately though. I was very tired. Also I must confess now, that my first impression of the volunteer house was not so encouraging, so perhaps that's another reason why I didn't want to get out of my warm bed that fast. I even said to myself that I might leave in a month. Then a beam of sunlight flickering across my bed caught my eye. I jumped out of my bed, and I knew I was going to stay until the end of March. It's a beautiful day today.