Just another day

The summer just seems to be speeding by! I can't believe that it's already mid-July! 

Life in Israel/Palestine and Neve Shalom~Wahat-al-Salam, continue, (for the most part, calmly) on. Depending on the day work at the SFP and at the College can be really, really busy, or dead slow. It makes for a very up-and-down sort of work week. 

The big news for this month is that I am out of the volunteers compound and into a house! One of my co-workers in away in the US with her husband, giving lectures and fund-raising for the SFP and she asked me to house-sit while they are away! It's been great to be in a house again and out of my small room (in the formally very messy) volunteers compound. The extremely messy and domestically inexperienced volunteer has left and the building management has thankfully begun to clean and "purge" the messes and grime of volunteers past.

This is all by way of saying that I am really enjoying having a lovely house (with a big kitchen) to myself for most the week. I have been trying to get in more traveling on the weekends and leave the house empty for my co-workers daughter who returns home on the weekends. This weekend I went on a trek around the surrounding hills and "wilderness" of Neve Shalom and the other small communities and Kibbutz near-by. Boy, was it hot. You'd think after about two months I would be adjusted to the heat, but nope. It was still a lovely weekend of hiking and adventuring.

The other big bonus of being in the new house is that they have a dog! Dog ownership is a little complicated here. There are so many stray animals around Israel. Pet owners who get tired of there animals tend to leave them in remote villages like ours. "Ghost" (I can't pronounce his Hebrew name) is one such stray who was left in Neve Shalom~Wahat-al-Salam. He doesn't understand my commands (perhaps because he only knows "Hebrew") but he is incredible well behaved and I think we've established a good friendship. I also bribe him. Which helps. 
  

Out and about with "Ghost"