The Big Meeting

Well, the big meeting was really just yet another small meeting.

After a busy morning of doing nothing Swell and I hopped in the van to take us from the new campus to the old campus. Tagging along with us was the dean of the Faculty of Optometry.

We were curious as to how we would have lunch at the President's office. As it turns out it was not in his office but was in a conference room near his office.

We walked into this conference room and saw a very well laid out table. A nice table clothe, 8 place settings of fine china - well not fine china but nice sturdy plates and cups, well maybe not. I guess what I'm trying to say is it wasn't paper plates and a box of pizza.

We had a seat and soon the President, the Vice-President, and a Human resources guy joined Swell, the Dean, and me. Lunch started the way all meals start in Palestine. With some amazing Hummous, Cabage salad, and another type of salad. We ate those with the pita bread that had already been served to us. It was very good and could be a meal in itself.

As we were eating the appetizer someone brought in plate after plate of rice, chicken, beef, and the most amazing potatoes I've ever tasted.

We ate our fill. One of, if not the, best meals I've had in the past 5 months. It was very good.

Not much was said during the meal. The president asked if we enjoyed our time here. He asked if we would be willing to come back. He answered three different phones 100 times each. He said that the students would miss us. The vice-president said that they are happy with the job that we did while we were here. They asked about how the students did with English. A lot of small talk, and long periods of no-talking.

After the meal we had the greatest desert invented by man. Nablus is famous for it. It will sound gross when I explain it to you but it isn't gross. First they take one of the local sheep lop of its head and skin it. It is then chilled. Just prior to serving it they pluck out its eyeballs. Each person then gets a sheep head and a special utensil to get to the brains through the eye socket...

Nah. Really it is shredded wheat with some kind of cheese in it and honey all spread over the entire thing. It is served warm and is amazing. Very, very sweet but good.

After desert Swell and I were each presented with a very nice school seal with our names engraved on them thanking us for our work. It was very nice. I will display mine proudly.

Swell cried when we got home because she feels guilty that we can't come back. She feels guilty about needing too much money. The students are in for a really bad year next year. There are more courses, more students than any other year and only one person to teach all of them - and she can only come three days a week. It wil be tough.

There was a brief mention of our returning. The dean is still looking for a way to get funding for us to be here. She has been left out to dry by a couple of organizations that have promised to help her for years. The University is unable or unwilling to cough up more money so she is left with a task that is near impossible to accomplish by herself.

Tomorrow the Dean is taking us to Jerusalem for lunch so I am sure that there will be more talk of our return then. Without more money we will NOT return. We also need to find out ASAP as we need to start looking for work, or not, in Atlanta.

We leave our home at 10:00am on Friday for our 5:00pm flight. You'd be surprised how excited we are to be at the airport 6 hours early. We'll just eat, walk around, relax, surf the internet, etc. It will be nice to be somewhere.

We then have a short (5 hour) flight to London. A long layover (9 hours?). Another short flight to Romania (3.5 hours) and then we start the last portion of our 6 months abroad. We're looking forward to Romania, Swell understandably a lot more than me. We don't have a lot of plans. We'll just visit family and I hope to finally be able to go the the People's Palace (second largest building in the world behind only the Pentagon).

We'll miss a lot of things about being here:
Being together 24 hours a day 7 days a week
Short work days
Short work weeks
Having time to cook
The people
Not being angry at work all the time
Hearing the call to prayer 5 times a day
Cheap lunches (50 cents)
Having a job that has the potential to accomplish something
The beauty of the city/area
The food
Sheep "baaaa-ing" outside our window
Romanian TV

We won't miss:
Guns
Airplanes
Curfew
The cold
The bugs
Not being able to get around without an escort
Hearing the early morning call to prayer (5:15am)
The flat we lived in
The bed we slept on