Well that was a little bit frightening

So the other day Swell and I were walking to the little store about 400m from our house. We had to get milk so that she could have coffee. She is an addict. Addict. It is sad to see her going through the shakes. Sweating. Cursing. Hitting. Biting, which not so quickly turns to crying. Sobbing. Sitting on the floor rocking back and forth muttering. Coffee, almighty coffee.

So to prevent this scary, yet amusing, chain of events we had to go and get milk for her coffee. We thought we would get some fresh pita bread as well. We are approaching the store when I see three trucks.

I quickly pondered what we could do. I decided to continue on to the store but had seriously considered telling Swell we should turn around and go home.

These three trucks were loaded with Palestinian police and army dudes. They pulled up next to us and said:

"ljonelmlanohjoen."

We responded, "Whaaaat? English?"

One of the guys while holding his automatic weapon said, "What are you doing here?"

We responded that we were working at the school. That was the end of the scary part of the interaction but for a few seconds I was concerned. We chatted with the guys for a few more seconds and then as the other two trucks drove by they were sure to stop and say hello as well.

Very nice people here.


As I was giving my final final I was thinking about something. I decided that there are five types of dress for the women here. Most people when they think of Middle Eastern women imagine women who are covered from head to toe with a small slit to look through. That is not the case here.

The five styles of dress are (from most conservative to least):
1. A small number of women do cover themselves from head to toe. They usually dress in all black, however, some wear white.
2. A large (the largest?) number of women wear a head scarf and long (floor-length) trench coats. You can see their faces but everything else is very well covered.
3. A small number of women are similar to 2 but have trendier outerwear. They aren't as plain. Their long coats will have fancy stitching on it, more colours, etc.
4. A large number of women wear a head scarf but dress in typical conservative western wear. Jeans, long flowing shirts tec.
5. A small number of women don't wear had scarves but just wear conservative western wear. Similar to 4 without the head scarves.

Don't know why I told you about that but it was funny just looking out over the class for two hours and realizing that this is probably the last time I'll look out over a class of women where the vast majority have their heads covered. One of the things that was neat about being here.