Two Turkeys and a Wadi

A little over a year ago, I was invited to watch my neighbors kill a sheep and clean it out, in preparation for the Eid al-Adha. It's one of the most important holidays for Muslims, and it involves slaughtering sheep, goats, or camels to commemorate Allah providing a ram for Abraham to sacrifice in place of his son. I was slightly traumatized by that experience, but luckily did not have to repeat it this year. Instead, we celebrated Eid al'shukur (holiday of thanks) - Thanksgiving.

This year, I had two Thanksgivings, both with turkey! (Last year, no turkey. It was too expensive.) The first, on Thursday afternoon, Bethany, Julia, and I went to the Haddad's, a large family Bethany knows partly from the States. They own some pretty big companies. There was a ton of amazing food, wine, and lots of really friendly people. We got all dressed up for the occasion - heels, nice clothes, make up, hair down... basically everything I avoid because of the extra attention it gets me. Thankfully, not a lot of people were out, being the first day of the Eid. There was some drooling though, to my amusement. Afterwards, Bethany and Julia went for another large meal with one of their teachers, and I went to see some German friends of mine.

Thanksgiving #2 (Friday) - a more relaxed occasion at the Schupp's house, where we go for football on Sunday nights. Julia, Bethany, and I were all supposed to bring a dish. Julia cooked hers earlier, but Bethany and I had to cook ours the morning of, in our ridiculously small kitchen. Turns out that having both of us in there trying to cook is really, really difficult. There's nowhere near enough room. I ended up mashing my potatoes on the floor in the hallway. Bethany made stuffing from scratch, I made sweet potatoes (with marshmallows!) from scratch, both recipes from the Pioneer Woman. I could hardly wait to eat those sweet potatoes... We decided it would be fun to dress up again, so Bethany

played with my hair a bit, we threw on some nicer clothes, then loaded all of our dishes into my laundry basket wrapped in towels and sweatshirts, and headed over to the Schupp's. There, we ate. A lot. There was turkey, salad, aubergine curry, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, rolls, green beans (also a Pioneer Woman recipe, made by Julia), and more. Oh, and homemade apple cider. Yum! We dove in like the starving students we are. The food was good, the company awesome. We had a quiz on how much we knew about the first Thanksgiving, most of us failed. Angie got the most correct, but handed the win to Julia, seeing as she was the hostess. I won't tell you what I got. We played Scattergories, I correctly identified the part of speech for "making" - it's a gerund, which was super exciting for me. I do not like grammar. Arabic grammar especially. But I guess it's paying off. (I also passed my final book test on Arabic grammar) Then there was more eating, dessert, and some super competitive Dutch blitz. The kids chose to watch Elf, and then I made my exit.

Friday night - my small group girls and myself came over to Janelle's (my co-leader) for a girl's night in. We talked, had some awesome taco soup and garlic bread, watched BBC's Persuasion (the actor who plays Captain Wentworth was pretty good-looking!), then threw a bunch of mattresses on the floor and went to bed. The next morning, we had pancakes. They were delicious. That afternoon, I went to a friend's house and helped them paint their apartment. I got lots of paint on me. It's unavoidable. I spent a couple hours on a rickety ladder edging the ceiling, had a couple scary moments where I was convinced I would fall off and die, and introduced my friends to some cool new music. And there were brownies.

We slept in on Sunday. I did homework. We cooked 3 full meals that day. This is a huge accomplishment for us. I made scrambled eggs with real bacon bits for breakfast. Uh-may-zing. Bethany and I shopped around for fresh produce for lunch, failed miserably, then made bruscetta from canned whole tomatoes, fresh basil, and italian bread, with a little melted cheese on top. It wasn't bad. Bethany made fajitas for dinner, also delicious. We went to football at the Schupp's, but left earlier than usual, because we had adventures planned for the next day.

Bethany, having never been to Petra before, finally got to go to Petra, as a day trip with Julia. They left around 6ish in the morning to catch a bus going down. From what I've heard, they really enjoyed it, except for the sore muscles and tired feet. They got back around 7 that night. I, on the other hand, had plans to go hiking in a wadi near the Dead Sea with Janelle, some classmates from Kelsey, and the youth pastor from church. We got pulled over 5 times by the police, 3 times on the way down, twice on the way back. And no, I wasn't driving. No tickets though, so no problem.

It was a 6 hour hike, and it was awesome. We climbed rocks and jumped off rocks, jumped back and forth over the creek, slid down hillsides, got wedged in between rocks, left a nice bit on skin on the rocks, and for some reason the boys really enjoyed throwing rocks at each other. There was a waterfall, and green growing things, and a somewhat hazy view of the Dead Sea and the hills on the other side. Today, I'm sore. My joints hurt. But it was totally worth it.

Coming up: another final, only 9 days of school left!, more choir rehearsals, a Christmas party, lots more homework, Christmas shopping, and getting ready to leave for winter break.

Click here for more photos from the weekend.