"Look, there's a mosque! We'll be ok!"

Two other 'development professionals' were kind enough to invite me along on their road trip this weekend. As I said in the post below, we went to Nazareth, just like Jesus, which turns out to be a lovely Arab city (in Israel) very reminiscent of Morocco--lots of narrow winding alleys with beautiful courtyarded mansions behind tiny, arched doors.

It's incredibly spooky how quickly you can go from shwarma in Palestine to shrimp, 2 bottles of white wine and date pudding on the Mediterranean coast in Israel. Rather, how quickly I can go (1.5 hours, to be exact) but so many cannot. Perhaps there needs to be a global revolution, a la Egypt, of all the young people so sick of such nonsense who just want a job and a future for themselves and those around them. A revolution calling for pragmatic and accountable leadership is perhaps the most romantic of all, just for its sheer lack of romanticism.

I'm pretty beat from the weekend so don't have the energy to be articulate (obviously, see above), but there's thoughts bubbling up in there that I will write down eventually...including but not limited to the topics of: being an aid worker, development spinsterdom, Israelestine, missing my friends, wanting to get a dog, and how Europe, it turns out, is only $150 away (guess who's going to Chamonix late February, enshallah!! Man, I have always wanted to ski in Europe. Pretty psyched (Laura, I literally can hear you lecturing me about budgeting AS I TYPE THIS))

Now home, sitting next to the 'fireplace' (aka, incredibly dangerous but indispensable gas flame heater thing), really looking forward to a hot shower in 2-3 hours after the water is warm, and bed.

Best story from the weekend, most absurd sure-do-live-in-Palestine moment: driving home, we got lost in the Israeli back country somewhere and were driving along grumping about being horrible at finding our way back to the checkpoint. Suddenly we see a green lit mosque in the distance and the driver cheers, "Look, there's a mosque! We'll be ok!"

Indeed.