Ozzi vs The Ice Cream Cone

Ozzi wins!

Hurricane Oscar

I remember when Q was this age. The Minneapolis Institute of Art and The Walker were our second homes. Q could have guided tours. He was always content meandering quietly through these favorite places of mine. Patiently allowing me to revel in my favorite pieces and the professions of amazement from strangers over his un-childlike tranquility. All those visits have certainly paid off. Not only does his behavior in museums put some adults to shame, he can pick out a Van Gogh in a room filled with impressionist works.

Ozzi is not his brother. More often than not, I'm quite thankful for that. I relish the variety.... But, I also really love a good art museum. And clearly, one cannot truly enjoy the extensive collection of a quality institution like the Israel Museum with a two year old tornado.

kickin' it old school

The school bells have rung for Q. When we visited his school for the orientation he was reluctant and nervous on the way there. That all disappeared though, the second he was back on campus and saw a few of his friends. He was back in his element.

This first week of kindergarten he has been more energized than he has been since we returned to Jerusalem from our vacation back in Minnesota. He really seems to love it. Though, the other day when I asked how school was he said, "Good... but... well... we just don't do enough science. I don't think they have enough science equipment. You should go back to America and buy some, bring it back here, and give it to my teacher."


As for Ozzi and I, the repressive heat of summer has finally started showing signs of retreat. This thankfully allows the little guy and I to spend more days running amok. Terrorizing/entertaining shop keepers and tourists along the way.

"Camel" Rides and Dragonfruit

Tiabas-sitting

While some friends of ours are spending some quality time back in the old US of A, we have been dog-sitting their dog Tiabas. He is huge. He is also the best behaved dog I have ever seen... which is good since I have two boys that seem to be eager to test his patience.

When the time comes to give him back, I'm guessing there will be two very sad little boys.

The Height of Sophistication

Despite my efforts, I can't seem to get Ozzi to call Quentin by name. Instead, he stubbornly continues to refer to him as "Brother". How properly Victorian of him.

When they're playing hide and seek, "Brother, where are you?"

When they're fighting, "No. Brother stop. Hallas! Hallas!"

When responding to questions, "Did you just put a popcorn kernel up your nose?"
"No, Brother did it."

Extreme Makeover: Playground Edition

This is what I signed on for. As a spouse of the foreign service I expected to be doing a lot more community outreach sort of activities. The reality is though, that I'm here in Jerusalem. In many other posts, volunteer opportunities seem endless. Here, the places that could use the work are in Gaza and the West Bank. Unfortunately, our access to the occupied territories is very limited. So when a chance to clean up a playground at a school here in East Jerusalem came up, I jumped at the chance. And it was awesome.

It felt great to get my hands dirty and put in some real work for once. It felt even better knowing that an overgrown and faded playground at a girls' school has been brought back to life.

Holy Week a few weeks late

Once again I'm apologizing for neglecting the blog. Sorry. There was certainly things to write about over the last few weeks. Walking in the Palm Sunday procession from the Mount of Olives into the Old City.

The combination of Passover, Easter, Orthodox Easter, and all the corresponding holidays and festivals makes for a pretty crazy week in Jerusalem. In order to escape some of the craziness for Easter Sunday we crossed over into Jordan to visit Ajloun Castle and Jerash, an ancient Roman city complete with gladiator and chariot reenactments.

A stone throw away

It's a five minute walk but still a world away. Isawiya, one of the East Jerusalem neighborhoods that experienced clashes between the IDF and some Arab youth yesterday, is just on the other side of the hill. Yet, beside the coming and going of helicopters, life at home was the same peace and quiet we usually experience.

As a herd of international journalists gathered on top of a hill just down the street to cover the conflict, Jews and Muslims nearer by peacefully ate fallafel together. There was no media coverage of that though.

Like everyone else, I do have my opinions of things here, but even after living here for a while I feel I'm still in no position to publicly voice them. The unfortunate reality is that way too many of those so readily and vehemently mounting soapboxes seem to know even less then I. Politics here is far too complicated and dominated by biases and grotesque generalizations. What I will say is, when you watch news coverage from around the world please know what you see is a very small fraction of what's really going on... good and bad... it's only the 30 seconds of the exciting and obvious that makes the nightly news.

Spoiler Alert

"So Quentin, did you buy anything when you were in the Old City today?", Kate asked.
"Um, a bagel with cream cheese.", Q answers glancing nervously at me.
"Did you buy anything else?"
"Some spice and a grinder thing."
"The mustard seed and pestle and mortar, yes, but was there anything else?"
"Um, ahh, no...  Hey Papa, I didn't say nothing about the earrings!"

Aaargh!

Merry Christmas!

O Tannenbaum

Tis a tree that would make Charlie Brown proud... of his own tree. Honestly, I think this is my favorite Christmas Tree we've ever had. It's got personality. Flimsy, disheveled, whimsical, and, with the fantastic decorating by Kate and the boys, Perfect. Of course, the adventure of Christmas in Jerusalem makes this motley conifer even more special to us.

We started priming our holiday spirit by visiting Bethlehem last weekend with an organized tour for Consulate Staff and Spouses. We visited the Church of Nativity and did some shopping. On the way back to Jerusalem our bus driver hit the traffic-arm at the check point leaving the West Bank. After a little yelling between the guard and our driver and probably a few calls to various supervisors we did eventually get through and home.

The trees arrived at the American Consulate Thursday courtesy of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (which is a bit surprising after reading this article). The boys and I drove over to meet Kate for dinner with plans to bring the tree home after. Halfway to the restaurant it began to rain. This coupled nicely with the heavy winds that had been bombarding my eyeballs with sand all day prior. We found refuge in a nice little Italian restaurant as we watched the rain increase in volume. As Kate and the boys had a little dessert I ran back through the rain to the Hyundai Matrix we're still renting. Thinking it would be easier to cram the tree into the little SUV before the boys than vice versa, I found myself driving back to Little Italy with a car stuffed like a cypress canolli. If you're wondering why we didn't tie it to the roof, I didn't have any twine on hand and, well, you haven't read the article I linked to yet, have you? At any rate, we managed to plant the boys into their seats and make the pine-fresh drive home. Ozzi, spurred on by the invading branches, got wise on how to unbuckle himself from the protective confines of his car-seat. Luckily we were just about home and here child seats are very much the exception and not the rule. Explaining the tree obstructing 98.9% of my view while driving would be much harder than the 2 year old climbing over the back of the driver's seat. Once home in one piece I procured a small bucket of Jerusalem's finest limestone gravel. This works quite well in absence of a traditional tree stand. Our non-traditional Christmas Tree in the capital of the Jewish State now stands, in all its festive glory, awaiting a visit from our jolly fat friend from the north.

Mount Scopus

Mount Scopus, home of Hebrew University, is located right next to us here on French Hill. It has definitely had a significant role in Jerusalem's history, most commonly as the base of attack for Romans, Crusaders, and most everyone else that has laid siege to the city. It's also a great place for Q and I to explore while Kate and Ozzi are napping.

 

 

 

 

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving Eve

I picked up the magnificent turkey I special ordered at Super Deal. This supermarket tries to cater to the huge American contingent here in Jerusalem without being obvious about it. I did have to special order a whole turkey after all. With the 6.5 kilos of holiday bird loaded into my cart I joined the scavenger hunt already in progress for pumpkin pie ingredients. It's surprising the sense of community one gets gathered around the dairy section trying to collectively determine which little Hebrew laden container is the proper whipping cream for our Dessert Americana. That was one of several shopping excursions in preparation for our first Thanksgiving Feast beyond the land of Pilgrims, Indians, and the NFL.

Thanksgiving Day

We adopted a vagabond IT guy named Cory. He's a great guy from the consulate that arrived only about a month before we did and didn't have any plans for Thanksgiving. With his car still in bureaucratic limbo, I was more than willing to go pick him up at his German Colony bachelor pad Thursday afternoon as the turkey progressed to a glistening golden brown in the oven.

Jerusalem traffic is chaotic in the best and worst sense of the word. There is a degree of lawlessness that provides a driver with the freedom and convenience to, say, make u-turns whenever or wherever it suits you, ignoring other traffic, curbs, oneways, whatever. It's fun and entertaining. Of course, this driving philosophy tends to lead to the other extreme on the driving continuum; traffic patterns, or really, lack there of. Which brings me to my drive across town to pick up Cory. Why, on a Thursday afternoon at 2 pm, the city streets in entirety would be at a complete standstill, I do not understand. I do, however, understand that this level of congestion on old narrow roads is not the best circumstances in which to get a flat tire.

I had suspected something was wrong. The little rental Hyundai didn't quite feel right. But when the dude on the scooter pulls up to your passenger window and pantomimes the universal gestures for "Your tire is flat." you know you have a problem. At that point I was relatively close to Cory's and had no good place to pull over anyway. I decided to just get to his place and deal with it there.

I know how to change a tire. It's pretty easy really. Unless the tools your given don't work. The lug wrench, though the right size to fit the lug nuts on the wheel, was too fat to fit into the holes around the lug nuts. So I call the rental company:

"Sholom."
"Sholom. Hello. Do you speak English?"
"Yes. Of course." seemingly offended that I would even ask.
"I have a rental car with a flat tire and..."
"Flat tire is not insured. It is customer responsibility."
"Ok, that's fine. I'm trying to change the tire right now but we don't have the proper tools here."
"All tools should be there. Flat tires are customer responsibility."
"The wrench here doesn't fit. Do you not have some sort of roadside assistance that could at least bring us the correct tool."
"You should have the correct tool in the car."
"Well I don't."
"I can send someone with the tool but if they see you already have the tool we will have to charge you a service fee."
"Fine."

I then spend 5 minutes trying to explain where I'm at to her after which see just tells me that within a two hour time frame a guy will call me and I can give him directions. We get the car parked in a metered spot nearby. The meter's broken and steals my money. The guy calls and speaks English just slightly better than I speak Hebrew which made for fun direction giving until I mention that we're near the McDonald's. "Oh, the MacDonald. Yes. You go there. I send a guy there. His English not good as me." So I leave Cory watching a car with a flat tire at a broken meter so he can maybe explain away any parking tickets that come by. I meet the guy at the McDonald's and aggressively persuade him to come back to the car to make sure the wrench he's handing to me fits better than the one we already have. As soon as I confirm it fits he takes off, leaving Cory, Q, and I to finally take off the flat and put the State Fair mini-donut spare on. Two hours later we're finally on our way toward Thanksgiving Dinner... except traffic is still at a complete halt. Eventually we do make it home to an amazing meal that Kate made independently. The food was wonderful and it was great to have Cory over. I even got him home without incident.

Eid al-Adha

This morning Kate called Nassar, the motor pool guy, for a recommendation on where we should take the tire to get fixed. It turns out today is a major holy day for the Muslim population here. This made getting a tire changed in East Jerusalem impossible. I spent a good portion of the day following the wonderful local guard staff driving all over Jerusalem trying to find a place that was open. We did eventually find a place way out on the SW side of town.

Oh wait, one more thing

Last night Ozzi had a super-high fever. While I was running all over town getting a tire fixed, Kate was getting Ozzi to a doctor to find out he has a double ear infection... which explains why he was so pissed off on the decent down to the Dead Sea last weekend. He's on antibiotics now and already seems to be feeling better.


So, what am I thankful for this year?

• Nassar, the Local Guard Force, and everyone else here that has been so forcefully eager to help you with stuff that shouldn't even be their problem.
• The opportunity to live in such an amazing city with so many fun quirks, challenges, and new things to discover and learn.
• My wonderful wife that was able to put aside fear of bones in meat and actually carve the turkey by herself.
• Two happy and (relatively) healthy boys.
  

Peace Maker

"Papa, can you walk me all the way into school today?"
"Sure. Why?"

"The big kids were being mean and made me cry."

"Were they teasing you?"

"No, not me. The other littler kids."

"Um, so they weren't teasing you?"

"No. They were saying mean stuff like 'scaredy-cat' to the little girl."

"And that made you cry... them teasing other kids."

"Yeah."

The trick is, how do I toughen him up so he isn't such easy pickings for bullies without discouraging his empathy and compassion which rivals that of Buddha himself. He may not have been the victim this time, but if he's that quick to tears, they'll pick up on that soon enough. Unfortunately, the Gracie Jiu Jitsu class at the Consulate is for 9 and up, because a martial arts class seems to be the best approach. At the very least, I'm glad he told me about it. I did my best to explain to him that it's up to him to be brave and stand up to bullies and tell them to stop... even if they are picking on someone else... even if the ones doing the teasing are his friends.

Besides that little incident before class one day, school has been great for Q. He really loves having all these new friends to play with every day. He even said he wanted to go on Sunday. Instead we visited the Western Wall....

 

 

 

 

 

... and left it standing for this guy who visited just hours after us.