Climbing Walls

I am a little late saying it, but I hope everyone who reads this has had a wonderful Eid holiday and may the next year bring you everything good.

In Palestine, the first day of the Eid is usually spent visiting with relatives. The men of the family go out and visit the female members of the family, and give out presents of cash to all the women and children. Because the families are so big, each visit is fairly short. The women all prepare their sitting rooms with fruits, sweets, nuts and seeds for snacking on, and have coffee and juices ready to offer any visitor. Each lady tries to stuff her visitors with the treats she has prepared, and the men arrive home in the evening stuffed, buzzed from too many cups of strong Arabic coffee, and considerably poorer.

Our house is considerably quieter than other people's houses on Eid. Since I am ajnabiya (foriegn), I don't have any family to visit my kids and I. My husband's family comes, but the last few years it has gotten much harder for them to visit. They all live in Jerusalem, but we live just out side the wall around Jerusalem, so instead of taking 5 or 10 minutes to get here, it can take an hour.

Many families go on some sort of a trip on the second or third day of the Eids. We hadn't gone on one of these trips for years, but last Eid we went to Jericho, and it was wonderful. Maybe I will make another post about that later. This Eid, I took some of the kids for a day out in Ramallah. They played in an arcade, shopped a little, tried "cheese steak" for the first time, bought yet another game for the computer, and ate donuts. Not a big deal, but the best we could do.