Wednesday Nov 21

Hey everyone just thought I would stop in and wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. It is starting to change seasons here a little. Well as much as it changes seasons here. It has been raining for two straight days and not just a little storm each day, but almost two solid days of rain. Other than that we have been getting ready for Thanksgiving here and I spent most of the afternoon baking pies and cakes. There was 6 of us in the kitchen and we ended up with three pumpkin pies, an apple pie, an apple crisp, a Cheesecake, some pumpkin bars, and something called a shoe fly pie or something like that. tomorrow 8 of us get locked in the kitchen at 10 to start cooking thanksgiving diner for 112 people. That should be interesting. We are doing as close to a traditional meal as we can here in Israel.

It is interesting getting used to stuff here because in most cases it is really close to what we are used to but just not quite there. Most of us have picked up a suffix to almost every item we try to describe and that is -ish. like for breakfast we had pancakish type food, they were sort of like pancakes, they looked like pancakes were called pancakes, but just weren't quite pancakes as any of us would recall. Most things here are like that. I also took two of my five finals today for school so I have three more to go. As the time starts to roll up to the end here at JUC people have begun to say goodbye at ministries and churches we have been volunteering at and to other students. There are several students that are here for more than just a semester abroad and they are starting to deal with the fact that they are losing alot of new friends. The Spring semester is pretty small around here as most people seem to come for the fall term. It is only a very small percentage of the students that attend for a full two years for a degree here at JUC. Of those here, near 100 students, only 15 or so are staying for the second semester and of those only about 8 are planning on being here for the two years.

Well, I better get back to studying for finals and preparing a presentation I have to give in Egypt about the history of language and writing as part of a class project. Hope you are all well and that I get to see you when I return to the states the end of Dec. God Bless.