Blogs from Middle East - page 986

(As dictated to Betsy.) In school, I’m learning Hebrew and my friends are mostly talking to me in Hebrew but if I don’t understand they talk to me in English. One of my friends talked to my dad and said I’m learning Hebrew really well. I have a tutor named Yuval. He’s really nice and my teacher doesn’t think he’s doing enough. My school teacher wants me to do other stuff with her and not so much with him. My teacher’s making me read a book in Hebrew called “Alexander the Great, the Small" ("אלכסנדר הגדול הקטן"). With Yuval, I’m also learning to conjugate verbs and know colors and numbers, and we have signs on lots of things around the house that I’m learning. I went to a party on a boat for a bat mitzvah ... read more

The guys who worked at Paris Hotel wrote down the numbers of two buses that went to the main bus station which is actually pretty far from the centre. We stood for a while at what we thought was the right stop until a really friendly guy indicated using German and Turkish that we should be on the other side of the road. The shuttle bus seemed to take forever and got pretty crowded. We are so confused as to the hıerarchy of seat priority in Turkey. İn some countries men always stand up for women of any age and in other countries only younger men do and younger women stand for older men. No one particularly old got on the bus so we didn't give up ours, but one does worry about these things. We ... read more

We awoke, dressed and left the hostel in a somewhat zombified state. We were out of the hostel by six thirty and onto the weirdly empty streets of Istanbul. We walked up to the Aya Sofia where we had to run to catch a tram nearer to the port. We got off and unable to find a road name, we set off in approximately the right direction. We are both rather proud of getting to the port on time and with minimal hassle. The ferry crossing was ok once we had figured out where the hell to sit. We bought what we thought was a Danish pastry but turned out to have meat inside. Once the ferry docked we knew we had to get a shuttle bus to the centre of Bursa. There were buses waiting ... read more

'' ıt ıs possıble to recognıze the prescence of god ın what we see, ıt would be temptıng to thınk that god lıved ın the natıon of the cappadocıans, rather than ın foreign places. . . . .how many sanctuarıes ın all the rest of the world? '' -gegory of nyssa ... read more

Something unexpected and not on the itinerary. As we cruised down the Red Sea (Latitude 15 32 N and Longitude 41 50 E) there was an announcement from the Cruise Director that the Captain had reported that there was an active volcano erupting and that we would pass very close to it (within 3 miles). It was spectacular. We witnessed ongoing multiple eruptions on the volcano which comprises the Yemeni island of Jazirat At Ta'ir. The peak stands at 244 m above sea level and we witnessed three active domes, the highest, a perfect cone, being the currently active vent. At our closest we were just 1.5 nautical miles off the volcano. The captain changed course to allow us spectacular views of the eruption and lava flows ranging in colour from white through yellow to red. ... read more