Synopsis of day: Christmas!
Highlight of the day: Sleeping in and not having to walk up a billion stairs. Also getting to watch some Arabic TV.
Lowlight of the day: Missing out on the cheese bread and other traditions with family at home.
Favourite quote/word: “Can we have some more hommous?”
Favourite photo:
Kerri, Mary and myself at lunch. Ros is looking on.
Cultural-shock moment: Christmas Day. Was not a public holiday. The restaurant owner asked us if we were having a party when we turned up for lunch. (However, it was the start of the Sabbath, so part way through the day, the town died and almost everything shut. Honestly, Sabbath is not a time for doing anything money related!)New food consumed: A Middle Eastern Christmas lunch of different salads, shish kebabs, pita and a very liberal amount of wine. Eggplant is really good round here.
Favourite purchase: Lunch.
The thing I lost today: The traditions of a Christmas at home.
Random act of crazy: The group's festive cheer with a bunch of them acting out the words of Christmas carols (Tricia's interpretations were hysterical). Also Mary, Mary and Tricia's attempt at dancing Hava na gila, the Hebrew song we've been making very poor attempts at learning on the bus.
What Arthur did next: Didn't turn up to our Christmas gathering. So he ended up getting his own KK present.
Something I want to remember: the Christmas mass in German.
The Tabgha Pilgerhaus where we have been staying in Galilee seems to be connected to the Benedictine Monastery of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes. They are about a ten minute walk apart from each other, and each has a distinctly German feel. Consequently the late service that we went to was conducted mostly in German. It was not nearly as cold outside at night as I was expecting but we arrived rugged up, to the sound of a bagpipe playing (Kerri says this is traditional but it struck me as being a bit strange with the German thing). It was really cool though to hear it through the night as we got closer to the church. Within the church there was an enormous pine tree decked in fairy lights, and some smaller ones too. These lights were not flashing and tacky like other ones we had encountered. There was a huge iron circle raised above the altar with candles on it but all of the other places were lighted artificially despite the space for candles being there too. The church itself was a lot like the crusader church of St. Anne in Jerusalem which was my favourite to date, because there was no ornamentation on the walls, just the stone. It was much smaller though, and to the right was an organ with a very talented baritone Benedictine man playing. I could have listened to him for a long time, and he led a lot of the Latin songs so he soloed often. Yay. He played as well, but added to some of the familiar tunes so that made them a bit harder to sing to at times. Kerri was bothered by this more than me.
We all had access to the German prayerbooks and order of service and some of the carols were in a combination of German and English verses. Silent Night in mostly German verses (it was originally German anyway) was rather a highlight. I enjoyed making up the sounds for the German to sing along. It was much easier to do this with the familiar tunes, in some that we didn't know, rather than following in the hymn book we just listened. There were altar kids with incense all over the place, nuns and deacons up the front and a priest who did about 95% of the service in German or Latin (we were welcomed and farewelled in English). I was not expecting it to go for as long as it did, and with the lateness of the hour and the aroma of the incense, staying awake past one o'clock was formidable, and the service finished around half past one, two hours later. Afterwards I went to the front and took some photographs of the famous mosaic in the church, which we have seen images of all around Israel.
We awoke earlier than we would have liked and were very disappointed that there was no special effort in the meals at the Pilgerhaus. Because I really enjoy watching foreign tv we went to the tv room and watched some tv for the first time in over a fortnight. There were over 400 channels (no, seriously) and we had quite a few giggles at some of the acting,and identified a number of different languages. The music videos and soapies seemed to be the most bizarre of the shows and we had fun flicking through and trying to work out what was going on. We settled after a bit by watching a German telemovie about Briar Rose (knowing the storyline helps you understand a lot!). We had to leave it early because of the timing for our lift to Tiberias.
The group of thirteen who went in all decided to go out for lunch together and we had a lively time. There were so many spreads of different foods and the wine was very convivial (I'm used to soft drinks and water at dinner but there has been so much wine on this trip!). We were there a few hours and because it was the Sabbath, by the time we left, most of the shops were closed. We did walk through part of the shopping district but apart from some tacky rings and hair clips we only bought drinks before catching a taxi back. Kerri slept while watching a dvd on Muhammed and I read a trashy British magazine we'd bought the day before as a treat before our 6pm group gathering for the KK presents and singing and food. Clearly there had been a liberal amount of alcohol amongst the group because there was far too much giddiness and lack of inhibition in the Christmas Carol re-enactments and Jewish dancing. I received a wall plaque which said Jerusalem as my gift which I was pretty content with. After dinner we did our usual journalling and internet above the reception before heading off for bed. All in all, a very different Christmas from what I have been accustomed to.
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