First Impressions

We landed at Ben Gurion airport in TelAviv yesterday afternoon. We had no difficulties entering the country. We waited for a bit for our ride to Nazareth, and arrived at Nazareth Hospital about 6:30pm. We met Christine Farah, in the flesh, which was great as prior to this we had only known her via Skype! She gave us a quick tour of the grounds and ahowed us our new accommodtation. She did not linger as we were weary. We had got up in the morning at 2am to get to the plane airport by 3! We found Heathrow Airport practically empty. We had thought our flight was international, needing to be there three hours prior to take-off but as we had a stop in Vienna, in the EU, it was classified as domestic. We could have used that extra hour and a half! Christine is a delightful British expat from Manchester eho has been in Nazareth for about sixteen years. She had rounded up a supper for us and a few basic groceries to stock our fridge. She also gave us some phones, to use, and gave us each a Serve Nazareth T-Shirt. She's great. I would say the accomodation is typically student in that there have been many guest over the years. it is relativly clean and quite spacious with a fair amount of natural light. We met a number of people today. They are friendly and open. Most understood us ok. It was diconcerting, when not talking to us, that they talked together in Arabic. This, of course is Nazareth, and we will have to get used to hearing conversation we don't understand. We had been warned that the land was hilly, and so we thought we were prepared. It is steep hills and lots of rocks! They are also on tbeir dry season so everything also seems dusty. The forcast is for sun and 30 degrees everyday, but tomorrow there is a 40% chance of thunder showers. They are longing for the rain. The hospital has about 140 beds. It is a modern facility that has had a number of additions, It is right on top of a great hill. At the bottom of the same hill, we did a tour of Nazareth Viiage it really is quite amazing. This is going to be quite an experience!