Because of Pesach, I had half of Monday and the whole of Tuesday off work.

Got to go to two gatherings over this week to celebrate Pesach, as we eat foods like herbs and Matzah bread as a symbolic way to celebrate the Jewish people escaping from Egypt.  Both were good, one from my church ended up having 20 odd people crammed into someone’s flat, one was with my work at the food bank at Talpiyot.

Tuesday I went and bought a bike, I settled on the first one I saw a week previously, as I visited about 4 bike shops in total, and this one was 450 shekels, although after getting helmet, lights and lock, the shop made a deal on 550 all in.  I haven’t really owned a bike since I was a child, I am actually very happy getting about now.  Its ok to ride on the pavement as long as you are sensible, I only go on the road that are very quiet.  I think in my first day I did about 20kms around the city and back home.  Anyway I am still concerned about getting sources of sponsorship but this tool is kind of an investment, as it saves me the 49 shekels a week on bus (and that’s just for work, not any social trips)  I don’t see many cyclists here, and therefore there was plenty of new bikes for sale but extremely few used ones.  Even when looking in my church’s newsletter which has a columns with things for sale, houses to rent and jobs, there were a couple of bikes at least 1000+ shekels.   As like any new hobby there doesn’t seem much point in paying more than necessary.

Now getting used to making sure the brakes are used in the right sequence so not to throw me over the handlebars, and this thing has about 16 gears, er, I can just about get used to 5 on a car, I am not sure how they work!

On the Wednesday, I was going to the park with meet up with some friends to play some games, but I first went to Mamilla shopping centre to call for another friend, whilst waiting outside the coffee shop, I got approached by four young Arab teenagers who one of them appeared to threaten me, it was hard to make out, I just tried to mention I am a foreigner working here.   Two of the other lads were very apologetic and seemed embarrassed by their friend’s actions to me.  Anyway I didn’t manage to find my good friend K, (who is also an Arab) as after calling him realised I was at the wrong coffee shop, after a quick ride over to Ben Yehuda Street I met up and went down to the park, and learned a new card game, ate some nuts and dried fruit and got some time to relax out in the park with six of us, then did a bit of frisbee whilst the weather was still warm.

After then decided to do a bit of riding around town, entering on the edges of Meir Shareem, the Ultra Orthodox neighbourhood with the folk there in there familiar hats and black coats, there were barriers put up across the street to stop people driving, as  this is always done on Shabbat or on holidays.  I didnt want to upset anyone so did a U-turn here.

Today after being back at work, I went to the Shuk to go food shopping, and a Arab lady came up to me begging.  I see quite a lot of beggars but this one was different.   After giving her about 2 1/2 shekels which was all I had in my pocket, she ask me to pray for her, I felt a bit bad as I was trying to stuff a large bag of oranges into my rucksack.   I asked her name, she was called Luce or Luis I think, I told her I was pray for her later, she mentioned her brother was going blind and she was trying to provide for her children, the poor lady seemed genuine.   Made a note on my phone of her name there.

Found some shorter ways to ride home.  Plus I get a chance to ride across the Peace Park Promenade on my way to work which is stunning.  I will put some pictures of this location here soon.   Why does God bless me with some unexpected things like this.   At the moment life is good.

I noticed after prime minster Benjamin Netanyahu avoided making any compromises on land after pressure from Obama in recent meetings last week, the next day it rained here in Jerusalem.  🙂 No trivial thing when water is precious here and four or five months can go with absolutely no rain at all.

On Saturday I went walking around my neighbourhood, my house is close to an Arab town of Al Sawahira, as after looking on Google maps I can see my flat is right on the 1949 Armistice line.  Yep you guessed it, I live next to the Palestinians.  From a brief look around, there’s not been any signs of unrest here, seems people generally live together ok.  When walking out and about in this street on Saturday, people seemed pretty friendly, perhaps a little surprised to see a foreigner there.

Looking out of my bedroom I can see in the distance this scrap metal yard in the distance.   Standing 100 yards away, here in the foreground you can some fruit trees which don’t appear to be affected by any chemicals that’s quite likely to seep out of waste metal products.  Recycling and caring about environmental impact isn’t a high priority here in the middle east.

Here you can see one of the minarets, these are Islamic prayer towers that give off this terrible noise that have often woken me up (like when I was in Jordan in December in a hotel right next to one)  as this one is at least 1km away, its not too noisy.

I like this picture as if you take a closer look you can see the rather grey cloud surrounds this tower but the weather is bright and clear in the distance 🙂

On day 2 of my return to Jerusalem I was walking through the Peace Park Promenade which is 1.5km in the other direction, and the voices from the towers started up, the blackbirds which were singing nicely in the trees in the park suddenly stopped and standard making their frightened “ping-ping-ping” sound like when a cat comes near them.   When you think that animals and birds usually get used to man made noise that regularly appears near them like trains, its funny that the Blackbird one of God’s most vocally talented birds doesn’t like the minarets either.

I was walking through part of the old city with this Irish priest I got chatting to the sunday before last.

I took a shortcut through the centre of the old city, up the steep edge of the south side of the city

These interesting bits of pottery were just spotted loose within the grass.  Don’t know how old they are or from what period (Byzantine, Ottoman, British Mandate?) of who was in Jerusalem at that time.  I put them on the wall to photograph and put them back from someone else to discover afterwards.

Click on the picture for a bigger view, if you can identify any of the markings please do comment.

Yesterday I took a different route home from work, as I wanted to visit three bike shops to get some idea of costs of a cycle to get me to and from work, as I live 6kms (4 miles) away from work, friends and shops.  Seems that around 600NIS (£100) will get me a new simple bike, with used ones fairly scarce amongst cycle businesses, one wanting 450 and another 1000, one did give the option of buying back the bike for half what you pay for it which seems like a sensible idea for volunteers in the country like me.   I am going to leave it for the moment and look at any privately offered ones.   Heck, there is a bike with a flat tyre outside my flat owned by the neighbours that hasn’t looked like it has been ridden in a long time.   The main things I am looking for is cheap to buy and cost of ownership, something simple, as I haven’t really owned a bike since I was a child, and something low cost to fix when it needs mending so has standard type parts etc.   I don’t really have the funds to do this right now but am praying for a source of money of some kind for this.

Anyway on the way home I got thrusted a leaflet outside some shops in Talpiyot by some young lad who looked about 16 or so,  I just gave a quick ‘toda’ and took it from him, he then said something in Hebrew back, when I asked if he could speak English, he just said thanks I took his leaflet as he was counting on this job to make some money, when I looked it was for bedroom furniture, I mention I was volunteering for a charity so I wasnt really his target market, we had a good chat for a few minutes as he was surprised seeing an British person here, lately you probably saw on the news UK/Israel relationships has been strained since the row over a faked passport allegation was in the news this week.  It was good for me as a foreigner to chat to someone genuinely curious why I was here to work for free showing Israel support from Christians.  For those new to my blog, as I have mentioned before I came here not to convert or evangelise but to show love and practical assistance in volunteering here, for me, I have a ‘backroom’ role doing IT support, to provide the main workers with the tools to do their role in providing food, assistance with new immigrants and sponsoring towns being some of the many things Bridges for Peace does.  It was quite a encouragement to see this young lad’s eyes light up at the thought there are foreigners coming to help when the media paints a grim picture of Israel being a much disliked nation amongst a lot of the world.