Staying in Bethlehem

The professor and I decided that it would be good to visit a friend of ours in Bethlehem while we were in Israel. Bethlehem is a complicated place right now, so it was good that we have a friend to help us arrange the visit. We are staying with his brother’s family, Issa and Diane Zoughbi. They have a bed and breakfast in their house where they regularly have people come and stay. Here is the website that tells about their church and hospitality house. House of Bread Church (Bethlehem means House of Bread in Hebrew)

Here is a view of Bethlehem from the patio where we are staying. It is beautiful. The house has about four floors. In the basement there is a room for Sunday School. On the next floor is an apartment for visitors, then the church and then there is the level the family lives on and finally the guest apartment. There is a kitchen, bathroom, two bedrooms, a living room and a patio!

The whole family is very friendly and warm and we feel comfortable here. They have one son studying at Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma, then there are two sons and a daughter here. I will have to put a picture of the whole family in later if I get one, but here I have just added a few of their pictures of Pastor Issa, Diana and Grace. The first evening we took a drive to a place just outside of the main town where we could get apricots. The apricots are only available for about a week, so they like to get lots of them and then make jam.

One new food they taught us about is a spice called zaatar. It is something they eat a lot. It has thyme and other spices and sesame seeds. They dip pita bread in olive oil and then into zaatar. I really like it. Also, Palestinian barbeque is really good. Today we ate lunch at a Palestinian restaurant. The first thing they do is to bring you pita bread and lots of different salads. We probably had about 15 small plates of different things to eat with the pita bread. There was tabuli, humus, tahini, pickles, cut up cucumber and tomato, something that seemed like an eggplant salad and other things. Then they bring the main meal which is usually roasted meat. Today I had a dish with chicken that had been baked with lots of onions. At the end of the meal they bring a really sweet dessert like baklava and arabic coffee. It is really strong coffee with cardamon in a small cup. Diana has been making breakfast for us in the mornings and visiting with us and then during the day our friend, Zoughbi Zoughbi (he has the same name twice!) has arranged for us to visit other thing which I will be writing about in other posts. Tomorrow I will tell you about the Wi'am Center.