Waking up in Michigan

The long wait for visas continues. Hope is alive and well, and she's tentatively scheduled us a flight to Tel Aviv for September 6th, but she has her fingers crossed and she keeps checking her phone so I'm not really sure how to read that behavior. But we're optimistic! And we sternly, semi-confidently expect visas to arrive before September.

In the meantime, we've ventured to Michigan, where we're staying at a fancy Jesuit retreat center that frequently plays host to various church groups and band camps. (Sweaty band kids keep stealing our table.) ("Sweaty sousaphonist" is a term I wanted to use just then, but then I would be making assumptions about what instruments the various sweaty children play, and that's a problem. You can't sacrifice your integrity for a cheap joke Michael, especially when you're not even sure that's the proper term for a musician who specializes in the use of the sousaphone.)

But besides the adorable children visibly struggling their way through primary school (bless them), I really enjoy the random pictures of Pope Francis scattered about the facility (bless him), and I have much appreciation for the copious amounts of complementary coffee of questionable quality (BLESS IT, I guess).

It's definitely a little anti-climactic to be sitting here in Michigan after a week of orientation, rather than getting to actually get going, but I'm trying to see it as an exercise in patience.

And it's not like we don't have plenty of orientating and preparation to do for our time in the Holy Land anyway? With our team of volunteers and our humble coordinators we've already started diving more deeply into the history of the region -- so we should be all read up and ready to go in a couple more life-times of careful study and analysis. (Which at least means we won't be running out of things to do anytime soon.)

Then there's the whole language learning thing! I've been producing spit, phlegm, and gaspy wheezes all summer in anticipation of learning Arabic, but it's helping surprisingly little. Apparently there's a little more to it than that? It's actually a pretty beautiful and complex language and it's a lot of fun. But yes, there is a lot of spitting.

Our first vaguely on topic Middle East venture for orientation was a casual trip to the Oriental Institute in Chicago last Wednesday (after the other YAGM volunteers started catching flights). I say "vaguely," because how relevant is the history of the Hittites and the Assyrians to the Middle East today? Also because the whole "oriental" label is a little iffy for me, in a "what-does-that-really-mean?" sort of way. (For me it was more of a museum about western archaeologists and their conclusions about Sumerian trade routes than a museum about the Sumerians themselves -- if you know what I mean.)

But whatever. Life goes on and learning continues.