What is Michael doing in Jerusalem anyway? (In which I attempt to be informative and end up just talking about food)

It has come to my attention that I haven't really gone into much in the way of basic, basic detail on blog, so those who arrive at this blog without the benefit of advance information might be a little confused.

Also: I've been living in Jerusalem for three weeks now, so it might behoove me to give you a little bit of an overview of what life is like for me right now -- before I slip back into a more scattered, anecdotal blogging style.

 So yeah! I live in Jerusalem, which is a couple layers of city on top of each other, the older layers of which are some of the oldest layers of city in the world.

The whole city is dense with cultures and histories and traditions and faiths, overlapping, intermixing and weaving together in tremendous and beautiful and also occasionally morally revolting and traumatizing ways. One way or another there's a lot of feels.

Then there's the politics. You can't turn a corner or buy a bag of chips without choking on it like abnormally thick, rancid, polarizing, volatile air.

A brief sample: I'm living in Jerusalem. Israel claims it as its capital, but the international community (by which I mean pretty much everybody, but also specifically the big guns at the U.N., including Amurkah.) puts their consulates in Tel Aviv, and when they put "Jerusalem" on official documents, like under "birthplace" on passports, they just leave off the comma and specific country.

To be specific, I'm living in East Jerusalem. But where is East Jerusalem? Well Israel says it's Israel. And they treat it like it's Israel, but everybody else puts their hands over their ears and kind of ignores that.

But that's cause they've got their eyes set on very particular solutions to this whole massive trainwreck of a geopolitical struggle and taking their hands off their ears for too long might endanger those idealized plans and this is all tongue-in-cheek and neither-here-nor-there so we're-just-going-to-put-politics-Palestine-and-Israel-all-away-for-now. But yeah, I'm in a fairly awkward, confusing position, geographically speaking.

So I'm living in Jerusalem.

It's sort of a city in a desert, except there's a bunch of pine trees and grass and various other temperate plants because a lot of people wanted to make it look European. (Cigarettes and capris would've been much more effective and much less intrusive to the indigenous ecosystem)

I live in a neighborhood called Beit Hanina, and I attend church at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in the Old City. It's part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land, which is the primary representative of the spunky, self-confident global minority that is Palestinian Lutherans.

I'm working at an odd preschool-daycare sort of hybrid run by the ELCJHL, and I play with children, and there's a lot of interesting adventures and quirks to get into there, but we'll get into that later. Needless to say, silliness, tears, etc. etc., lots of weird and fascinating language difficulties and opportunities, many different smells (few pleasant), etc.etc.etc. whatever.

Food! Food is good. I'm currently living on a diet consisting mostly of cheap Hospital lunches, invites to occasional local bbqs, and leftover Bible Study pastries.

Only sort of. But I'm eating a monstrous amount of yogurt, hummus, and fresh produce. That's about it. Vegetables, oil, and milk fat. (With live cultures!) 

Also for the last week I've been having the most incredible inexplicable cravings for dark chocolate and coconut. I've been rapidly burning through some funny imported Polish coconut cookies but I'm never satisfied. I usually trust that my body knows what it's doing better than I do, so I sort of just follow its lead, but this might be one of those times where I have to step in and demand that it put down the Dr. Gerard Kubanki Kokosowe. (now with Podluzne kruche ciasteczko wypelnione kremem śmietankowym i wiórkami kokosowymi!)

Here be pictures.

rice and lentils and onions (mujuddara) and what is probably yogurt or tahini sauce.  (R-L cause that's how they do here)

Cucumbers and tomatoes and various other things diced up, and probably drowned in parsley (tabbouleh!)

shakshouka and coffee! Egg, tomato stuff with various other vegetables mixed in, anddddd parsley.

Did I mention I work on the Mount of Olives and can go chill out here in the mornings, only minutes from my workplace? No I don't think I did. Hey look, the sovereign nation of Jordan! (The hazy, faint mountains in the distance) And now we return to your regularly scheduled food programming.

Most meals outside of my flat consist of many little plates like this. It's a little overwhelming. Also this is just the appetizer round. It's called "salads" and it's an opportunity to stuff your face with hummus and arugula. 

And after salads... Meat! And potatoes! And more vegetables! And more meat! And usually someone will complain to the waiter at this point about the woefully insufficient supply of hummus thus far received. Then more hummus will be delivered, and there is generally much rejoicing. (If you don't eat all the hummus and/or complain about there not being enough, you're probably not adequately fulfilling your social obligations.)

Oh parsley. You're like that friend I thought I sort of knew cause you were always kind of hanging out on the fringes with our pals back in high school, all ground up and somewhere in that ubiquitous "generic spices" category, but now I get to know you and see you in your element, as an individual, on your own terms, and wow you taste funny.






Also the lemonade here is made with mint. I don't think I'm ever coming back. (Kidding! I'm kidding! Don't deport me!)