Near the post office is a small Greek church and a nice plaza. I decided to go into a coffee shop and get a frozen fruit drink, and at the counter, another customer asked me if I was from New York; she had noticed my Metro Card in my wallet. I started chatting with her and it turned out she lived in Astoria for one year! It's very close to where I grew up in Queens. It turns out she is from Nazareth, but lived for a long time in North America, including in Canada. She moved back to Nazareth about a decade ago and married her husband, and has two cute little kids (the husband and children were with her at the cafe). She even used to work at the NGO where I am volunteering! Maybe I shouldn't be so surprised because Nazareth is a relatively small city (around 60,000), but I still think it's a small world.
I chatted with this woman and her husband some more, and after they left I talked with the shopkeepers, a man and a woman who are friends with the first woman I spoke with (the one who lived in Astoria). They gave me some publications to read, including some newspapers from the 1980s and a few contemporary magazines written by teenage girls.
The cafe is really nice, and it has a bookshelf with books you can borrow (that's where the publications came from). I think I am going to go there often to talk with the owners and just sit and read. I'm glad there is a place I feel like I can chill out, as it doesn't seem there is much to do in Nazareth besides go to church.
Then, I walked home to buy groceries and stopped into a thrift shop to buy a bucket (I needed one to use as an extra trash can), and I started chatting with the shopkeeper there. He gave me the bucket for free as a gift when he found out I spoke Arabic. I feel really humbled when people are impressed that I study their language, but at the same time it makes me think that I have some kind of privilege when it comes to being a Westerner and studying a language. For example, when I think about the students I used to teach English to, I don't know how often Americans congratulate them on their language skills...but I feel like I always get congratulated when I speak Spanish or Arabic. But it's not that big of a deal. Maybe compared to most Americans it's unusual, but most people in the world know at least two languages, and I think that's how it should be in America too.
Then I came home and stopped by my landlady's. She was outside with some of her relatives and she invited me to sit and have a bite to eat with them. I am forever amazed at people's generosity here in Israel. I hope I can return the favor and spread it around.
Oh yeah, and yesterday I visited my old teacher at her kibbutz! She has the most adorable animals: a fluffy white dog named Dubalei (it means "bear" in Hebrew), a white cat named Sheleg ("snow" in Hebrew), and a new kitten named Betty (because she looks like a bat). Betty and Dubalei play together. I wonder if Betty thinks she's a dog. My teacher said that Dubalei behaves towards Betty as a mother dog would toward her puppies.
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