JSB (Jerusalem School of Bethlehem) has field trips during the spring break every year. This year, the students went to a local spring that has been around for thousands of years. It’s probably as old as the mankind itself. As usual, I took a bunch of pictures as a school photographer.
When we left for America for 90 days last October, we had a family look after our beloved chickens. Within two weeks, however, they all got stolen. When we returned to Israel, we had to move to the Bethlehem area. After we settled in, we decide to start raising chickens again. It took awhile to find them, but here they are, all 16 of them, just in time for Spring Equinox!
Beit Jala is one of the few villages in Palestine that nests both churches and mosques.
I take pride in taking pictures of people in their natural settings, but sometimes it’s just not possible to have everyone in the group looking ‘correct.’ I can either take hundreds of pictures and hope for the best, or simply have them pose for the “natural” pictures for a few seconds. Below, the first one is the best frame I could grab from dozens of pictures in unposed setting; the second, posed. You gotta do what you gotta do to get the job done. World renown photographers of nature magazines sometimes ‘cheat’ to get their perfect shots as well. We all do it, but we just don’t talk about it that much. 🙂
No John Deere? No problem. Horses are still commonly used throughout Palestine.
You can’t miss three things on top of pretty much every household rooftop; passive solar hot water heater, water storage tank and satellite dish.
Solar water heater works amazingly well. Just within a few hours, it produces boiling hot water without any external power or moving parts.
Most Palestinian village turn on their municipal water supply a few times a month, so every household has some kind of holding tank. It has something to do with water rationing and leaking pipes, I believe.
Satellite dish is very common. Watching television is probably the top form of entertainment. Decoder box can be purchased for around NIS 150 (around $40) and it can receive 100’s of channels from all over the word, including Hollywood movies.
True beauty is NOT in the eye of the beholder, but in..
The answer is obvious yet not so.
The school is starting a campaign of hope, to let the world know that hope drives these kids here at the Jerusalem School of Bethlehem (JSB), Beit Jala.
Jogged along “the wall” this morning, stretched out for miles along Bethlehem and Beit Jala. Pretty much every section, ugly yet beautiful, tells a story.
Rain gave today – probably for the last time this season, not expecting much in return. We need to listen – and learn.
“One person gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.” (Proverbs 11:24-25)
