Weekends at the N.E.S.T. - November 1, 2008

Weekends at the N.E.S.T. are very quiet. Many students go home to be with their families and churches. The ones who live farther from home stay. We decided to have a movie night in the student lounge so I attempted to make a cake. I am a bit challenged with the oven in my apartment so Terra and new friend, Mohammed, helped me. To start the oven, the pilot must be lit with a match. Oven lit, now it was time to set the temperature. The highest setting was 350 and of course, that was what my cake mix required... so we fired up the oven to preheat. I put the cake on and Terra noted it seemed to be baking quickly. Silly me... we are not in Farenheight territory... 350 really meant 500 degrees or more! YIkes! Luckily the oven was turned down and the pumpkin cake salvaged for movie night!

We watched "Mama Mia" in the student lounge. I caught one photo of Bahjet Khader, Jirair "Jiro" Ghazarian, John M'mbirithi, Terra Winston, and Talar Marashlian before the movie began. Bishop Peter Munde, the Dorman Family, Yacoub Sabbagh, Salim Dawani, and Jacqueline Hoover were also in and out of the movie viewing. The plot and humor was difficult for some. After the movie, Yacoub played different humorous short video clips of Mr. Bean and Coke commercials about Priests and, well, you had to be here. All I can say is, people here like to laugh, which is fun!

The weekend weather was glorious. During the late afternoon Terra Winston and I retreated to Cafe Younes for little break and time for internet for me and grading Hebrew papers for her! We also stopped in the Cigale... a delightful candy and pastry shop. Yummmmmmmm!

None of the staff are around on the weekends so the students man the front door desk in shifts. It is just a very different rhythm and a bit lonely. All the more fun to gather together, even if some are studying and others are writing or reading or playing music. It has been fun to trade music. I'm learning a lot about contemporary Christian music from Jiro.