Living in Tamra, our first day of school and new friendships!

We are slowly getting used to life here in Tamra. Things are very different then back home! 

Let’s start off with the most obvious one: it’s hot, like, very hot. Between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. it’s impossible to do anything outside. This very blog is written because at this moment, it’s 3 p.m. and the temperature is 27°, with no wind and no clouds to block out the sun. We can do some laundry, or get some chores done in the house, but that’s about it. Shopping is for the early morning, or the late afternoon. 

Secondly, the thing I just mentioned, the shopping. We have a trip of about 2 kilometres around Tamra to do our shopping, this takes us about… 2 hours!

There are two main reasons why it takes so long: the roads and the people.

Tamra is built on a hill, or should I say a mountain? The roads can be insanely steep. To go to the shops it’s all the way down, very nice, but of course we have to get back up once we have finished shopping and got all our groceries! Let me tell you, it’s hell!

Always a fun time in Tamra

What is the complete opposite of hell, are the people. When we walk down the road, everyone wants to talk to us! They want to know how we are doing, where we are from, what our plans are, … Every house you pass by you have to say ‘Marhaba’ and spend a few moments having a short conversation, which is so lovely!
I sometimes feel people in Belgium are so very distant from one another, one week in Israel makes you see how fun it can be to spend more time socialising. 

Lastly, we also enjoyed some local cuisine for the first time, Falafel.

We went to the best falafel restaurant in Tamra and had a great time, but couldn’t finish the entire meal, we were so full!

We also had our first day of school and what an adventure it was.
When we left at 8.30 we expected to go to school, get some information about our internship and be back home by 12. It didn’t work out that way.

We got to go to a festival organised by the pupils of our school and another school for senior citizens. There were a lot of important people speaking there, like the major of Tamra and a minister, there were traditional singers and dancers and who we think was a comedian, but of course we didn’t understand his jokes.
One of the English teachers of the school was so nice to accompany us and explain most things going on and afterwards, while we were waiting for the bus, we had a nice opportunity to  interact with some of the pupils. They were all so excited to get to know us, it was a little overwhelming!
We had a lot of fun having little conversations, practicing each other’s names and singing. Sometimes it was very difficult because some pupils had trouble understanding every English word we said, but we managed, some words and jokes are universal.

Nathalie and Katharina eating falafel

A final thing I want you to tell about are two new friends we made: Katharina and Susanne. They are also staying with Khaled and Aisha, our host family and are two German primary school teachers. Whoever said Germans don’t have a sense of humour surely can’t have met Katharina and Susanne, because they are some of the funniest people I know. We took them to eat falafel the first night they arrived and had fun the whole time. When we were returning to our house one of the families we were passing by wanted us to sit and drink some coffee with them, a great night indeed!

Be sure to tune in next time to hear how things are going and even more, like a description of our trip to beautiful city of Akko!

To keep you entertained until then, here is a clip of the ladies showing you around our home away from home in Tamra! See you!

- Joachim