Our Lady of the Holyland

So today here in the Holyland (that means from Egypt all the way to Rhodes and Syria) we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of the Holyland - actually here in Israel it's Our Lady of Palestine. She's always depicted with cactus surrounding her - cactus being the symbol of Palestine - the desert plant that flowers.

Marco Gudinho presided at the Mass, and we sang most of it including the Our Father in arabic. That was a nice local touch. All in all it was a nice Mass, simple and dignified. I mispronounced one word during the reading and after Mass it was well noted by everyone ..... the hazards of reading publicly in a foreign language.

It rained last night from 11.30pm to 2.30am. It's been like this every night, so it gets cold. And there's no lettuce left in the fridge so the canaries have no veggies today. To make it up for their enormous appetite (for winter), I gave them two hard boiled eggs and a stick of grain with honey. They love it. The tortoises are partially hibernating now so they hardly eat anything except when it really gets hot in the afternoons and they wake up and search for food.

Well it's the Sabbath and I have to go to school now. Will write more after lessons.