25 canary eggs

Reaction to the pope's visit to the Holyland is mixed. Generally everyone welcomes him but there are some dissenting voices. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1239710820961&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Meanwhile more Palestinian houses are being demolished. That's not a good sign. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8016258.stm

And level 5 has been raised for the mexican flu ... bad sign too. It's amazing how western countries have not learnt from the Asian flu crisis. Govt.s are still relaxed about face-masks and border-crossings .... very unlike the asian countries who have now enforced high alert measures. Well the price to pay is human lives. I hear that a close down would worsen the economic crisis but hey ..... economics is more important than human lives? There'll be not much of an economy when everyone dies. Was man made for the sabbath or the sabbath for man?

Second day into my prednisolone regime. The wheezing has reduced significantly but I still get up at 3am coughing and gasping. Fr Paul Sun the chinese priest some of you sponsored to study here in Israel, comes every other day to do foot reflexology on me - concentrating on the lungs and bronchial acupressure points.

Fr Vincenzo is very busy and only wrote me a couple of lines to say he'll update on the sponsorship of children in Musky soon.

And the canaries - it's boom time. The 4 breeding cages have a total of 16 eggs. Then in the large cage there're 9 eggs in one nest although I put 3 nests in there. 2 females squeeze to brood all the eggs in one nest. It's a funny sight - one sitting on top of another. I tried to remove some eggs to another nest but they refuse to move to the new nest. So anyway if all goes well, we'll have 25 baby canaries for the first batch. The other friars here are already planning what to do to them - the consensus being to sell them or exchange them for canary food.