Fire!

So Sunday's rioting moved south yesterday (Monday) to Silwan Village .... more rioting, injured and arrests. Soldiers are still everywhere on high alert. They're still expecting problems.

Fr Matteo left this morning for Germany via Italy. He had finished his Licentiate (MA equivalent) and is brilliant in Aramaic and Hebrew. He's now off to Germany to study German for a year and then back here to continue with his doctorate. Good luck Matteo!

And today is the Feast of St Jerome, who lived here in Bethlehem and translated the bible into latin (from Greek and Hebrew and aramaic). It's our feastday of course, so we had a nice lunch - rice! And of course we remembered all the bible scholars who went before us marked with the sign of faith. St Jerome, pray for us!

My nose started bleeding (again. has been bleeding the whole week) after lunch. Feels lousy cos it was lots of blood. Got my beard all bloodied. Everyone is thinking my blood-pressure is high again.

Bro Rosario asked me to go for a walk after my bleeding stopped. It was about 4pm. Good thing we did because when we just walked past our school, we found a huge fire at our school's backdoor. Flames over 3 metres high. Crowds were surrounding, kids were shouting. I ran back to the monastery to get our doorman to get the hose from the garage but it wasn't long enough. So I ran up to the school rooftop and turned on the hose that's up there. Managed to douse out the flames. Someone had set a sofa on fire at our door. The school walls are now all blackened. Now you think it's a nice place to live here?