Christmas soon

Our wild poinsettia

Another Friday. The first thing I noticed about this morning was .... the muezzin's call to prayer at 4am was much less loud than before. Apparently the govt.'s imposition to silence or lower the volume of the loudspeakers have gone into effect. It was significantly softer, the loudspeaker of the Al Aqsa Mosque that lies directly in front of my window. The other smaller mosques were so soft I could not even hear them. What a difference! Today however we read in the newspapers that the PM is now going to enforce this low volume even during the day.

The Tourist Ministry just reported that November saw the highest volume of tourists in the year, a 38% increase from last year which comes up to about 300,000 people. Chinese and Indian tourists make up the bulk of this visitors and the govt. has decided to pump more money to attract asians because the market in America and Europe has dropped significantly. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4890567,00.html

Christmas is fast approaching and streets in the Christmas Quarter are decked with buntings and lights. It's an italian tradition that Christmas trees are put up on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (yesterday) so most shops and houses have had them up by evening yesterday. Our courtyard has a huge poinsettia tree, almost 2 meters tall and it is flowering profusely. That's our christmas tree ... it looks very festive in green and red, and evokes the spirit of christmas to every visitor that comes to our place.