Tawjihi nightmare

Sunrise in East Jerusalem

It was tawjihi yesterday ... that's like A levels or Matriculation. Families have fired non-stop fireworks to celebrate their child's graduation. Strange most of us foreigners think ... to fire fireworks in the day when you can't see anything, only loud noises. And it started at 7am and went on till past 10pm. Talk about noise and air pollution. The police even closed off some streets in East Jerusalem so those celebrants could drive around the area honking their cars to announce their graduation. Our fear is fireworks setting houses on fire, peoples getting burned ... and early sleepers like me scared the hell out from fireworks fired 2 meters away.

Meantime though the weather has cooled somewhat, certain areas especially near the Sea Sea continue to heat up. Reports say it was up to 50 degrees at Sodom which is along the southern tip of the Dead Sea. We here in the mountains have a cooler breeze but daytime gets quite scorching if not for the wind. Let's hope the forest fires will burn out soon ... we've had too many fire disasters the past few years. And fireworks are no help.

Rockefeller Park at 6am

This morning our UPS blew up so we had no internet service. None of my librarians could work so I could everyone to clean up the shelves instead. Blessing in disguise. We managed to clean up alot today ... thanks to a breakdown in our internet system. No cataloguing done ... but lots of clean shelves.

Yesterday was the birthday of one of our alumni ... a romanian orthodox priest who was our great friend and a hardworking student. He was killed 6 yrs ago by a drunken driver while on his way to celebrate Sunday Mass. Dreadful tragedy. And none of us have forgotten him. He was one of the finest people we've ever met and shared time with.

There's a sad piece of news we read on the Internet .... the legendary arab pastry and sweet shop run by the Zelatimo family has finally closed after 150 years. Their perfection in exquisite arabic pastry is known throughout the Middle East. It's situated at the ancient entrance of the Holy Sepulcher and in fact inside the courtyard of the shop you can see the 1700 atrium of the ancient Basilica of the Sepulcher. What a pity ... another legend die4s ... another part of history is gone.   https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-the-vanishing-of-a-legendary-palestinian-pastry-1.7530785?fbclid=IwAR23jsu-QtmizdE3POm3yZqcFjujFtUpLC9fjMxnSip95U9sXr1qybn0qSI