Arriving!

Hello all! I have arrived in Jerusalem and hit the ground running full speed ahead! I can already see that this will be a crazy next few months!

Friday, May 22:
My plane landed in Tel Aviv where Jonathan Miles, the director of Shevet Achim met me. We then immediately head off to a hospital in Tel Aviv where several kids sponsored by Shevet Achim were receiving treatment and surgeries for heart defects.
At the hospital we met up with Guron and his wife Rebecca, the Iraq liaison for Shevet Achim. There were some surgery complications with Hamza (http://www.shevet.org/hamza/ ) one of the Shevet children, so we stayed at the hospital with Hamza’s grandmother for a few hours waiting to hear if his status would change.

While at the hospital I was able to get a brief tour of the pediatrics unit, including the pediatric intensive care unit, and meet several of the other patients sponsored by Shevet Achim including Akram (http://shevet.org/akram/ ) who beat me in a game of Uno during our visit! During the process of losing the Uno game, I learned how to say several colors in Kurdish: green – saos, blue – sheen, red – sur, and yellow – zur!

After our visit at the hospital in Tel Aviv, we left for the Shevet Achim headquarters in Jerusalem. As soon as we arrived there we met up with a couple visiting from Egypt and Jonathan offered to drive them through Bethlehem and invited me along. So I ran inside, put my bags upstairs, and then got back in the car and we went driving through Jerusalem and Bethlehem for a few hours. My head was just about falling off my shoulders by the time we got back to Shevet Achim! Then we all had dinner and I was able to meet several of the other staff members.

Saturday, May 23:
Today was the Sabbath and I had the pleasure of walking down to Christ Church in the Old City to attend a Messianic Jewish church service in the morning. I was also able to walk around both the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City for a brief period of time and observe social interactions within these two cultures.

Sunday, May 24:
I spent a large portion of today with Mohammed (http://www.shevet.org/mohammediraq/) playing, dancing, singing, and laughing as his ridiculous antics! He is definitely the charmer with a huge mischievous grin and a rambunctious twinkle in his eye. His scheduled heart surgery date has been delayed so he will be living here at Shevet for another week and I look forward to getting to spend more time with him!

I also attended my first staff meeting today and had a bit of training! It sounds like I will be doing mainly office work, house work, and family care for the first month that I am here. The children going in for heart surgeries live at the Shevet Achim facility, along with their families, before being admitted to the hospital. Depending on the amount of people staying here at one time, that entails a lot of work! I will be doing anything from writing up grocery lists, cleaning the house, financial paperwork, watching children, and helping to transport patients. After the first month I will probably be focusing a lot more on hospital visitations, transportations, and family support at the hospitals.

The adventure has officially begun!