You say Passover, I say Semana Santa

It is happening...At about 3 or 4pm tomorrow people will start saying "Shabot Shalom!", the stores will close, and that is the end of bread and milk for a week!!!

So the Israeli day starts at sunset the night before. The work week is Sunday through Thursday. Passover starts on Tuesday and lasts a week. This (in A-merrr-i-ken) means that at 3 or 4pm tomorrow businesses will close so everyone can be home from work by sunset. (No work on the Sabbath!) Businesses usually stay closed until Saturday at sunset. But with the holiday around the corner we've heard that most people take off Sunday and Monday while they're at it. (Monday would be a half-day anyway because you would have to leave work by 3pm to be home for sunset and the first day of Passover - remember, "Tuesday" starts Monday at sunset..~5pm). Are you following me? So then businesses are closed for Passover until Tuesday the 6th, but even that is a Moroccan holiday that is now celebrated here - so what the heck, lets throw in an extra day of vacation. This means at 3pm on Friday (the 26th) businesses will close and not open again until Tuesday the 6th.

Now, most of the Americans and Palestinians aren't Jewish so they (and hence our work community) continues to work through this whole shindig (with the exception of the first and last day). Not so bad - except the places we shop, for say groceries, are closed. AND...if that isn't enough, Passover means no wheat (I think, correct me someone!) so you have matza and NO BREAD!! (We stocked up today)

At breakfast this morning we made another not-so-fun but important discovery about Passover. Our milk is kosher (that isn't the sad part). It says (in English) that is kosher, but not "Passover Kosher".....? Oh!! okay...? The grocery stores supposedly put sheets over the non-kosher items during passover so we can't buy them....are they going to not sell us milk too? A whole week without bread and milk?!?! I'm excited to see how this works. Hopefully I'll get some pictures and post them later. Pictures of Passover, not us without bread and milk.

On another note - our first guest is coming!!! All the way from Spain! They have Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Spain so he too has a long vacation and gets to spend it with us! Yeahhh!!! Who is next? The guest room is ready!