"Welcome to your Sudanese education centre."

The Dead Sea was wonderful. It's amazing how you float to the top no matter what. I couldn't dive under if I wanted to. Of course, it's so salty that you wouldn't want to. The small amount that got in my mouth burned my tongue and I can't even imagine getting it in the eyes. But all that aside, the water was warm and it was so cool being able to just float along without making any kind of effort. Very relaxing. The reason we went was actually to take Eldon's in-laws down to one of the hotels. It was this amazing, all-inclusive hotel with just about anything you could ask for. Really. Anything. When we got there, they wanted to have us stay and hang out with them but after we went and moved the van to a proper parking spot, security wouldn't let us back in. Of course, all the free ice cream you can eat sounded marvelous, but we just went a little farther down the beach to where it wasn't reserved by the hotel and it was still a great time. The weird part is that you can go as far out into the sea as you want with no fear of how you're gonna make it back. I recommend to anyone that gets a chance, come do it.

Nothing too exciting happened for the rest of the day. It was a good day to relax and I ended up falling asleep early again.

I've been at the center all day today and I'll be back all day tomorrow. I did some laundry today and have been playing with the kids and doing some reading. Kyle and I went to the bank today and I finally figured out just how Arad is put together. Everything is really close to everything else. It just took a minute to figure out the arrangement. And it's just a short walk from the center here to "downtown" where all the shops are. I'm thinking I might go into the market today because it's only a once a week thing. There's this giant tent thing on the way out of town and every Monday they have a farmer's market type of deal. If not today I'll probably go next week because I want to see what kinds of cool things they have over there. Probably lots of things I can't live without.

I feel like I've kind of started to settle in by now. I have my surroundings somewhat figured out and I've met enough people that I don't feel like a complete stranger anymore. It's still hard for me to grasp how far I am from home and sometimes even the significance of where I am. But it's coming. I've only been gone for less than a week so I haven't gotten too homesick, yet. I think that's partly because when I was living in Seattle, I often wouldn't see my family for a couple weeks or even a month. It also helps, though, that I've been emailing home plenty and keeping in contact with a lot of my friends.

Tomorrow I'm teaching two English classes - one in the morning and one at night. And I think between teaching, hanging out with the Sudanese, and seeing as much of Israel as I can, that will cover most of what I'll be doing here. It's nice to have some kind of direction finally, but, of course, I'm a big fan of wingin' it, too. Mostly, right now, I'm just feeling the impact of all the traveling and running around and trying to adapt to new surroundings. I'm tired. I think my sleep schedule has started to normalize a bit, though. I'm still getting up with the sun but at least I can last a little later into the evening without feeling totally exhausted. And to think...it only took a week!

I hope everyone is doing wonderfully back home. Talking to my mom and little sis, it sounds like Longview is as exciting as ever. Rain and all. Please feel free to get a hold of me as I would love to hear how everyone is doing. And thank you all so much for the prayers and support. I really, quite literally, couldn't have done it without all of you backing me. I love you all!

.Tim