Early Bilbies

Littletree has gone away for the holidays to stay with her grandparents in Israel, so she’s over there now celebrating Passover.

We haven’t ever really celebrated Easter before, and she’s well-informed about the Pagan origins of the holiday, and knows that technically, it’s a Spring rite, and therefore should be observed around the full moon after the Vernal Equinox, which isn’t for another six months for us up here in the Southern Hemisphere. We’ve talked at length about Ishtar and Oestre and the significance of rabbits and eggs.

This year, Littletree declared that she doesn’t mind about all of that stuff, she just wants to have the “wake up in the morning and have a surprise easter egg hunt with hidden chocolates”. She explained to me that she knows that the “Easter Bunny” would just be me pretending, but she asked me to do it for her anyway. And to do it early, since she would be away on the “proper” Easter – as she wisely pointed out; it’s irrelevant when we do it, since it’s not really Easter anyway, and the whole holiday is just a made-up thing.

Fair enough.

So off I went to a purveyor of processed egg-shaped chocolate confections to purchase a small hoarde of goodies for Littletree to find. A dozen “egg-sized” chocolate eggs, a small bag of “mini” eggs, and an Easter Bilby.

The Easter Bilby is an important and noteworthy part – here in Australia, rabbits are a massive plague of a pest, and meanwhile, the Bilby is a cute little Australian native animal that sort of vaguely looks like a bunny, and they’re highly endangered since the introduction of European settlers to the country (said settlers were also the foolish imports who brought the rabbits with them). Anyway, Australia tries to cull feral rabbits, and promote saving bilbies, and somehow, eating chocolate bilbies at Easter instead of bunnies is a part of that. Or something. At least it’s educational.

Anyway, Littletree awoke on the morning before she left to find a little trail of chocolate eggs outside her door

She started collecting them up in her shirt

Until she found that the trail led out into the garden to a basket

There were eggs hidden all around the house

and around the garden

Littletree got quite the stash!

She did plan to save the Bilby, but after about an hour she came to me, all distressed, and said, “mama, the worst thing ever happened – I was playing with my Easter Bilby and the wrapping just fell off of it, and then it broke, so I had to eat the broken bits, and then it was uneven, so I had to eat more to make it neat… and now it’s all wrecked.”

The poor child – she had to eat the whole thing!

She did save all the eggs to take to her cousins in Israel though – apparently they don’t get chocolate there, only matzah.

Iran and Israel – Flashback Friday

In 2004, I had a vision - a dream, if you will.

I had a vision that the Rainbow Family Gathering could happen in the Middle East - in a place where both Israelis and Iranians (and Syrians and Lebanese and Jordanians and in fact all the world) could come and gather together in peace.

I shared my dream at the council at the World Rainbow Family Gathering in Costa Rica (this is the council where it will be decided in which country the next World Rainbow Gathering would be). I said Turkey (the country, not the bird).

A lot of people argued against me. A lot of people said I was crazy - they said you can't have a Rainbow Gathering in Turkey - Midnight Express, Muslims, Military state... They said there is no way any Middle Eastern people would come. They said it would be a disaster and that there was no way Israelis would be able to be at a festival peacefully with Iranians.

At that time, I didn't personally know any Iranians, but I held my vision, I spoke my dream. And some people caught on. The council reached consensus, and the gathering happened.

I got myself to the Middle East, I walked my talk and went to Turkey to help find the place for the Gathering to be held. I spread the word, I promoted it. And I went there, with Littletree – she was two at the time.

It was a beautiful place in the mountains of Southern Turkey. There was people from all over the world - Australians, Americans, Canadians, Germans, English, French, Italians, Kiwis, Turks... about 40 countries were represented, in fact. And lots of Israelis. We all had fun, we sang songs and at food together and camped out.

And then one day, about a week into the month-long festival, a big truck drove right up to the main fire area - we ran over to ask the truck driver to leave, because Rainbow Gatherings are car-free zones; there's a car-parking area a short walk away, but we had problems with locals driving in all the time.
But before we could say anything about the truck being in what we feel is a sacred space, people started pouring out.

Iranians.

Twenty-one Iranians, men and women. They'd heard about the gathering and come together, caravanning all the way from Teheran. They'd been travelling for a few days in trucks, and they'd brought a king's ransom of food to share (dried fruits and nuts from Iran, and spices to start a chai tent).

They poured out of that truck, and kissed the ground, and we crowded around them and hugged them, and cried "Welcome Home!" (because that's what you say to newly arriving people at Rainbow Gatherings.)

And before I knew it, there was a mob of Israelis hugging Iranians hugging Israelis. And Germans. And Aussies, and Dutch and South Africans and Turks and Danes and Swiss... And we were all just people.

In the days that came, the Iranians set up a camp and started hosting parties and serving food and chai (in Rainbow Gatherings, everything is shared freely; there is no commerce). And friendships were formed.

Someone called for a "talking circle" (basically a group meeting where people sit in a circle and take turns talking) to discuss Peace. It was mostly Israelis and Iranians that came.

Virtually every one in that circle - Iranians and Israelis alike said the same thing:
"I grew up thinking the others were evil people who just hate us and want to bomb us, and we only want peace, I had no idea that the others are people just like us, who also want peace."

So many tears were shed, so many hugs were shared, and so many deep friendships forged.

This was my vision, and it carries on today - the "Peace in the Middle East" Rainbow Family Gatherings are still happening every year, mostly in Turkey, and I now have many friends from Iran, and from Israel.

Let go of your politics, let go of fear, let go of assumptions and media scaremongering and hate. Let go of fear, and see that we are all just people who want Peace.

And I’m not the only one

http://youtu.be/mYjuUoEivbE

Capoeira Cats

All packed up again and ready to leave Israel. It’s been nice to visit, a little short, but so good to see everyone!

On the weekend we had a lot of friends over for a little get-together, we all sat around chatting and we got into playing capoeira.

Littletree has been really getting into playing again – she begged me to do some training with her every day :)

Loads of fun!

Sadly, Littletree’s cousin found some abandoned kittens mewling in the woodpile. One of them was already dead and the surviving three weren’t in good shape; hungry, cold and wet from the rain.

Everyone took turns in holding them on hot water bottles and feeding them special milk from a dropper.

Tonight I fly to Bangkok to await Littletree and Purple, who will be coming in two more days, then Littletree and I fly to Malaysia for a month :)

Jerusalem Butterfly

On Friday we drove up to Jerusalem to see one of my bestest friends, Butterfly. Twas so awesome to see her again, after three years!

Littletree loves her to bits as well :) We all went out into the old city in Jerusalem in search of the best hummous ever in the Muslim Quarter. I love walking around in the old alleyways, on stone pathways that twist in and out; I would get lost in there within 30 seconds!

Eventually we found the best hummous, and oh my goddess! It was worth the walk. Seriously delicious, still warm and served with fresh pita.

We walked around the markets, buying bits of this and that, and catching up

Then we went to another place for the best knaffe ever. Knaffe is a kind of dessert made with goats cheese and sweet stuff somewhat related to baklava. Actually, I can’t explain it, you just have to go try it for yourself! (be warned though, it’s sweet enough to curl your toes!)

Purple and Butterfly sat being silly and we all laughed a lot

Then we went up to a lookout, just to be a bit touristy, and take funny photos while admiring the view. Yay for the good zoom on my camera

And Butterfly showed off her new-found acrobatics skill, in perfectly irreverent style

A fantastic day :)

Enough Matzah

It was still Passover when I arrived to Israel, so of course, there was an abundance of matzah around. Yay. I hate matzah; haven’t the Jewish people suffered enough?

Purple did succeed in making a damn fine tiramisu with matzah flour, and I do kind of like the matzah ball soup Purple’s mother makes.

Apparently, Littletree was hankering for some wafer biscuits, and her grandmother, aunt and cousin were all trying to explain why she can’t have any. They went through explaining the stories from the bible, and why we can’t eat any “Chametz” during Passover.

“But why” Littletree kept asking, “why can’t I have wafers?” Finally her cousin had enough and said to her “Just because! We do it because we always do it and we’ve been doing it for 3000 years!”

Littletree replied: “3000 years? I think it’s time to stop now!”

LOL The unhindered honesty of children :)

Anyway, it’s over now and I’m muchly enjoying a good fix of pita and hummous of the like you can’t get outside of the middle east. mmmm

Bon Voyage Littletree

Littletree and Purple left for Israel, so I’ll be home alone for a couple of weeks. It’s going to be the first time I’m not with Littletree on her birthday!

We had to get up at quarter to ridiculous to get them to the airport on time, but we were blessed with this awesome rainbow along the way.

roadside rainbows

I miss my little girl already, but we still get to talk on Skype a lot. They’re in Bangkok now for 2 days before flying on to Tel Aviv. I’ll join them in 2 weeks.

Learning to Read

Littletree has been really inspired to learn to read lately, and she practices writing a lot as well. The other day, quite out of the blue, she said she wants to learn to read Hebrew.

We have a big stack of Hebrew learn-to-read books that Purple brought back from Israel one time, only Littletree wasn’t interested in them back then. So I got them out and dusted them off and we sat down and went through the first one together.

First I read it to her once through, and then we looked at all the individual letters and talked about what sounds they made. We have a set of Hebrew alphabet magnets on the fridge, so we got those to help us as well.

  

After about half an hour of practicing together, Littletree was able to read through the whole thing, she was so excited and proud of herself at the end she made me take a video of her reading it.

And then it was on to the next book…

I love that we’re a multi-lingual household and I love that it was totally Littletree’s own intrinsic motivation and choice to start learning to read :D

Bye bye again Littletree

I’m home alone! Child-free for 30 hours already!

Yesterday I dropped Littletree and Purple to the airport and said goodbye to them… again!

They were supposed to fly to Israel on Monday. We were all packed Sunday night, and drove in the morning to the airport. They checked in and I kissed them goodbye at the gate

 

Quite a poignant moment for me, since Littletree will be away for almost 4 weeks, and we’ve never been apart more than a couple of days before. I gave her one last big hug and smooch, and drove back home to relax.

Only about half an hour after I got home, the phone rang. It was Purple, calling in a panic, because there was some problem with the aeroplane’s engine and their flight was delayed. It looked like they might miss their connection in Sydney to fly to Bangkok, and it was a big stress.

Purple didn’t have a cell phone, so he called me from a payphone… only the airport is under renovations, and there is only one payphone in the whole airport – outside on the street. So poor Purple had to go back out through security, with all their bags and Littletree to make the call.

I found the number of the travel agent and called them, thinking it’s hopeless since it was a public holiday on Monday. Thankfully, the travel agent has a 24 hour emergency line, and after a mere 20 minutes on hold, I got through to a helpful guy.

I explained the situation, and he promised to do his best to sort it out. Meanwhile, I waited. Eventually he called me back to say he’d not managed to get Purple onto another flight, but that his original flight was ready to leave very soon, and if Purple and Littletree were able to run really fast when they got to Sydney, they’d probably make their connection. He’d even arranged to have their baggage labelled “priority” and to get them sitting near the front of the plane, and alerted QANTAS that they’d be coming a tidge late for the Bangkok flight.

Only when Purple next went out again to call me, he had only 10 minutes to get back through security and on to his plane!

It didn’t matter, since the plane wasn’t ready after all. Back to square 1, called the travel agent again, who realised there was no way possible for them to make their flight, and started trying to get their tickets transferred onto a flight the next day. After loads of calling back and forth, and stressing out, it was all sorted – they could get on a flight the next day and it was up to Purple to get the domestic airline to either take them on the next flight to Sydney and put them in a hotel for the night, or give them a flight the next day. They took the second option, so I had to drive back to the airport (35 mins on the freeway) to collect them, and home again!

We spent the evening vegging out watching videos, and in the morning we did the whole thing again. This time, I parked the car and went in to the gate to wait with them.

Finally, their flight was called to board, on time, and I kissed them goodbye. Just at that minute, it was announced over the PA that their flight was delayed due to technical difficulties.

I swear my jaw hit the floor.

Luckily, they got the plane going again after just 20 minutes, so that was it. Littletree and Purple are gone!

Shabat Shalom!

Last week for Shabat we had a big Israeli Feast.

Purple decided to make cholent; a traditional Jewish meal that is cooked very slowly for the sabbath.

He started by soaking beans, barley and chick peas on Thursday evening. Friday afternoon, before sunset, I got the fire stoked and Purple put the soaked grains in the pressure cooker, with some potatoes and whole eggs and got it boiling on the stove. Just as the sun set, we put it on the fire, and left it to simmer the whole night.

In the morning, the fire was out, but the pot was still warm :) Purple made some rice to an Arab recipe he learnt from his mother and we roasted pumpkin.

We invited two Israeli families to eat Shabat lunch with us, so it was twelve people in our tiny little house - six adults and six children! Pretty crowded, but lots of fun.

Yum!!!

An Elephant Ate My Daughter

One of the weirdest things in Tel Aviv (note it's definitely not the weirdest), is at the playground in a huge shopping mall called Dizengoff Centre.

They have this larger-than-life flibreglass elephant with stairs leading up into its mouth. Children climb excitedly up the stairs into the dark, red belly of the beast...

And slide down through a chute that comes out its butt!

The children emerge, barely digested, to gleefully run around and go again.

And no one seems to think it's strange.

Littletree and I followed this adventure up by getting into a fight with a random passer-by: I was standing on a busy street-corner, talking on my phone to arrange a meeting with my friend. Littletree was sitting at my feet, waiting patiently. It was a loud and hectic place to stand, and I was already feeling a little stressed and overwhelmed...

Anyway, someone walked up with a dog, and the dog proceeded to sniff Littletree in the face. Littletree whined and backed away. The dog followed and started licking her. She whined more, and tried to fend it off, but not very convincingly. I said in a good dog-commanding voice (in Hebrew) "Hey! dog! Go! Shoo!" The dog continued to harass Littletree, and she continued to be disturbed by it.

Then I saw that the dog had an owner standing right next to us, so I said to her (in Hebrew) "hey, get your dog away from here". The woman replied that the dog wasn't disturbing my daughter. I raised my voice (clearly not so cool, but hey), "Yes! The Dog IS Disturbing Her! She's Frightened, Now Get Your Dog Away From Us!!"

Without moving her dog, the woman said "whoa, you're so aggressive!"

So then I lost it.

Shouted in her face (in English) "OF COURSE I'M @#$%ING AGGRESSIVE! YOUR DOG IS ANNOYING MY DAUGHTER AND I ASKED YOU TO TAKE IT AWAY! NOW GET YOUR @#$%ING DOG AWAY FROM US YOU STUPID B!TCH!!!"

Clearly not my best moment,

But clearly, IMO, you can't just let your dog go around getting in people's faces, especially when they ask you not to. Littletree could have been allergic to dogs, or phobic, or anything. She didn't know. Clearly I could have dealt with this waaaaay better. But somehow, being in Israel has me acting like that much more than I'd like.

Thank goodness for Rescue Remedy. Then i took Littletree to the park to meet Butterfly and climb on stuff.

New Article

Another of my articles was published on Essence of Life
It's about a woman called Wangari Maathai, an African woman working on changing the world.
Check it out
and as usual, go make a comment in the forum :)

I'm pretty busy at the moment, since we're packing to leave Israel and fly back to Bangkok - we'll only be there for 3 days before we fly to China, to the rainbow gathering, so most likely I'll be offline for a whiles.

Desert Odyssey

This weekend we went for a big trip into the desert with Purple's family, in honour of his mother's 75th birthday.

Personally, I'm not really into the desert; it's very hot, and very dry, and dusty. We walk around for ages to look at interesting rocks, that mostly look just like the rocks we have here, except that Moses once stubbed his toes on the desert rocks.

So, it was eighteen people, driving in a convoy of four cars - for some reason they refuse to tell us exactly where we are going; we have to drive in a convoy, and about a hundred cell phone calls flash back and forth between the various cars during the course of a 3 hour drive.

We stopped a few places on the way; at one Moshav where we looked at the locked doors of the Cochin Jewish Museum, and had a picnic, while the kids climbed trees.

And not just the kids:

We stayed the night at a Bedouin guest house, which was very cool - we all slept on the floor in a huge Bedouin tent. Oh how I would have traded my first born for a mosquito net that night!

Anyway it was a nice place, and we had a big Bedouin-style feast for Shabat dinner. Though sadly, they were keeping Kosher for us, so it was served with Matzoh, rather than wonderful Bedouin pita.

So, here's the tent:

And our feast:The next day we drove into the desert 4 hours, the group divided into 3 4WDs, to get to Mount Karkum to see the rock paintings. On the drive we saw lots of wildlife; some Zvi (a kind of deer) and a cool lizard.

For me and Littletree, driving hours out into the desert, only to climb up a rocky mountain in the middle of the noonday heat just to look at rocks isn't really such a great time, but on the way, we drove through a firing range (a common-place occurrence in Israel), which was pretty interesting for us.

Littletree was fascinated to see all the missile cases and blown-up wreckage littering the desert, and it led to lots of discussions about war and Israel and such. Long-time readers might remember previous discussions about that, which is the real reason we don't live in Israel.

In the end, it was too hot, and Littletree didn't want to climb up the mountain. So after we walked around a bit, looking at interesting rocks, I sat with Littletree and some of the younger children in the shade while everyone else climbed up to look at the rock paintings. Purple took some photos:

Then I managed to sprain my ankle, tripping on a rock, en route to the aid of my nephew, who banged his head really badly by standing up under the open car door. It was quite a slapstick moment.

Finally, we climbed back into our cars and drove home. In a few days we leave Israel for Bangkok, and on to China for the World Rainbow Gathering

Rainbow Rant

We went off to the Spring Rainbow Gathering this week. Luckily, it was held in a relatively (for Israel) nice place, only about 40 minutes drive from home.

I thought I might stay a few days, but once we got there... well, though it was a pretty easy site - very small, easy access to everything, and we found a nice spot to put our tent up, it was SO hot. Like, Global warming came early this year. Seriously; when we left, the reading in the car thermometer was 42 degrees Centigrade (105F)!

We ended up leaving on the second day, choosing Ice Cream and Air Conditioning over Rainbow Warriors.

When we got home, I put our household thermometer outside to see how hot it is, and the poor thing went up to 50 degrees (120F) and then broke!

We spent most of the time there drinking lots of water and hiding in the shade. I, of course, found my way to the kitchen and started to focalise dinner. What can I say? I'm an addict.

There was a great kid there helping, he was 14, and lots of fun to chat with. Only he didn't speak English, so I had to brush up on Hebrew. Anyway, we chopped a huge pile of onions, and vegetables, and made a big dahl, and a salad. That went down really well, and we even had it served before sunset. :)

The main problem was that Littletree was miserable. The ground was got and rocky and dusty - not fun for going barefoot on her little tootsies. Only she refused to wear her sandals, coz she can't stand if bits of sand get in. So she went around barefoot, complaining pitifully the whole time. and it was too hot for her. and there weren't other kids for her to play with. and she wanted to go home. and she wanted to eat...

I still had the same old problem with the levels of hygiene in the Israeli rainbow.

Okay, let's be honest; hygiene levels are never too hot in rainbow - it's a bunch of hippies camping in the woods, without running water or proper facilities. So, in order to counteract this deplorable level of hygiene, we make really strict standards - thorough hand washing, no tasting of food from fingers or already-used spoons while cooking, and most of all: the food servers should *never ever* touch anyone's plate when serving.

But in Israel, everything is exacerbated by a couple of issues:

1) There's no water at all - This gathering thankfully had a tap that was only about 200M to walk to and fill up the jerry cans, but it's still a mission to get them filled. Some times they gather in the desert where there really is *no* water at all. They have this 500L tank, which supplies 300+ people. and it gets filled every second day. You do the math. Clearly low standards of hygiene

2) It's freaking hot! like you can't believe. And there's flies everywhere.

3) The people are mostly Israelis. This means that it doesn't matter what you tell them, they will insist that they should do just whatever the heck they were doing in the first place. The more you try to explain that a small splash of water from a bottle is not sufficient to cleanse one's hands after defecating, especially if one then goes to chop salad for hundreds of other people, the more they will insist on cutting said salad, and refuse to wash properly. Their final word in any argument is inevitably; "I'm not in the army any more so no one can tell me what to do."

Not touching plates while serving is the hard one. It's a strong habit. Now, I've been to over thirty rainbow gatherings, and I've focalised the serving at a lot of them. You get a few wingnuts, but in general, it's pretty easy to explain this to the servers - we carry the pots of food around to the people, and we let them hold their plate close to the pot while we scoop the food. We never touch their plates, not with our hands and not with the serving spoons. It's a new way of doing things, but totally doable, and in the long run, less work for the servers.

Only in Israel, they insist that the pots should remain in the centre of the circle, and the servers walk around collecting up plates, bring them in to be filled up, and then carry them back out.

Great. So that server, who just went and made a big show of washing her hands, is then going and touching the dirty plates of those dirty hippies. Plates that are sitting on the ground. Plates that haven't been washed properly for a week, and that dogs have licked, and flies have been on, and that people with random intestinal parasites from India have been eating off. And then they go and touch everyone else's plate. great thinking guys.

Now this non-touching of plates might sound extreme, but I've been to gatherings where literally 85% of the people got lying-on-the-ground-screaming-in-agony-in-a-pile-of-their-own-diarrhoea sick. It spreads like wildfire. I'd like to prevent it.

I explain all of this to people, calmly and patiently. They seem to understand. But the Israelis don't change the method of taking everyone's plates. Some Israelis even say they understand me, and say very nicely, "okay sister, I understand. Sometimes I do it your way. But today, I want to do it my way. We're in a flow".

Drives me batty. </rant>

Anyway, here's some highlights; The Welcome Centre: Breakfast Circle (well, not a "circle" because the shade was so precious):

Here's Me with Butterfly, and me after Littletree swapped our Shawls (wow, me in non-green!)