Shalom Y'all,
I guess these late nights and early mornings are catching up with me! As I was typing the title for this post, I realized that yesterday I titled the post "Thursday: 6-18-2011". I guess I jumped two days ahead somehow!
On Friday morning, Tommy and I got up early again and walked to Gilgal for breakfast and praise and worship. Gilad (the man who takes care of this house) asked if we would lead praise and worship for the current volunteers with Trumpet of Salvation. It was a small group, but we had a good time of singing and prayer and sharing the Word with each other.
After we were finished, we walked back to Yafo and went to the shuk/flea market. It is very large and has many shops, so we were able to find a lot of things that we wanted to bring back to the States. We spent several hours there, walking through different shops and bargaining for what we wanted. For the most part, the sellers will ask double the price of what they are willing to take for the item, and it is expected that the buyer will bargain for a lower price. It's a lot of fun ... I really enjoy doing it!
We went into one shop, and I wanted to buy a particular piece of clothing. The woman said she would sell it for 35 shekels, and gave me the regular spiel about what good quality it was and how it usually sells for 60 shekels, etc. etc.! I offered her 25 shekels for it, expecting her to maybe come down to 30. She looked at me like I had insulted her, and put the item back on the rack! Maybe she hadn't expected me to bargain with her!
So then I went into another shop where I found a similar item as well as a large purse/bag that I wanted for traveling back to the States. The shopkeeper offered to sell the piece of clothing for 35 shekels and the purse for 30 shekels. I told her I would give 55 shekels for both of them, but she said no. So I said; "Ok, I won't take the purse; just the shirt."
Then she said I could have the purse for 25 shekels, but I said no ... I would only give 20 shekels for it! We went back and forth for a little bit, and she tried to tell me that she bought it for 20 shekels and would not make any profit if she sold it for that price. So I said; "Ok, then I will just take the shirt, not the purse."
I was pulling out the money for the shirt, when she said (in a tone of disgust); "Ok, give me 20!" She acted very offended, which I thought was funny because she didn't have to sell the purse to me ... I told her I would only take the shirt! Usually the vendors really enjoy bargaining, and are amused when I stick to my price. If they don't accept the price I want to pay, I usually walk out of the shop, and almost every time they will call me back and give me the item for that price!
Once we were finished in the shuk, we went to a small grocery store to get some food for lunch on Shabbat, as we will be having a picnic with Ephraim and Rimona. I bought some bread, hummus, lunch meat, olives, pickles, and vegetables. I also found kosher salami to take back to the family :)
It was about 2pm by then, so we came back to the house and dropped off everything. Then we walked down the hill and got shwarma for lunch, and went to the ocean. I swam this time, and the water was very nice! We couldn't stay very long, as we had to come back and pack and prepare for Shabbat.
At about 5:20 or 5:30pm, we walked to Gilgal (again!) for an Erev Shabbat supper and fellowship meeting. We had a blessed time, and were with believers from a number of different countries, including Holland, Switzerland, Norway, Hong Kong, Ethiopia, Israel, and the USA! When the meeting was over, we walked back to Yafo with three young ladies that we at the meeting. It was very nice to be able to get to know them better and spend time encouraging each other.
Once we were back at the house, we skyped with a friend in Arkansas, spent some time of the roof, and I wrote a blog post about the day before! We got to bed around midnight :)
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