Another guest writer

Last Saturday CARAVAN went to Saida. Saida, located in the south of Lebanon, is mostly a Muslim city and famous for it´s “Souks” ( traditional markets). The old fishermen´s village is somehow the stereotype of an Arabic city. The streets were crowded, vegetable and fruit dealers in between cars and donkeys. Indeed, CARAVAN experienced an old fashion Muslim city with all it´s beauty the first time. The markets are basically subdivided in textile, food, jewellery and accessories. Some dealers are still trading the old way, exchanging twochickens for one carpet. Therefore you are seeing little boys running from one side of the market towards the other end of the city with the exchange goods. That fills the city with a certain movement and life. We also visited an old castle, set at the sea, founded by St. John during the crusades. By taking a group picture in front of the castle, did we allow our selves to put CARAVAN in St. Johns tradition. We conquered Saida a second time. Finally we got a tour through an old soap factory. The soap is hand made out of 100% pure olive oil. We felt guilty, since we had such a nice trip to Saida, without buying anything for our family and friends at home, who are suffering rainy days in the midst of autumn. That made us buy at least a piece of soap.

The following week was in the spirit of Christmas, hence why we decided to have a Christmas marathon for the sake of our children. Our Christmas donation, for the gifts of the girls and boys, has been spread out. The service in the homes started as always on Monday in Del El Quamar. Suzi had the amazing idea of making cookies with the girls. That was a great success and our friends ate their first Christmas cookies this year. We prepared the Christmas tree with the crib around it in Deir El Salib the day after.  The children have been as excited as never before. Everybody watched us enthusiastically putting the figures for the crib and nobody besides Ayman dared to touch the fragile Christmas tree. The spirit of Christmas finally arrived in the homes of our friends and CARAVAN is thankfully in it´s midst.

We have also been garnished the opportunity to return the favour and invite the Jabres for dinner in our apartment. Maxi, who was made in Italy, made magic in the kitchen thus we will found “CARVAN Delivery” soon.

Mathieu is supposed to arrive tonight. All of us are very excited and we hope that we are able to give him a very warm welcome.