Palestine: Travel guide, visas and free housing · 2026

EExchangeexchangeiec · May 29, 2009Read

PART ONE, WORK Five jobs, how it was, Honduras My five jobs. I'll tell you how I looked for work, how much people earn, and what their work schedule is like. June 29 Deposited checks into the account. Walked around the churches - they were closed. Called the old man as promised, said "let's do tomorrow." Ate ice cream! $1.95, very delicious, that's how I celebrated my first paycheck. Told Rob I'm staying, we moved some furniture for him. Now he's changing the carpets, and I'm sitting here watching "Caribean Resorts", in five minutes I have to go to the restaurant for the first time. Also met a guy from Palestine, he works for Rob. Came here 3 months ago for a year. I already forgot his name... =) Kind of cool... (Remembered - Waleet, like Wally from the cartoon) Night. Came back from the restaurant. Yiping arrived from Alaska, tired. It's so great here. Everything is white, clean, the people are homey, friendly. Rob did some renovations, replaced the carpet, moved the bed, fixed the AC. The guy is handy... What about the restaurant. In short - it's great, an amazing experience. I started to get an idea of how it works, who works where, and what the pay is like. For example, a waitress with only five tables (it was very "slow") got over a hundred bucks in tips. But her skirt was like a belt. Overall, the restaurant is expensive and cool, the third floor is open-air, with trees. But there were very few people today, probably because it's hot outside. We, the bussers, had nothing to do. All day I brought chips once and cleared a table a couple of times. Boring. But we chatted. Everyone here is young, the girls are very pretty, for Americans, there's a guy from England with a goofy accent. The managers and the kitchen staff are Spanish-speaking. The people in the kitchen are the most important in the restaurant. The ordering system is computerized. In general, a lot of interesting things... At the end, I asked in the kitchen, they gave me some Mexican stuff, two pancakes like things with cheese and meat in the middle. Tasty but not enough, took it home. The pay is a bit weird, $5.15 an hour + tips. And our waitress gave us $5 each in tips. That's it. So for now I'm working for the experience (and the pancakes =) We'll see... Time to sleep... The stupid phone says "Your wheneverminuts are low" and interferes with dialing home via the card. Steph is calling, but I can't talk anymore, my eyes are closing, it's impossible to lift my head.. I'm passing out... PS they let me sleep in the renovated room for one night - you should have seen it! I got very lucky with housing, only just started to realize it. Forgot one more thing! At the restaurant, it was a client's son's birthday, so our entire Mexican kitchen crew came out of their dungeons and sang a Happy Birthday type song to the kid in Spanish =) And also when I was walking to work, at the intersection of Market and High St, there were guys standing opposite each other, some for peace, and one for supporting the war, with a sign something like "honk for our troops". Well, I was walking on the side that was "for the war" and asked the guy with the sign what "honk" meant, we started talking, he's smiling, asks "Where do you think the terrorists are?" I say "Well here, in America". He says "I agree, and those guys over there support them!" I say "Well, the terrorists are at a high level here". He asks "Do you think George Bush is a terrorist?" I say "Well, yeah". He says: "Get the f* out of here!! Go back to Russia, you f*in terrorist!! get out, don't wait till I knuckle you!!!" I was shocked at how he changed.. and a minute ago he was smiling at me =(( Anyway, next time I'll walk on the other side =) To travel preparations