Today was almost a direct copy and paste of yesterday.

We had a leisurely breakfast while Millie used and abused the craft offering of the hotel. This gave us over an hour to sit and adequately reach the limits of the all-you-can-eat buffet. Nick was so full from breakfast that he didn’t eat anything else all day.

We came back up to the room and did some upcoming hotel/airbnb booking and played. I’ve been wanting to work on reading and writing with Millie but she gets very frustrated when we sit down and practice. I know she can do it, but she just doesn’t have the patience or desire to try. So I’ve been working it into games and it’s working like a charm. We have a whole elaborate scene set up where she drops Judy off at school and then finds mysterious notes that she needs to solve. If there is role playing and imagination then she will willingly sound things out. We played for a full two hours.

We headed out to try a new hike that would take us down into the valley and across to the other side, but everyone in the hotel warned us not to do it because there was a threat of rain. A tiny drizzle didn’t worry us, but they explained that the weather is unpredictable and the rain from the mountains often causes flash floods on the trails. So we heeded their warnings and did the exact same hike as yesterday.

Today the construction was finished and we were able to go much further. The path took us through villages, some abandoned and some still in use. We saw the terraced farm land and pomegranate orchards up close. We walked along by the irrigation channels that run all down the mountain.

We heard the call to prayer and people around us started heading to the small mountainside mosque. Millie did what she always does when she hears it, and said “let’s prayer”. Our version is that we all go around and say something we are thankful for. Nick said he was grateful we had strong legs for the hike, I said I was grateful for Nick packing apples for us, and Millie said she was “thankful for nothing because I hate hiking”.

Despite this and some whining she did pretty well and we were able to keep her distracted enough to keep going. We walked back to our hotel.

We had dinner again on the roof. The promised rain finally started and we sat in a glass dome thing while the sun set. Millie got a surprise ice cream Sunday for a couple of days of top notch behavior.

As we were leaving the bartender was charmed by her and showed her a trick where he blew a bubble with smoke in it for her to pop. It blew her mind.