PART TWO, Photo Album. Number One

This is what we see as we walk home from shopping.

Ma'ale Adumim appears to consist of two shapes, one of which fits into the other.

The outer shape seems to be a curve, a kind of flattened letter "U". Very flattened.  It is a topography that seems to follow the curving contour of the top of a desert moutain.

In this outer curved shape, which might from the air look something like a boomerang,  there appears to sit two residential neighborhoods. On  the left arm of the curve--one neighborhood--and  on the right arm, a second neighborhood.

On the inside portion of the base of this curve, is the town center. Here, you'll find the municipal building, an indoor shopping mall, an "L"-shaped four-story apartment building that houses another strip-mall kind of shopping mall that is built as a multi-tiered shopping area, a public library, two parks--one of which seems quite large--and a large Community Center campus.

That's the outer shape of our city.

The inner shape can best be described as three fingers (ridges) that jut out into the desert from the inside of the  base of the curve.

Think of a boomerang lying on the ground. Take a breadknife and lay it down inside the curve of the boomerang, with the base of the knife touching the inside of the curve, near the base, and the point of the knife pointing straight up, outward, in the same general direction as the left and right arms of the boomerang.

Then, take a short baby spoon, and lay it to the right of the breadknife, parallel to it.

Then, taker another bread knife, and lay it to the right of the baby spoon, also parallel.

All three knives are now inside the curve, all three are parallel, and all three point upwards, in the same general direction as the two ends of the boomerang.

Can you picture that?

The inside portion of Maale Adumim looks like that--with three finger-ridges jutting out from the inside of the base, pointing out into the desert.

The two longer finger-ridges are about the same length. They flank the baby spoon, so that the shortest finger-ridge is in the middle.

To help, look at the picture here: I am taking this picture while still standing on the inside of the base of the boomerang, looking out into the desert. The trees that you see at the left stand at the end of the middle finger-ridge, which essentially ends where you see the land slope down.

Look at the lower mid-center of the picture. Here, you'll see a line of red-roofed buildings. These are part of the left-side finger-ridge jutting out into the desert, as that ridge begins to drop to the desert floor.