Acorns

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I sit here, silently rubbing my temples, trying to coax the sheer volume of stuff I've learned, seen, and done over the past couple of days.

This is what I love about traveling. One day seems like a week, one week seems like a month.... I'll get back to you on what a month feels like once I've completed it.

Yes, so I've been in Nablus exactly a week. Even if I posted three entries a couple days ago, there is still such an overwhelming amount of news... maybe I should space it out, so as to tide you all over when (if) my life gets more boring. As the White Stripes wrote (I know, deep), split it up into manageable acorns...

SO. Last Thursday, as I apparently logged in my journal, was a ridiculously Awesome day.

I woke up, feeling mostly just kind of alone and blah. Amazed that the 'honeymoon' period of being on the road lasted a grand total of four days (less?). Now the weird homesickness and a weird feeling of… drabness kind of took over. My Arabic is ok, my accent fine, but my arsenal of words can be described simply as pathetic. Everyone speaks English, but every conversation was slightly strained by the language barrier, and I felt really uncomfortable- here I was, the Ajnabiya (foreigner), swooping in and insisting that everyone speak MY language- how neocolonial of me.

Speaking of neocolonialism, that was the day of Obama's speech to the Muslim world. Reem, the director of the centre's daughter, invited me to watch it at the university with a bunch of her friends, and they were going to have some sort of videoconference afterwards.

When Obama announced his 'next point', the Israeli- Palestinian issue, you could feel a noticeable thrill go through the room. It was almost like watching his inauguration speech again. It was just so freaking cool to be seeing this speech with a bunch of youth at the heart of the issue.
HOWEVER, I also got to experience a lot of the cynicism that these youth have. Following the speech, there was a video conference with one of Obama's representatives in Jerusalem, who was taking our comments to send back to Washington policymakers. Most say that they love Obama, but come on, they've heard such a multitude of political rhetoric and promises over the years (60+), so, without any decisive plan mentioned, they still found the outlook bleak. None of them think that a two state solution will ever be formed.
I finally mentioned a thing or two, kind of embarrassed because the forum was to hear Palestinian opinion, but regardless, any comment I would make in that environment would hold much more weight than, say, in this blog entry.

I think the moderator, this guy from Colorado, was impressed with me. He's running a summer training camp at the end of June, and, due to the fact that I feel like in this city of maybe 200,000 people, there are about …25 foreigners? (I'm thinking, logically, there should be more, but really, that's my estimation Greatly rounded up), he was eager to have an international person who seemed mildly articulate and interested (I hope that's how I came off). In any case, I'm REALLY excited about it. It's a week long conference with expert guest lecturers and trips out to see settlements/ other key places regarding the Palestinian issue. However, I'm really kind of cowed by the fact that in the grand scheme of things, I really don't know as much as I hope to. I raided the bookshelves in the office for any English book I can about the subject.

I met a ton of the youth there- they are all hilarious, and fantastic, and it was great socializing with people with relatively good English, about my age, that weren't Crazy (ugh. I could get into my roommate now, and the cockroaches that I've been routinely killing in my kitchen, but I'm too exhausted to deal with it). Since then, I've hung out with a bunch of them, met their families, and even have been invited to stay with them (offer rescinded due to unfortunate surprise visiting cousins, but still).

I could go into more detail, about Kawther, Sherif, Madjdalene, Reem, Fayrouz, Soraya, Akram, Majdi, the guy always to be known as 'Buffalo', and lord knows how many other people, and how amazing and interesting they all are. These people are really providing me with a good lens into the culture here, and how different it is (prepare thyselves for an entry on what 'dating' is like here: confessions of love, with nary a held hand).

I also have climbed up one of the mountains surrounding this valley-ed city, learned a ton more Arabic, been called 'Mitsubishi' and 'Great Wall of China', met up with a friend from Cairo and toured Jerusalem, and have been to the hospital (Not me! For once! Everyone's fine- Mom, you can stop hyperventilating).

I love and miss you all. Pray that my roommate develops some sort of self-preservation/hygiene gene in the next week.

Stacey

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