Considering I'm writing this while many of your are probably asleep, most of you would probably miss the fact, if I did not tell you, that there are two new posts before this one. Even if your weekend was boring - probably because there were no Canucks games - you can now live vicariously in Palestine.
The first point I need to make this week is one that I probably should have made a little while ago. I need to make this point because I do not really know who is reading this. I am assuming that it is mostly my friends and family but there might be a few others. Basically I just want to outline that I don't really have any idea about anything. Also, I often joke about a lot of things. At least once, my written sarcasm has been greatly misunderstood *cough* Conflict and Development from an Indigenous Perspective *cough* even though I thought it was fairly obvious. I've also seriously offended someone in this blog before; an event which I deeply regret. I'm saying this because I am in a situation that is highly charged with feelings and I plan to talk about what I see. Now because I am living with Palestinians, most of the stories or information I safe will probably be with a Palestinian bias, but the people who know me know that I try to hold out my judgement for as long as possible. (I don't necessarily see that as a good character trait). If you disagree with anything I say in here then please tell me and provide some information that I can look up that supports your argument. I highly doubt that I will get called anti-semitic - I love my two half-Jewish friends very much - but it seems that many conversations about Israel/Palestine can degrade to the level of name calling very quickly.
In more important news, it turns out that all of the Canucks games start at 3am here. I'm planning on staying up for the Friday night one, so save a spot in spirit for me.
This last week, the directors daughter has come back. She has been studying in the US for the last three years. Considering how much time I spend with her father, it is good to have someone around my age with flawless English. When I told her that I brought Dutch Blitz, she said that we would have to play a game sometime.
I've made a new 12 year old friend. His name is George and we played board games Thursday evening. We later played tag after the Baptism and then even danced a little at the reception afterwards. He tried to drag me back when I told him I was leaving. This is good. In my three step plan to Middle East infiltration, the kids are the first step.
I've started taking Arabic lessons. I have had two already. The easy part about the beginning of Arabic is that they do not have a word for "to be" in the present tense. In English, a basic sentence would be directly translated "I in Bethlehem." It makes conjugation simple. The hard part is the pronunciation. Not only are many of the sounds very difficult for me to make, but if I am different by a slight bit it is a completely different word. Many times people have honestly no idea what I am saying and then when I say it in English they pronounce the exact same word back to me.
I've talked about prices before but this one might interest a few people. Gas here is 7.1 shekels per liter. By today's exchange rate of 1 CAD = 3.53069 ILS, gas is $2.01 per liter.
In future news, there is a group of American students who are going to be coming to Wi'am to help run the summer program. They arrive sometime in June and they are here for two months. They are also from Conrad Grabel University Collage, which means there is a good chance that they are Mennonite. In fact, I know two of the guys that are coming. I met them during my trip to New York last year. It's actually quite funny because at the time I was trying to figure out my practicum and one of them suggested that I go to Palestine with them. I forgot about that until I heard the names if the people who are coming.
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