Waaaa Happen?

Hello all! Sorry I haven’t written in a while. I actually don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve written because time is all confused in my head, so maybe it actually hasn’t been that long, it just feels like it. Maybe. Well, my last entry was about the Israeli invasion, and things have definitely calmed down a lot since then. I haven’t even thought about Israelis in a couple weeks. It’s weird that things can go from so drastic to very normal so quickly. Some humanitarian groups here go from place to place to protest what the Israeli army is doing, but living in one place, doing normal, every-day things gives me a different outlook on the situation. Sometimes I think about it a lot and I talk about it with my friends, but other times it doesn’t come up for days. This reminds me of one of the families I have become friends with (their father was one of my electrician students and now their daughter is in my university-level conversation class) who have invited Ina and I to dinner a couple times. The first time after we ate we were sitting around eating fruit and drinking tea (something you must do after dinner), they told us about how the Israelis destroyed their house and the entire apartment building where they live. They said that at 7am the soldiers came and told everyone they had to get out as fast as possible because there was a wanted person in the house and they were looking for him. So the entire building was standing on the street, all the men had their hands tied and were forced to stay on their knees on the curb looking away from the house. The soldiers bulldozed a hole in the building to get at it more easily, then after a day of ransacking the house and not finding anyone, right when the sunset call to prayer went off, they blew the building up. They showed us a video tape of it and you could see the building, then hear the beginning of the call to prayer, then a huge cloud of smoke and a boom and it was gone. All the people in the video were yelling and wailing and then they all started yelling “Allahu Akbar” (god is the greatest). When the mom saw the film again she got tears in her eyes just thinking about it. Luckily they had saved money and other people pitched in so they could rebuild the building and now they’re back where they started, having replaced all their possessions and furniture and cars and everything. It was really sad to think that this family who had done nothing had everything they owned and their entire house destroyed. But then, the next time we went over for dinner something completely the opposite was the topic of conversation. As we were eating, a couple women showed up at the door unexpectedly. As it turned out, the family didn’t at all know them, but they were coming because they heard that there were two girls of marrying age living at the house, and they had sons that wanted to marry. So everyone was all a flutter, both the girls had to go out and “be seen” and the father grumped in the kitchen because as he told us, this was an old fashioned way to marry and he couldn’t believe complete strangers were coming into his house to look at his daughters. Both his daughters of course agreed with this, but for him I think it was more that he didn’t want to think of his daughters marrying yet, although they are 21 and 23, which is prime age here. Then one of the daughters rushed back into the kitchen and said, “Can you believe it! They’re asking for 3 girls because she has 3 sons!” They all slowly turned their heads and looked at Ina and me. We both pointed to each other, but she’s older, so she had to be sacrificed. All in all it we had a lot of fun with the whole situation with people coming in and out of the kitchen gossiping about the women and lots of eye rolling. After they left we heard lots of stories about how the mom and dad met each other (which was, as you can guess, not in a traditional way like this) and their grandparents and so on. We laughed a lot and had a really good time with them. So yes, that’s the way things go. Everyone here has horrible memories like this family, but life still goes on and you can’t always talk about them and think about them. As much as I’m here to learn about the situation with the army and everything, I’m mostly here to meet people and make new friends and tell jokes and all that warm fuzzy kind of stuff.
So, in general, life is good with me. We’ve switched classes, which I wasn’t happy about because I really liked all my other classes, but now that I’m used to the new ones, it’s really good. I’ve been kind of sick for the past couple days with flu-ish kind of stuff and people have been calling me all day to make sure I’m ok. Seriously, every single person I’ve met here has taken me into their family like one of their own. If I ever needed anything (especially home-grown medical remedies, tea or food of any kind or quantity) I could have 20 people at my door with it. It’s kind of exhausting, but mostly it’s just really nice. Ahhh, I really do love people here. Hokay, I know all my blogs end up like this, but it’s true. Other news, pounce is still thriving here. I can hear my roommates playing right now and the only reason I got out of the game is because technically I’m sick. It’s going to take over Palestine and then the world! Muahahaha. Also, I’m reading a book by Willa Cather and I forgot how much I love her writing. I recommend her to everyone. I spent my whole day in Nebraska as a pioneer. It was awesome. Oh, and just to tie things up, we have hot water now and it’s been going strong for a couple weeks. Hamd lilah. (Thank God). Ok, there’s a fight about someone cheating at pounce in the living room so I’m going to go see what it’s about. That reminds me, my roommate Eric had a dream that he cut his finger off in the kitchen and came to the living room to tell us and we were all playing pounce, so no one paid attention to him at all. Hahaha, I’m sorry to say it’s probably not far from what the truth would be. Anyways, I’m sending all of you lots of laughs for ridiculous situations and I ask you to send me some non-swollen tonsils (I think you can UPS them if you want) and some strength to say goodbye to all my roommates who are leaving within the week. I miss you all more than corn on the cob and beets in the summer (why is it that I always pick food to miss you more than? Hmmmm…….) Love, Lisa
p.s I have more concrete travel plans now for the next couple months, so if anyone wants to meet me, or will be in the same place at the same time, or has a better idea in mind, let me know! Leave Palestine in mid April to Jordan for 3 days, then to Egypt for a week with Barbara, then to Senegal on the 22nd for a couple weeks with Irene, then trekking up the coast to Morocco and into Spain by May 15th. Travelling around Spain, Portugal, France and Italy for a month with Elizabeth, then to France for about a month to stay with the circus guys I met here with a week excursion to Greece to see Kristin and one to Germany to see Ina somewhere in there. Then back to the good ol’ US of A. Anyone interested? Maybe just maybe we could have a lot of fun!

Operation Hot Winter Could Last Indefinitely

Hello everyone. Well, things have gotten a lot better and a lot worse since I wrote last. I still don’t have classes in one of the refugee camps, but my other classes with the adults and the other 7th grade girls are going really well. All of my roommates and I are getting along really well and we have a lot of fun together. We finally figured out how to make the oven work, so we’ve been trying to make bread, which hasn’t gone too well, but it’s still fun to try. I made my first Arab meal yesterday called Maqlouba and it was ok for the first time. The Palestinian guys who ate it with us said it was good, but I think they were being nice.
So, as you might have heard on the news, the Israelis invaded Nablus last week, putting everyone in the city center and the old city (not where I live) under a curfew. They called the operation “Hot Winter” (we had a lot of fun with that name, changing it to Temperate Spring and Freezing Summer, etc.) and they were supposedly looking for 5 wanted resistance fighters, but I don’t think they were so successful because when you announce that you’re coming and then drive into the city with 50 jeeps I’m pretty sure the fighters would go hide somewhere else. In my opinion, they made the operation so drawn out and such a big deal because they want not only to find the fighters, but also to remind all the people of Nablus that they still have power in the region and that any day they could come in with some sort of agenda and put everyone under curfew and close schools and work for everyone. Now I really understand why no one here plans anything too strictly; because they aren’t sure if in a week they will be doing normal things, or sitting at home watching tv hoping their bread doesn’t run out before the army leaves. One of the Israeli newspapers tried to estimate how long it would take to find these 5 people and they said, ‘Operation Hot Winter could last indefinitely.’ If that’s not a sign that they’re not at all interested in leaving the West Bank alone, I don’t know what is.
But, one good thing that came from this invasion/curfew thing is that I taught all my roommates how to play pounce and they’re completely addicted now. I lurve it. It’s so funny that no matter who you play with or where you play, pounce always makes you swear. We've all learned swear words in German, French, Dutch and Arabic because of it.
Well, I think that's it for now; sorry I don't have more to say. Teaching English grammar is draining my creative juices. I can't believe I only have a month and a half left here. I'll be sad to leave. The problem with staying more than a short while in places is that I get attached to them and then I love too many places and I feel skitsofrenic (haha, that's not how you spell that but I have no idea, so deal with it!) hokay, i love you all more than moqlouba and I'm sending you lots of fun pounce games in return for lightning quick speed and good hand eye coordination :)

blahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

Hello everyone! I hope everyone’s doing well. I’m doing fine over here, although things have gotten kind of rocky. First of all, I went to Jordan last weekend, which was really fun, but kind of hectic. A lot of people to see and stories to catch up on, so I didn’t get much sleep and I ended up getting a really bad cold that I’d been fighting off. My trip back to Nablus was also kind of hectic because it was Saturday, shabat, so one border was closed and I had to go up north to the other border, then the taxi guy tricked me into giving him more money because he said I hadn’t given him enough and of course, being too trusting, I believed him. So I didn’t have enough money to pay the exit tax and get out of Jordan. I was trying to give him my left over Lebanese and Syrian bills that amounted to about a dollar and a half, but they didn’t want those. Luckily a guy helped me and just made me promise I would call him the next time I was in Jordan. So I finally got through the Jordanian and Israeli borders after being questioned about why I was carrying a Quran translated into German with me (I bought it for my roommate). But I convinced them that I was just a tourist wanting to go to Tel Aviv and that I would definitely not be going to “the territories”. But after all that, I came out of the building looking for a taxi or bus to Nablus and not only were there none, but there were no cars at all, once again, because it was Shabat and this border is in Israel, which I hadn’t realized. So I asked someone to take me to the nearest town, and he dropped me off at a deserted bus station saying that he thought there would be a bus to Jerusalem later in the day. So I waited and read Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya sisterhood and luckily, a bus did come. I was so sick by then that I passed out and was probably snoring and sniffing and hacking phlegm up for the whole bus to hear. I got to Jerusalem, at some Thai food and showed up at a hostel hoping they had rooms. I left early the next morning, still feeling really crappy and got back to Nablus by 9am. I was so happy to be home and ready to have my two classes and go to bed, but I got called into the office for a “chat”.
Ok, now I’ll back up and start at the beginning of this mess that I got myself into. Last week at my class of 7th graders at the Balata Refugee Camp UN Girls School, the girls started off the class by asking me if I was a Muslim. I said, no, I’m Christian. They were curious and asked how Christians pray. I just put my hands together and said, like this and sometimes we kneel down in church. Then they showed me how they pray, and told me some things about Islam. One girl read a section from the Quran and we talked a bit about how they learn to read from the Quran (because they read in a melodic way). Then they asked if I thought Jesus was the son of God. Now, it’s easy to say I’m Christian when we’re talking generally, but when people ask specifically what I believe, I find it harder to lie, because I don’t believe that Jesus is God. So I skirted the question and said, yes, people do believe he is the son of God. The girls all started yelling, that’s not true! There’s only God above all else, he has no son or family because he’s God. So I told them to quiet down and said, ok girls. If you’re going to be in a discussion with people who believe different things, you can’t yell at them. If you think you’re right, you need to explain to them why because if you yell and tell them they’re wrong, they won’t want to listen to you. So they all said they understood, it was just that they love me, so they want me to go to paradise. I said ok, and continued the class on a different subject. After the class I felt pretty good about the talk we’d had because it was more interesting than going over fruits and vegetables and I felt like they understood what we talked about, which doesn’t always happen. But, the next class their English teacher said that the kids went home and talked to their parents about what we’d talked about and the parents had complained that I was talking to their kids about religion. So she politely asked me not to talk about religion or politics again. I apologized and was a bit embarrassed, and we went on with the class. So then I went to Jordan and came back and here we are again the morning I got back. My boss sat me down and said that all of my classes in Balata Refugee Camp were cancelled because the parents stormed the school saying that I was trying to convert their kids to Christianity and that the program was in a lot of trouble because of it. In my head I said, at this point in my life, I’m probably closer to being a Muslim than a Christian, but I sat there and let him finish. The head of the Balata schools came to him complaining and they forbid me from going to Balata again. I assumed that after I explained the conversation we had had, he would realize that this was a misunderstanding, but he’s kind of a hard-ass, so he just said, use a little common sense. So I hadn’t slept much in a few days, had had a long travel back from Amman, I was sick and I had been up since 5:30am. I was not on top of my game so much. So after apologizing multiple times for causing him so much trouble and forcing him to give all the volunteers a rules sheet, I left the office, sat on some back stairs and cried a bit while I ate a banana. Then I went to my other class, afraid to say anything at all and feeling like everyone in the town was talking about how there was a foreigner in their midst trying to convert their children to Christianity. I went home and passed out and didn’t wake up until my roommate came in and said she had baked a cake for me. They thought I had holed up in my room all afternoon because I was so sad about what had happened, not just because I was really sick, so, knowing me better than I thought, they lured me out of bed with cake. So, that’s the end to a long story about how a 20 year-old girl from Iowa got kicked out of the biggest refugee camp in the West Bank. I still feel pretty shitty about it all and all of this combined with the perfect spring weather makes me really not want to teach anymore, but after having my other classes again that are just as good as they were before, I feel less like a witch in Salem that the whole town is talking about. So, that’s the update for now. I woke up this morning with a great idea to try to make applesauce. Also, the circus is going well. I’m learning lots of new juggling tricks. My Arabic is also improving more than I thought it was. I dreamt in Arabic last night! Broken Arabic, but it was still Arabic. Hokay, I have to go make some worksheets. I love you all and have been missing you so much lately. I’ll send you some of this perfect, perfect weather that makes me want to roll around in the grass and run really fast without stopping, and you please send me some courage to keep stepping into my classrooms even though I’m a bit nervous about what I’ll say this time. And send everyone open-mindedness. Hokay, have a good week! Byeeee!

Love Birds and Burnt Apple Pie

Hello everyone! I hope everything has been going well for you since I wrote last. Life is good here. First of all, an update on the hot water situation. Now we have hot water, but it’s either burning hot so that you can’t touch it or freezing cold; no in between. The water saga continues… So, along the same lines as the clown lesson, the highlight of this week is that we bought two birds for the house. Well, first we bought one bird that we named Batzi (because is Bavaria, Germany everyone names their birds Batzi, kind of like Fluffy for a cat I think) but Batzi was really sad because she was alone. We tried to put a mirror up behind her cage to trick her into thinking that she had a twin, but she wouldn’t have it. She just looked at us as if to say, “What kind of a stupid bird do you think I am?” So we bought Binti who is fat and blue whereas Batzi is green and skinny. They love each other and now Batzi is happy. The first night they were together Batzi followed Binti around the cage doing whatever Binti was doing like a groupie. So, overall, the bird experience has been very entertaining. Plus it helps Ina and I practice our Arabic because we’re not intimidated at all to speak to them in Arabic and since they grew up on the streets of downtown Nablus, we know they understand us.
Other than that fun, my classes have been going well. I read The Giving Tree with a couple of my classes and there wasn’t as much discussion as I had hoped, but I think the kids liked the story. I didn’t have the book with the good illustrations, just a printed text from the internet, so I had them draw the tree in all the stages of the book, which was pretty fun. I love that story. I made my adult class do short skits in front of each other today and they’re just as bad as kids; making fun of each other when they mispronounce a word. Ahh, boys will be boys. I’ve been invited to dinner by almost every student I have, so I think during the time I’m here, if I go to student’s houses for dinner 3 times a week, maybe I’ll get to everyone before I leave. It’s nice and I practice speaking Arabic, but I’m afraid some of the invitations are so that the guy’s mom can meet me and approve or disapprove of the possible marriage. It’s too bad 20 is the prime marrying age here. And an American passport is a commodity.
Along those lines, I got a little frustrated today walking in the street. I dress very conservatively here with just my hands, my head and my neck showing, but I still can’t walk down the street in peace. It’s not so bad, and most days it’s easy to ignore, but sometimes it’s too much. Also, there is one local volunteer here who was walking with me, and told me that I should wear a scarf around my neck because people in the street will wonder why he’s walking with a woman dressed like I am. I told him that I do my part to dress modestly, but that half of the responsibility is on the men in the street to act politely to me and that if he has a problem with women who aren’t wearing hijab, he shouldn’t walk with me. He didn’t say anything else, and even though I feel like I was in the right, it’s hard to dismiss his comment because he’s so well-meaning and nice. My mind was on what I was going to talk about with my class and if I had time to stop for a falafel, but after he said that, I couldn’t think of anything but how everyone was looking at me in the streets. It’s a really bad feeling to have, but it just took a little time at home, away from the streets and my class of men and some good music to get my spirits up again. No worries.
Hokay, a little about the political situation here before I finish up. The whole Hamas-Fatah fighting hasn’t had much of an impact on me here, except that one of my classes was cancelled because there was an ordered strike to try to promote unity. Many people got kidnapped in Nablus from Fatha, but most people were ashamed that Palestinians were fighting Palestinians. Hopefully the new peace agreement from Mecca will reach down to the people. Also, the excavation underneath the Al-Aqsa mosque is a big issue here. The mosque is the second holiest site for Muslims and before Mecca, they faced Jerusalem to pray. If it collapses because of this digging underneath it, there will be a huge reaction. The second Intifada started because Sharon visited the mosque in an act of defiance or something, so they know that it’s a sensitive issue. We were very gung-ho about preventing a possible nuclear war in Iraq, and it seems pretty obvious that making sure the mosque isn’t harmed would prevent another war, so I don’t know why we’re allowing Israel to toy with such a hot issue. I think a good way to fight the war on terror is to eliminate reasons for terrorists to terrorize. If we (as the Western world) could try to be more neutral in this conflict, first of all the Palestinians would have some hope that it would be resolved because there are people on their side, so they might not be as desperate as to use violence. And secondly, the argument that the West is trying take over the Arabs and wipe them out would loose validity so there wouldn’t be as much reason to fight. Everyone says this is a conflict without a solution, and maybe I’m simplifying things too much, but right now I think that if the West, especially the US, could look at the situation neutrally, as we might do with other conflicts in the world, a solution would be more accessible than it is now.
Whew, sorry, this was a long one. Hokay, in conclusion, I ask you all to take a hot – but not scalding hot – shower for me, eat a bowl of plain Cheerios – I can’t find them here! – and try, in whatever way you can, to mold the US into more of a benevolent big brother than a trouble maker/supporter. Haha, sorry, I know that’s a lot to ask and maybe impossible, but do the first two and try for the last. In turn, I’m sending all of you the picture of today’s sunset reflected on the white stone buildings making the whole city pink and yesterday’s attempt at an apple pie in a portable electric oven, which actually didn’t turn out all that bad. I love you all more than iced tea with sweet and low and sausage mcmuffins with egg! (Grandpa better be reading thisJ)
Love, Lisa

Hokay, so. Life is still going really well for me. I finished my first week of classes without going crazy and the kids (and adults) still like me I think, so everything is good. The highlight of my week was a clown lesson we had at our apartment the other day. The guy who runs the circus came over with a friend to try out my new houka with us, and it turned into him giving us our first clown lesson. It was so fun and surprisingly hard! Hopefully we'll do more lessons and I'll come back a real clown.
So that was the most fun thing I did all week, and the best thought I had all week was about how the people in Nablus are like one big family. There's no government here, no laws and no police force, but the town still runs very smoothly. Because they don't get any help from outside organizations, and because most of them rarely leave Nablus, and because their lives are very hard under the occupation, they all have a very unselfish mindset. If someone loses his job, he doesn't go to collect unemployment, he just asks around and people will find someone who can pay him to do something. No one steals from eachother because it would be like stealing from your brother, or if not your brother, his friend. With all the news about Hamas and Fatha fighting, it seems like the Palestinians have turned against eachother, but in Nablus, the majority don't agree with what's happening between the parties, and they live their lives exactly opposite to the civil war type activity going on. It's pretty amazing and even more amazing that they include me in this community. I have never met so many generous people and I have never felt so safe. Even though soldiers come into the city and sometimes people get kidnapped, I have no doubt that if I were ever in trouble, I could ask anyone on the street for help and they wouldn't let me go without solving my problem. The other day I asked a woman where a pharmacy was and she said it was Friday, so she couldn't think one that was open, so I went to her sister's house with her and drank tea and ate peanuts until her brother in law came home and he knew a pharmacy that was open on Fridays and they gave me directions. It would have been unthinkable for me to go home without getting to buy toothpaste and bodywash! So that's that. People are nice. And I love them.
In other news, we finally got gas again! So I had my first hot shower in a while right before our water heater broke. Good thing I was the first to take a shower. :) God really doesn't want us to have hot water.
Well, I'm off to my friend's uncle's farm to practice telling jokes in Arabic and to learn the names of all the farming words like planting and seasons and dirt, and then to his house so his mother can teach me to cook maqlouba, my favorite dish. Wish me luck! I'm sending all of you generosity to people around you and ask you to send me hot water vibes and creativity for another week of classes. I love you all and think about you all the time!
Love, Lisa

Nablus

Hello all! After thatl long update, I will now get down to what my blog is really about: living and working in Palestine. I came to Nablus (a city in the north of the West Bank with about 250,000 people) one and a half weeks ago. It seems like so much longer, but time always gets warped when I'm traveling. I live in an apartment reserved for the volunteers with Project Hope (check out their website if you're interested, www.projecthope.ps). It's really big to accomodate lots of volunteers, but right now we're just 5 including me, so I get my own room! It's almost like living in a luxury hotel! ...almost. My roommates are really fun and we get along really well. There's one guy from California who's 24 and he likes to study standard Arabic, so hopefully it will encourage me to keep studying too. There's a girl from Holland who's 21 and she's very upbeat and laughs a lot, so we get along really well. Then there's Ina who's in her twenties from Germany and she teaches art. All four of us hang out a lot at the apartment because we're not supposed to go out at night; Nablus isn't really the city for foreigners, especially women to be tromping around the streets after 9. The other woman is a French journalist, and she's not home very much, but she knows everyone in Nablus and always has funny stories.
For the first week I didn't have classes, so local volunteers showed me around Nablus and introduced me to everyone and I drank my body weight in tea. There aren't a lot of foreigners here, so I was glad that the local volunteers, most of whom go to the university here, some are English literature majors!, are so involved with getting us into the community here.
I started my classes two days ago (Thursday and Friday is our weekend here). My first class was at the Electricians Union, and it consisted of only men from ages 30-60 who didn't speak a word of English. They were really nice, but I think my challenge with them will be to get them to talk more because they haven't been in school in so many years, so they're not used to putting themselves out there and possibly making mistakes. I think I might make them get up and do the "head, shoulders, knees and toes" dance just to break the ice. My second class started yesterday at a girls school in one of the refugee camps on the outskirts of town, and then I had a class in the afternoon at a community center at the other camp with smaller kids. I also started a 2 week, daily class in the mornings at a center for 10th graders who are on winter vacation right now. So far they're all going pretty well. I forgot how exhausting teaching is, but it's a good kind of exhaustion. I think I'll end up teaching between 15 and 20 hours a week and maybe helping with the circus on the side or learning to play the oud (and instrument like a lute) from a friend of the director. Who knows.
So, to give you an idea about Nablus. It's spread out over two mountains/hills (mountains to Iowans, hills to Coloradians) and it's really beautiful. In between the two is the city center and the old city, which has narrow streets and lots of old mosques. It looks kind of like Damascus. We don't go there much because that's where the more radical section of Fatha spends their time, but I did make friends with the owner of a sweets shop who asked me to come and help him with english in exchange for coconut cookies! Not a bad trade I'd say. Our apartment is high up on the north hill and the Project Hope office is high up on the other, so it's a hefty walk a couple times a day, but it's nice to not have to take taxis everywhere like in Amman.
Hokay, so I've told you all about my life here and now I'll give you a little idea (I don't even have a full idea) about what a Palestinian's life is like in Nablus. There are two checkpoints that allow people to come and go from the city and the rest of the border is surrounded by Israeli outposts (I guess that's what you would call them), making it really hard to leave the city. One of the volunteers is 19 and hasn't left Nablus in 6 years because it's so difficult for a young man to cross through the checkpoints unless there's a specific reason, like work or a doctors appointment and sometimes that's not even enough. I can't even imgine staying in one city's limits for 6 years straight. Another woman teaches at a school 5 minutes outside of the checkpoint, but she has to leave 3 hours early just to stand in line at the checkpoint while 20 year old Israeli officers decide who gets to go through and who doesn't. So everyone's life is affected by the Israeli occupation, but within the city, everyone has to deal with the fighting between Hamas and Fatha that's almost as bad. Especially with the recent kidnappings on both sides, most of the people I talk to are really dissapointed. They say, how can we resist the Israelis if we've started a civil war amongst ourselves. It's too bad, but we'll see what happens in the next couple weeks. Well, my fingers are starting to cramp and I have to go prepare worksheets for my class (and I just spied Harold and the Purple Crayon in a stack of books!) So I'm going to finish up. In conclusion, please be grateful for what you have and send me some strenght and graciousness to refuse the 5th cup of tea I will without a doubt be offered by the men at the Electrical Union. I love you all so much and I would love emails about everyone's lives! I feed on them! Hokay, byeeeee
Love, Lisa

Welcome! Ahlan wa sahlan!

Hello Everyone! Welcome to my blog! So, I will bring you all up to where I am today. I left Chicago airport on August 28th and had a straight flight to Amman, Jordan where I lived for 3 and a half months going to the University of Jordan. I lived with a host family with six kids and another student. They were a fairly conservative Muslim family, but also very western. My oldest host sister, Farah (16 years old) lived for a year in Kentucky and had just gotten back a couple months before we came. She had a hard time with her host family there, but came out of it speaking really good, very American, English. The next oldest was Haroun, who was 15 or 14 years old. They never really gave us a straight answer on how old exactly they were, so I sometimes think that they didn’t even know. He was kind of quiet at the beginning, but got more lively as he got used to us and as we started speaking Arabic to him. Then there was Rahaf, who was 12 and I shared a room with. She was really annoying to me at first so that I wasn’t sure if I would last the semester in the same room, but of course, after a month or so she became my favorite and we got along really well. I guess it just took a while to get on the same page as a 12 year old. Then there was Adam who was about 9 or 10. He was really cute, and very smiley and active, but would cry instantly if he lost a game or someone made fun of him. He would get really frustrated that no one understood how earth shattering and horrible is was that he didn’t win at cards. Then there was Rayan who was about 6. She was also really cute and spoke really good English for being so young, but she lost it very quickly because when I came back to visit after having been gone for a month she didn’t speak as well. It was kind of amazing to see the difference in the kids after only a month. The last was Hoor who was 3 and a terror at the beginning and just as I got really fed up with her after a couple months, she started to be really cute all the time. My host mom ran a kindergarten down the street and had also just started to get her masters at the University in library technology. My host dad wasn’t around very much because of his job in the air force, but he was very nice although he liked to talk politics and religion a lot, which could get tiring. Morgan was the other American girl I lived with and she’s really awesome. We got along really well and it was nice to have someone to talk to about living there and everything else. I took a Standard Arabic class for 3 hours every morning and then had two afternoon classes; Prospects for Democracy in the Middle East (kind of pessimistic), and Arab Women Writers (kind of depressing) but both very good classes. Winter break consisted of me traveling with Morgan to Syria and Beirut, then Mom, Jerry, Grace, Rich and Alyce all came to visit me in Jordan over Christmas. Grace stayed on and we spent New Years Eve in Amman, and then headed to Jerusalem for two days, back to Amman and then to Egypt. We had a really good time, but it went so quickly. Two days at Mt. Siani, two in Luxor, two in Cairo and days in between traveling. After she left, I spent 2 days in Alexandria before taking a very long bus/ferry trip straight back to Amman where I spent a couple days before going to Nablus. Sorry that was so short, but I had written more and it got deleted and it's never as fun to write the same thing again. Also, my first entry about Nablus got deleted, so I'm going to end here for today and I'll have more for you all later! Hope all is well where you are, sending good sweets and tea from the Middle East! Love, Lisa