"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions." - Albert Einstein

Today could not possibly have been more fun. We had a library day, so we brought all of the neighborhood kids in for a reading activity and then an activity. Today, we told the kids the story of Caine's Arcade, which you can watch here (and definitely should because it's amazingly cute):

Then we had them each make a game or project out of cardboard. Kids games were funny, clever, cute and messy-- everything you want in a good cardboard game. Below, check out some of the games kids created.

Two girls from Khalla make
a dollhouse.

A maze made out of cardboard!

Sheker's soccer field (and
matching outfit

Maybe not the best picture, but my
personal favorite project, Hassan made
a yoyo out of curled up ribbon.

Seeing the kids so excited about the projects that they made totally made the chaos of Library Day worthwhile. Kids were so proud of their projects and they were looking forward to going home and playing their games with their siblings. Many of these kids don't get the opportunity or encouragement to be creative, so seeing what they came up with was inspiring. And to see them playing and goofing off and laughing is always a reminder to me of how resilient kids are and how similar kids around the world are. The only real moment where we were forced to really look at where these kids came from was when kids started coming up and asking if our center director had been kidnapped or arrested or killed. She has been on vacation for the last week in Jordan and just got back in town yesterday, but kids noticed her absence around the center and their minds didn't immediately go to vacation, because their parents have never gone on vacation. Their minds went to arrested or kidnapped or killed, because those are the experiences these kids know. But after numerous reassurances that our center director was alive and well and right upstairs, kids were back to playing with their cardboard creations in no time. 

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." - Anne Lamott

Graffiti in the old city of Hebron

Hebron should be a required stop for tourists coming to Israel. It is one of the more extreme places in the West Bank, because it is very holy in both Islam and Judaism. It is a place where Israeli settlers literally live on top of Palestinians, and Palestinians working in the old city have to put up wire and fabric to prevent settlers from throwing things like glass and bottles of urine down onto them. 

Wiring catches garbage thrown down by settlers
onto people working and shopping in the old
city of Hebron.

To really understand the settlement issue in Palestine, you need to know that first of all, according to the United Nations, the international community (including the US) and the Oslo Accords signed by both Palestine and Israel, Israeli settlement in the Occupied Territories (read: Palestine) is illegal. The Fourth Geneva Convention states that "the Occupying Power" (in this case, Israel) "shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies" (again, read:Palestine) Despite this, Israel continues to actively pursue Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Israeli settlers are civilians who have either destroyed Palestinian homes and taken over the land, or simply taken over the homes, and fall into one of two categories: the very savvy, and the very religious. The very savvy are Israelis who come to Palestine because their government provides them with a loan to take over the land in Palestine, and then forgives the balance after 10 years (loans which are financed by the US, despite repeated efforts by US presidents on both sides of the political debate, including President Obama and former President Bush the first, to reign in continued building of settlements). It's a pretty good deal, if you're comfortable having all of your neighbors see you as an invader. 

The very religious, however, are a different group entirely, and these are the settlers you find in Hebron. Hebron, as the burial site of matriarchs and patriarchs of the Bible such as Sarah and Abraham, Jacob and Leah, and Isaac and Rebecca,  is the second holiest site in Judaism, so it's home to 500 or so religious settlers, who don't work but are offered stipends by the Israeli government to just study Judaism intensively. The Israeli army provides a presence of about 1500 soldiers to protect those 500 settlers, and 18 checkpoints throughout Hebron.

A water tankard with bullet holes
preventingit from storing water.

The same water tankard,
just a full shot.

The best way to describe life in Hebron is that of a ghost town, or of Apartheid South Africa. There are literally full streets where Palestinians can neither walk nor drive, and entire neighborhoods that used to be shops and homes that were shut down by Israeli forces during the second Intifada, not to mention the overbearing presence of the Israeli military, the checkpoints, the settlers who throw glass at the Palestinians, or the Palestinian water tanks shot out so that they can no longer hold water. Hebron is the reality of life under occupation. This is Palestine.

A tapestry of Handala, a cartoon
symbolizing a Palestinian refugee
child witnessing life under
occupation, made by a women's
cooperative in Hebron.

This is a wall dividing where Palestinians
are and aren't allowed. In this photo,
we're walking on the Palestinian side,
but we also ventured up into the
Israeli side.

The empty, abandoned streets of Hebron,
with the Israeli flag hanging above.

"There aren't enough days in the weekend." - Rod Schmidt

It's 8:30 at night and I'm about ready for bed. Week two of classes successfully completed! Including paper mache today! And if I can survive paper mache masks with a room full of 10-11 year olds, I can survive just about anything. So for those of you looking for an update, check out the TYO intern blog to read about our first week of classes! Second week updates coming soon, as well as updates on tomorrow's visit to Hebron and Saturday's Library Day, which will inchallah be based on this super cute Youtube video called Caine's Arcade.

Also, don't forget that the TYO "Like" Drive is still going on, so if you're on Facebook and you haven't yet, please like TYO's Facebook Page  to help raise money for the programming to support kids and mothers here in Palestine. Thanks for everyone who has helped out already!

"Even the five fingers on your hand are not the same, are they?" - Arabic proverb

Tel Aviv is just over an hour from Nablus, but the two cities are worlds apart in so many ways. Nablus is a conservative city with somewhat crumbling infrastructure in some areas, where I can't show my shoulders in public and I feel self aware of my lack of hijab covering my hair. And where people are nothing but encouraging as I struggle to communicate in Arabic and excited to tell me their stories.

In Tel Aviv, I could walk around in a bikini if I wanted to and nobody would even notice. Men and women run on the streets for exercise and wear skimpy attire every day--- it's a beach town, so not unlike LA or Miami in terms of tourists, bars and clubs, and clothing. The buildings are tall and new; hotels line the beach front, and if you don't focus too much on the Hebrew you could imagine you are back in America with relative ease. But I could either talk to people in English and maybe be understood or try talking to people in Arabic and either be understood perfectly or shot dirty looks for attempting it, depending on if I was talking to an Arab Israeli or a Jewish Israeli.

The Port of Jaffa, with Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean visible in the background.

Telling people I worked in the West Bank offered me a wide number of reactions from local Israelis. Some gave me the reaction I was expecting, which was: Why would you work there, with those people? Why should Israelis learn Arabic when Arabs here speak Hebrew (never mind the fact that Israel is surrounded on all sides by Arabic speaking countries)? But some gave me more unexpected answers. Some didn't even know that Israelis could get into the West Bank, let alone Americans. Some approved of what I was doing, but with the tone that it was good that I was trying to "fix Palestine", never mind the fact that much of what is wrong in Palestine is a direct result of the occupation. Some wholeheartedly thought that what I was doing was amazing, asking if they could do something to get involved and help the kids in Palestine. Even the five fingers on your hand are not the same, are they? No two people are the same, and you can find as many different views of the Israel/Palestine conflict in Israel as you can in Palestine as you can in America.

One of many very cool art installations in Old Jaffa.

While there, I also took a short tour of Old Jaffa, the most ancient port city still in use today. It's a city that changed hands many times, from the Arabs to the Turks to the Ottomans to the Romans to the British to the Jews (and not necessarily in that order). It was also a major location for a number of biblical stories, including Jonah and the Whale and the resurrection of the widow Tabitha by St. Peter (which I had never heard of). The Old City of Jaffa is beautiful, full of winding alleyways named after Zodiac signs filled with artists galleries and little shops, as well as restaurants run largely by Arab Israelis who live in Jaffa. It was definitely my favorite area of Israel proper that I've seen so far, and if I had more time and wasn't carrying a bag while waiting for check in time at the hostel, I'm sure I could have explored those alleyways all day long.

Street art and graffiti always catch my attention--
This one was in a doorway in Old Jaffa.

In the meantime, it's back to reality. So back to teaching classes, which are partially suspended due to transportation strikes over the next few days. Back to speaking my broken Arabic. Back to the reality of living within checkpoints, which from midnight Monday to midnight Wednesday means no leaving Nablus. Israelis regularly shut down all checkpoints in and out of Palestine for Jewish holidays, which means that if you are Palestinian, you'd better plan your emergencies ahead of time-- if you need medical or humanitarian assistance during this time, you have to get it pre-approved by Israeli authorities and get a permit. Makes sense, no? Yeah, I didn't think so either.

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” ― Margaret Mead

One week of classes done. I know that everyone says this, but it bears reiterating. Teaching is one of the most under-appreciated roles in society. I got home every night dead on my feet, and faced behavioral issues ranging from hyperactivity to disinterest in any activity in the classroom. I had kids who admittedly hadn't eaten anything that day refuse to eat. The kids from our neighborhood show up after school every day, regardless of whether it is their day to take classes, because it gives them an alternative place to spend time with friends and run and play games than in the street.

My teaching schedule works out so that every Sunday I am teaching a professional competency course-- a class I feel woefully under-prepared to teach, since I am essentially teaching my peers. That being said, while I've held a job essentially from the time I was 15 on, most of the students in this class have either never worked or have only worked in the informal economic sector. 

On Mondays and Wednesdays I teach a women's aerobics class and my art class to one group of kids. It has been so much fun and so rewarding to see how into aerobics the women here get. Despite the fact that some of the women maybe have never worked out before (it's not a very big part of culture here) they come and work hard for an hour twice a week. My Monday/Wednesday group of kids definitely has more behavioral issues than my Tuesday/Thursday kids. They are great, but they are more hyperactive, less focused or interested in listening to anything I have to say, and less willing to participate in activities or mix genders at their tables. 

Kids work on designing their own comics in art class.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach Advanced English to moms from the center as well as art to my other group of kids. They are a much quieter group, but not without their challenges. At the end of every class, we line kids up by which bus they will take to get home, so the kids going home to the Balata refugee camp are in one line, the kids from Old and New Askar camps are in another, the kids from the Old City and El Ain refugee camp are together in one line, and the kids from our neighborhood, Khallat al-Amoud, are in another line to walk home. Today, lining up in the Balata line, one of the boys looked up at me and said that he was sad that class was over because he had to go back to Balata camp. Knowing that a kid is so sad to go back to his own home, and that here that feeling is so normal that he feels comfortable vocalizing it to practically a complete stranger, was pretty heartbreaking. But all I could do was remind him that I would see him again next week.

"Every child should have a caring adult in their lives. And that's not always a biological parent or family member. It may be a friend or neighbor. Often times it is a teacher." - Joe Manchin

I have officially met all my kids now. Sunday was my first class, a professional competency class at An Najah University, which went surprisingly well given that I make my living as an unpaid intern. Monday was my first day of teaching classes at the center, where I taught a women's aerobics class as well as my first art class. The aerobics class was a blast. It was fun to see a group of women having so much fun and working so hard. In the afternoon, I taught my first art class. I was short a volunteer in my class, and it was chaotic and stressful in the room and the language barrier made it even harder. The whole class felt a little out of control, and left me really nervous about round two of classes. 

Classes are divided into sections, so every Monday and Wednesday I teach one group of kids and every Tuesday and Thursday I teach a different one using the same lesson plan. So I learned from mistakes made on Monday for today's class and modified my lesson plan slightly, and luckily, with the addition of my last volunteer and a much calmer batch of kids, today went great.

I actually walked out of class today feeling like a teacher, whereas yesterday I felt a little lost and like I didn't have control of my class. Today kids seemed engaged and interested in the lesson and were willing to listen and participate in a way they weren't yesterday.

Today I also taught Advanced English for moms in the community. Most of the women speak very little English despite being placed in the Advanced class, so hopefully that class will smooth out as we figure out the difficulty level to work at.

Tomorrow I have the same group of kids as yesterday, so wish me luck trying again with them...

"Safety's just danger, out of place." - Harry Connick, Jr.

This post started out as an email, so that I could keep this to a less public forum, but I decided to go ahead and post it here. That being said, please be mindful that any comments you post are on a public forum. This blog is open to anyone who stumbles upon it.

Despite the anti-American protests happening across the Middle East, including some in Palestine, most of the protests within Nablus have been about the cost of living and the transit strike here. In Jerusalem and in Gaza there have been anti-American protests, as well as attempts to riot at the US consulate, which were stopped by police and the military. There has been at least one incident of an American flag being burned here in Nablus in the Old City, which is in a different area of Nablus. As a precaution, we are all laying low in the meantime. We aren't changing our schedules at all in terms of teaching classes, but we are sticking in the building that we live and work in at least for this week, in hopes that any anti-American protests will be eased in the week to come. Luckily I'll be starting teaching the young kids and moms tomorrow, so I will be plenty busy. For more info on the protests in Nablus and in Palestine in general, check out the embedded links in this paragraph. I'll keep you posted of any changes, and just keep in mind that we are acting with an abundance of caution. 

While a couple of days old with some outdated numbers, I think the message here still stands.,
And it's a pretty powerful one.

And on an equally important note, keep in mind that even if there are a few hundred people protesting in every Muslim country in the world, and a smaller percentage yet that is protesting violently, that adds up to less than one percent of the total Muslim population. So while these protesters may be anti-American, they make up only a small fraction of the Muslim community at large. Everybody who I have met has been very helpful as far as asking about whether I feel safe here, trying to make my stay more comfortable and secure, etc. So please don't walk away from this week feeling like there is this strong overwhelming sense of hatred toward Americans here-- there's not. There is a lot of anger, but it is directed at the maker of a movie that people find offensive, it is directed at US foreign policies and it is also directed at people who are taking innocent lives in the name of their religion. So while I'm not naive about the situation and we are being careful, I also don't want people in America to walk away from this last week with an unrealistic and biased vision of the Middle East. 

And for whatever it's worth, to any Muslims who may be reading this, I am sorry. The views of that man and that video are not representative of Americans views on Islam.

TYO "Like" Drive begins today

Some of you may have already received an email from me, and I apologize in advance for what will certainly be my predominant Facebook status over the next month, but TYO has started a "Like" drive on Facebook, meaning that for every "like" we get to our page: https://www.facebook.com/tomorrowsyouth, a dollar gets donated to TYO. If you could do me this favor and follow that link and click like, I would be incredibly grateful (and won't have to harass you for the next month, which I'm sure you'll prefer).

Please help me out! It's a really small thing you guys can do that will make a huge difference for kids here, and which will help foster good relationships between Americans and Palestinians (which I think we can all agree after the last week needs some improving).

Thanks in advance!

"What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

One of many breathtaking views of Wadi Qelt

Yesterday we went for a three hour hike in Wadi Qelt, near Jericho. It is one of the lowest points on earth, making it among the hottest as well. We started the hike early, around 8:30am, to try to beat much of the midday sun. The desert there is so unlike the desert of the Sahara (which, oddly enough, is the only other desert I've seen, so it's my only point of reference. Maybe I need to spend more time exploring my own country, because rumor has it the desert here is pretty similar to that of New Mexico). There are no great shifting sand dunes, no powder fine sand. There are rocks, and dust, and scrubby, thorny trees, and lizards and prairie dogs. Wadi Qelt is a valley, so we were walking at an angle the whole time over loose rocks and gravel. The story goes that Wadi Qelt is the path Jesus walked from Jericho to Jerusalem, among other biblical events for those of you interested in the religious history of the place.

St. George's monastery was built into a cliff in the late 5th century.

It was a beautiful walk, with Bedouin homes built into caves along the way, goat herders with more goats than I've ever seen in one place,  as well as donkeys and dogs. At the end of the hike, we arrived at St. George's Monastery, which was built into the side of a cliff in the late 5th century, where it still stands today. It was beautiful, full of decadent religious art, and was a nice place to stop and rest after continuing the climb up the cliff to where our car was waiting for us at the top.

The ceiling of St. George's Monastery

Religious art inside of St. George's
 Monastery

Today was the first day I met the kids from our neighborhood, Khallat Al-Amoud, for the first Library Day of the session. We broke into two groups, and I sat in on a reading group led by one of our volunteers, who read books in both Arabic and English for the kids. It was a nice first glance into the work ahead of me. If the transit strikes here keep up and the first day of classes is delayed (which is a possibility), we may be having more Library Day type activities for the neighborhood kids, since full classes won't be happening and we wont be able to bus in the kids from the four refugee camps or the Old City.

Reading at TYO's Library Day!

"The seed of revolution is repression" - Woodrow Wilson

A wall taller and longer than the Berlin Wall separates Palestinians from Israel proper, requiring them to get special permission to visit sites like Jerusalem that we take for granted as accessible. Most Palestinians haven't seen the bulk of their own country, because they've been living in refugee camps for the last 70 years.

So much of the uniqueness of my experience here in Palestine specifically is what it is like living under an occupation. It isn't an experience you can even begin to imagine if you're not experiencing it on a daily basis, and my experiences don't even begin to touch on what it is like for the community here as a whole. I'm here for three months, I'm American, I have a plane ticket out of here come November, but for many, this is their lives for the indefinite future. To me, the biggest part of living under occupation has been the sense of unease in the air every day.

We have this idea of the Israel/Palestine conflict being ages old, but it's not. Prior to 1948, Muslims, Christians and Jews all lived in Palestine without conflict, or with minimal conflict. Following the end of World War II, Britain and the US, in reparation for the damages done to the Jewish population during the holocaust, decided to lobby for and create a Jewish state, which became Israel. Israeli settlers came and launched a war that lasted until the 1960's, destroying villages and cities that were already in place within Palestine. It wasn't an empty landscape. These were people's homes and neighborhoods and grocery stores. So Palestinians were forced to flee into refugee camps, where many still continue to live. Four refugee camps exist within the borders of Nablus and their populations continue to grow while the area provided for the camps doesn't, creating huge amounts of overcrowdedness and poverty. Imagine a family of 8-10 living in one small room-- this is usually the reality for Palestinian refugees.

So when we hear about the intifadas, or of Palestinians throwing rocks at tanks, or the view of Israel as an illegitimate state, and we have this idea of these armed uprisings, it is in response to the extreme repression these people are under. Today I saw the Israeli/West Bank barrier, a wall longer and higher than the Berlin wall that physically prevents people from moving around their country. The checkpoints, barriers, and psychological sense of fear here all keep people paralyzed. And I've heard stories about how people from the camps haven't even seen the rest of Nablus, how people have never left Nablus for fear of never being allowed back in, or haven't seen Jerusalem because they physically can't get there because they need to apply for permission from the Israelis and  have been repeatedly denied for no reason, or can't bring themselves to leave the country because they may never be allowed to come back to their families.

Since I've been here, there are Israeli F-16's flying overhead daily, Israeli tanks and soldiers within city limits, sometimes raiding refugee camps for any number of reasons, and being able to hold people without due process or bringing them up on charges. Again, my neighborhood and community here is very insulated. We don't live in the poorest regions or near the refugee camps where raids most often occur, but these are the experiences of the kids I'll be working with, and it's an important part of being here, so I would be remiss to let it go without mention.

"Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

There will probably be some radio silence here for the next couple of days while I'm swamped creating lesson plans and curriculum overviews and setting up my classroom, so in the meantime, please check out this link to meet my fellow interns here at TYO.

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest" - Elie Wiesel

The streets in Nablus sat silent from 7:00am to 7:00pm today in protest  of the rising fuel prices.

Our normally chaotic street sat largely silent today. The silence, the lack of horns honking and tires screeching, echoed in the city this morning as strikes began in not just Nablus, but across the West Bank in response to rising fuel costs.

The increase in fuel costs is putting pressure on a country where one in every two people already live in poverty, many of whom have lived in refugee camps for upwards of 70 years, and where unemployment is as high as 80% in some regions, and 57% in the country at large. Fuel prices are increasing the cost of food, hot water, and cost of living in general. For people to whom the cost of fuel directly impacts their work, like bus and taxi drivers, margins of profit are slimming rapidly.

Protests have started outside of Ramallah, the administrative capital, and Tulkarem, where roads have been blocked, and in some areas tires have been burned to block off streets. The protests have been met by little in the way of concessions on the part of President Mahmoud Abbas, who says that little can be done to lower the fuel prices, which are caused by the increasing debt of the Palestinian Authority's administration due largely to a lack of follow-through in aid on the part of the United States and surrounding Arab nations. The protests will continue to be allowed "as long as they remain peaceful and do not harm public interest."

In Nablus though, the quiet on the streets is the only indication of the protests in the rest of the country. And even that drew to a close a few minutes ago, as the strikes came to an end for the day and drivers took to the streets again, honking and screeching their tires as they veer through the city.

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life" - Confucius

Local Staff, International Staff, and Interns at lunch today (photo: Tomorrow's Youth Organization)

Today was my first day of work. Doing something so rewarding and knowing that what I do will make an impact on kids and parents lives long after I leave makes what I can see rapidly becoming a chaotic and stressful schedule a more exciting than daunting prospect. But before I get too into the details of work here, a quick update on yesterday.

Yesterday we went out and got our phones all set up, got lunch for $0.63, and got the first official tour of the community center I'll be working in. I saw the interns office, which is chock-full of art supplies, sports equipment, markers and anything else we could possibly be interested in using to engage our kids. We saw our classrooms, although not which ones specifically will be assigned to us (I'm hoping for the one where the walls are painted with chalkboard paint), as well as everyone else's offices, the core programming (preschool) classes, and lunch areas. On the tour of the school, I learned that Nablus is situated between two mountains, Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Ebal. According to Samaritan faith (a very small subset of the Judaism), Mt. Gerizim is the mountain where Abraham took Isaac to be sacrificed. However, according to traditional Judaism, Islam and Christianity, that mountain was Mt. Moriah in Jerusalem. Nonetheless, it gives the city a particularly strong religious history. More religious history to come I'm sure following this weeks visit to Wadi Qelt.

Today, we spent the morning in trainings on professionalism and the various programs that TYO provides. We went over the volunteer program and YALLA, which is a leadership program for Nablusi youth. Each of the interns will have two assigned volunteers and an assigned translator for our classes. We also had a group lunch, where we met the local staff and played games, and on our afternoon break walked down to get fresh mango juice from the nearby juice store. In the afternoon, we went through Monitoring and Evaluation training, and finally we will be venturing into Nablus for grocery shopping in about a half hour.

Tomorrow we will go over the Women's Group programs, including the women's entrepreneurship program, and the psychosocial aspects of our classes, as well as the logistics of the intern program and how our classes will be run. The only potential hiccup in the plan would be that tomorrow there is supposed to be a strike from 7am to 7pm on behalf of the taxi cab drivers in Palestine, who are suffering from increasingly high gas prices but who are not allowed by law to raise their fares. In a small city like Nablus where everyone knows one another, a taxi strike means that there will be no cars on the road, public or private, as a show of support. Logistically, a strike like this could mean difficulty  getting to work for many local staff who may live in neighboring villages or in Old Town, which is too far to walk from, and if it lasts more than a couple of days could mean cancelled classes because our bus drivers would be unable to pick up kids for school. Classes are scheduled to start a week from tomorrow, so hopefully a resolution will have been met before then.

"Sometimes the most urgent thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest" - Ashleigh Brilliant

Today is my first full day in Nablus. Yesterday I arrived in Tel Aviv at 3:45pm, a little over an hour later than scheduled, went through Customs with relative ease (despite playing 20 questions with a very suspicious customs agent), and wandered through the airport looking first for baggage claim, and then for the cafe where I met up with the other interns. It's amazing how easy it is to identify a lost American in a room full of people though, because just walking into the cafe, I immediately met Tommy, one of the interns, and we were joined shortly thereafter by Mary, the other intern teaching classes. We also have a fourth intern, who is doing slightly different work on a slightly different schedule, so she was already in Nablus when we arrived. After about a half hour of waiting, we were met by our internship coordinator and we all got into the car for the hour drive from Tel Aviv to Nablus.

Going through security checkpoints into the West Bank was interesting in how lax it was. I expected the process to be a little more in-depth and invasive, but we were waved through without even having to stop, and were waved through again at a checkpoint right outside of Nablus. I guess that has been a change in the last five years, where prior to that it would be possible to end up stuck inside of Nablus for months on end without being able to leave.

Once we arrived at the TYO building, I got settled into my very nice room, took the first shower I had had in days of traveling, and went over some pretty general house rules. The apartment is great-- it's big and clean and the kitchen smells like fresh fruit. I went to bed around 9:00 last night, hoping to get a really full night of sleep, but woke up around 2:00am because my sleep schedule is so out of whack, and laid in bed listening to the call to prayer at sunrise, and then the roosters crowing outside, and now the slow awakening of the city.

Today is just a day of relaxation because work starts up tomorrow with orientation and psychosocial classes and monitoring and evaluation classes to help us plan our curriculum in a way that most benefits the needs of the kids we are working with, as well as trips to the neighboring Balata refugee camp and to Wadi Qelt, a historical and biblical landmark near Jerusalem that houses the oldest synagogue in the world. Classes will officially start next week.