"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.