Finally Starting School

            I've been across the pond since July 25th but I haven't officially started University classes until this past Monday.  In Israel, a lot of people's life schedules are based off of the holiday calendar.  And by holiday, I mean the Jewish holidays.  From September 15- October 15, Israel celebrated Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot.  All of these holidays puts the State of Israel at a stand still, so naturally the universities wait until after this time to start all classes.

           So as of October 15, 2012, I am now officially a University student. (Sorry Mom, I forgot to take a picture!)  And to be perfectly honest, thank God.  It is fun to bounce around a country with freedom, but at some point, you need a rhythm in your life, and that rhythm was going to be school.  So now I am going to classes, reading readings and stressing about time management.

           Our classes are only twice a week; either Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday.  After that we have perpetual 3-day weekends. We are required to take 5 classes a semester and they meet for 10-12 weeks.  I'm taking the following classes: The Struggle for Palestine-the roots of the issue, Introduction to the Religion of Islam, Radical Islamic Movements, Business Ethics, and After Auschwitz-Contemporary Views of the Holocaust.  So as you can tell, the majority of my classes are either Israel or Middle East related, which makes the whole experience of being in Israel more enlightening.

           And what I mean by that is the relations people have to the topics they are learning.  The best example I can present is when we read a poem in our After Auschwitz class.  The poem was beautiful and very heart-wrenching.  It was a list of what The Holocaust "is".  This varied from movies to emotional connections and it started out light and ended on a heavier note.  It wasn't the poem itself that was the interesting part of the class, but how people reacted to it.  As the list got more and more intense, people became more and more emotional, to the point where several people left the class because they were crying.

           Along with students' connections to the subject material, it is interesting to see how classes are taught.  I went to a class on Thursday to try it out and left feeling somewhat bad because I had to correct my teacher.  The class was focusing on the trials of Jesus and how it affects how people view the Jewish population.  Long story short, my teacher got a lot of the basic facts of Christianity completely wrong, or was presenting theories as facts.  I have nothing against theories being presented and discussed because that's part of life and how we challenge our intellect, but not when they are not prefaced with the idea that they are disputed theories.  My participation grade was really good that day.

          Today is Monday and after a much needed weekend, i'm back to readings and lectures.  Yesterday was the first day for the Israeli students, and I can't stress how stereotypical the campus looks.  Students are sitting on the grassy areas, people walking around with coffee, backpacks everywhere and more.  It's refreshing to see random people all over campus because for the last 3 months, it's just been us.

          I'm sure by the end of this week, i'll be completely sick of school, but for now it's nice to finally feel productive.  This is my passion; here, Israel, Palestine, the people, the peace opportunities and studies, and what better place to learn about it.  Alright, I gotta finish my homework before the Cards are on tonight!  There aren't any Chicago people here, so I found the next best thing, a person from St. Louis!  They better win tonight, or they're gonna have a sad fan here on the other side of the world! (look at ma pants)

A Vacation from our Vacation

           Like I said in earlier posts, I've had a month off before classes start this upcoming Monday.  So after coming home from Bethlehem and realizing no one else in our program was home yet, 3 friends and I planned a little spur of the moment trip to Rhodes, Greece.
           We used a travel site and booked a 5 star all-inclusive resort with flights and all, 3 days before we left for the trip for a ridiculously low price.  We left on Sunday and came back today, Thursday.  A few little glitches here and there, but at the end of the day, we left excited to see what we were about to venture off into.
            Now when I was telling a few people that I couldn't Skype or Facebook for a while because I was "going to be in Greece", I got a lot of "ohhh well look at you world traveling."  Thing is, our flight was an hour long.  It's not like I live as far away as the United States.  I'm ever so grateful to be so close to so many places people only dream of going to.

       
            So Tips of advice while traveling to Rhodes (this is the best way I can describe the whole trip):

                   1.  Rent ATV's.  At first we thought the boys were crazy for wanting to get them for the 3 days that weren't travel, but it was the best idea they could have had.  We used the ATV's (which are street legal) to go anywhere we wanted from the resort.  On the first day we just drove around and had some fun.  The second day we used them to get from our resort to the Old City, which was much better than renting a car because we got to see all the amazing a beautiful sights without the restraint of a window.  The third day was kind of rainy, and to be perfectly honest, we used them to have a little fun in the rain because we couldn't exactly swim at the pool.  The boys drove and had a little drifting fun with us holding on for dear life. Mom, you would be proud because I probably said the Hail Mary about 30 times.  We went around turns fast and over a mini jump we found on the side streets.  So, props to you boys.

                    2.  See the old stuff.  Sure, it might not sound like the most fun thing to do, but when you get to plan what you want to see and do it with friends, it can actually be pretty fun.  Group tours get boring sometimes, and sure you might not learn all the stories, but that's why God made Wikipedia.  We took the second day to leave the resort and go venture around the Old City.  After walking around the medieval moat at our own leisure and having a quaint lunch, we climbed all these old sites and got amazing views.  Things you probably can't do with an organized tour.  After, I got the privilege of driving us back to our resort before we went Jet Skiing.

                       3.  Become friends with the staff.  Since we were at an all-inclusive resort, there was a staff for games, the bars, the restaurants and more.  Well, half the reason why everything was so cheap was because it was the end of the holiday season and there were a lot of old people and a lack of younger people.  So we ended up legitimately becoming friends with all of them.  The boys participated in all the shows at night and I'm proud to say I am friends with the one and only winner of Mr. Electra (The resort we stayed at).  Then at the end of the night, we all went to their common hang out spot and later to a little bar/club thing.  It was always fun to see everyone out of uniform and have inside jokes.  This way, you're not only with the people you came with, but you also have the staff.  We never would have known about half the little places we went if it weren't for them.  

                      4.  Stay at an all-inclusive.  Nothing is better than not having to cook your meals and a pool at your disposal. 

                      Again, I say props to the boys for this whole idea.  It was a super cheap way to just relax, get back my faint tan and see a new and interesting place.  Hopefully I can come back soon!

Having Crossed, West Bank/Palestine pt. 2

                   Well like I said in my last post, this one is not going to be a narrative.  I haven't left Bethlehem yet, which entails a very different checkpoint experience than I had when leaving Nablus, but I'll possibly talk about that at another time.
                    I also want to take this time to let every single one of you know and understand that my stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that of Pro-Peace.  I do not want to see one side come out on top of the other, or see any side squashed.  I have best friends on both sides of the issue and I never want to see any of them hurt in any way.  I truly and honestly believe that solutions can not be made unless both sides are whole-heartily in it or there will always be an underlying issue.  What I'm going to say is honestly just going to be the observations I made while being in Nablus, Tulkarem and Bethlehem.

                    What I've told many people that have worried about me being in Nablus or Tulkarem, is that the people really do just go about their daily lives.  It is not war-torn, there is no obvious violence and I honestly felt very very safe just hanging there for the week.  But the biggest difference between just hanging in Tel Aviv and hanging in Nablus, was this eerie and underlying sense of containment.  And even though I am obviously a more free person in movement than they all are, I even felt contained.  And this is portrayed through different physical aspects:
                   1)  The Wall.  The pictured one is around the refugee camp in Bethlehem with some gorgeous and very interesting artwork along the Palestinian side.  And the example of Rachel's tomb is very interesting.  Technically, Rachel's tomb is in Bethlehem, but the wall surrounds the tomb in an square annexing it as part of Israel.

                     2) Is the massive amount of checkpoints you will find on Palestinian roads.  Although a lot of the ones I passed were not active, the fact that I had to drive through 3 during the hour drive from Ramallah to Nablus was really interesting. 

                     3) The last reason everything really felt contained was because of the road situation.  Like the rest of Israel, to get from one town to another you need to drive.  But something you will quickly notice while driving from Palestinian town to Palestinian town, is that there are no, absolutely no street lamps for night time driving.  Now being with my friends they explained to me this situation.  Like every human being, they would much so love to have lights on the roads especially since all the driving is basically mountain driving.  But they are not allowed to put lights on the road because they technically are not in control of the roads.  And then, that also means that Israel has not put lights on the road for them.  So since people are basically driving on and through mountains, you wouldn't dare drive at night.  This limits when you can travel and to where.  And since I already hate mountain driving, the lack of lights scared me even more.

                      Another thing worth noting is my checkpoint experience.  I got very lucky while hanging out with my friend Hiba one day.  Her friend was talking about the fact that her parents had Israeli ID cards and had to return back to Israel every once and a while in order to keep their status.  So they were going to Haifa the same morning I was leaving for Haifa.  Well, I'd rather drive through a checkpoint than have to take a bus to one, manually go through then try to catch another bus once I pass through.  My heart was pounding the moment we drove up.  Our car consisted of the Mom and Dad both with Israeli ID's, me with my American passport, and their nephew with a Palestinian ID and pass for the few hours in Israel.  We dropped off the nephew at the Palestinian entrance and we proceeded to drive through.  They took our ID's, checked our pictures and constantly asked my hosts who I was and why I was driving with them.  They answered "friend" in hebrew multiple times.  Then they extra took my passport, did some computer work and came out.  

                    Now, there were two different routes the car could go, one was to the left where we would immediately drive through, or to the right where the entire car would be searched along with our belongings.  Well, it was a random selection of cars to go to the right, and guess where our car was instructed to go.  We drove our car to the right and were faced with another IDF soldier.  To be completely honest, in a very stern and very frightening tone, he told us in Hebrew to put everything from the trunk and our personal bags in a shopping cart to bring to the airport like security checks.  After going through the metal detectors, we have to wait in a waiting room for the car to be finished being searched.  Now, if you thought I got a lot of stares when I was at the University...well imagine being the only uncovered female waiting for her car to be released.  Yep, that's correct.  When I said the car searches were random, I meant that loosely.  Every single female waiting in the waiting room had some sort of head covering.  Now hey, that could just be a coincidence.

                     After a good 30 minutes of waiting for the car to go through and a half heart attack later, we got through and we drove around to the exit of the Palestinian side to wait for the nephew, which took another 45 minutes until he was released.  He had nothing but his phone and cigarettes on him.  

                     Another thing troubling is just, how not awesome life really is there.  It turns out that the friends I stayed with in Nablus are luckily a pretty well off family.  They own the buildings they live in and don't have many troubles with their way of life, but what I found interesting was that even though I was staying in nice parts of Nablus, there is no way you could tell it was nice.  Below is a picture of the "nice" part of Nablus.

                   

                      Also, while visiting the refugee camp in Bethlehem, I learned that water is only turned on once every 20 days for 5 hours, and so all the tanks on their roofs is so that during those 5 hours they fill up as much as they can and then have the tanks to ration out for the next 20 days.  Below is the tanks on the roofs, and the visual of the squared wall around Rachel's Tomb.    

                      Lastly, something I will never fully be able to understand.  While I was up on the mountains in Nablus, you can very clearly see different settlements.  Now, if you know geography, you will know that Nablus is basically smack dab in the middle of the West Bank.  So, why would Israel put a settlement in the middle of the West Bank, instead of along the edges, where the settlers are generally surrounded by people who don't like them?  Well, while I was audibly questioning this situation, my friends made quite the statement...turns out most Palestinian citizens are more afraid of the settlement and its settlers than the settlers should be afraid of them.  

                      So like I said, people go and live their lives like anyone can and should do, but really people live their lives secretly in fear.  They can't escape their reality and in all honesty their reality isn't too awesome.  Many Palestinians asked why I wasn't studying in one of their Universities, and all I could say was if they didn't even want to live where they lived, why would I choose to live there? 

                      Overall, this was one of the most eye-opening experiences I have ever had.  I don't know what the checkpoint will be like tomorrow, but hopefully my American passport and cross on my neck will soften the blow.  I want to go back to every place I've been and even visit Ramallah because that's apparently the fun town in Palestine.  But as cool as it was, now I get why you wouldn't want to live there.  But I highly recommend every person to take even a day trip into Bethlehem, see what they Wall is like up close and experience daily life.  It will truly open your eyes to a new world.  At the end of the day, I just wish peace upon us all.  I hope and pray that peace will be upon this region every day.