I had no idea Valintines day was such a big deal over here! It's a much bigger holiday than in the United States! I have a party to go to at 8:00 (that's 1:00pm in Virginia, New York, etc) and I've used up most of my time on the computer doing other things, so this also won't be a real long post.
Thanks for all those that gave me updates! Believe me, I greatly appretiated them! I wouldn't mind some more, especially with the NBA rumors going around. Thanks also to whoever is watching my fanasty team, I don't actually know who is. This week is mine, bro!
So we are on our last 3 days here in Beit Sahour. This week has been run by MCC, not just ATG. So we were able to travel out of the West Bank. We went to Jaffa for a day and saw a lot of Jerusalem another day. In Jaffa I had the great pleasure to sit on the beach of the Med. Sea and eat Banana ice cream! For those minutes life was really great! Our day in Jerusalem was with ICAHD (Israeli Citizens Against Home Demolition). This quite possibly is the activist group that I agree with the most of all the ones we have met! The tour, especially the guide, was incredible! We saw the mess that is East Jerusalem and had lunch in a house that had been demolished 5 times already. That house has quite the story of applying for permits and receiving nothing over and over. They are persistant though!
This week we have also seen the inner workings of an olive wood factory. The artistry is incredible! I'll never show in 10,000 Villages the same! Our EMU Lotus basketball team had the pleasure of taking on a local team in Bethlehem last night. This team played the last EMU group here and we won by 40 or so I'm told. Well, this time we lost. By 9. That's not too bad considering who we have here and how little basketball experience we've had. I had 2 points on 1-4 shooting with 1 assist and 2 turnovers. Not the best statline. It was a great experience though! We all had so much fun!
If these last 3 weeks have been giving us kindling then our session with a Settler from Efrat was the spark! We finally have something to argue! We've been filled with Palestinian arguements and heard everything from a Palestinian bias for so long that it was starting to get dull. Now that we have been told the Israeli side we've pulled all we've learned and experienced over the last 19 days and started the debate. I think everyone is pro-Palestinian, but we have great debates over whether to be pro-Israeli too and to what degree. I can only see this continuing and that's just fine with me!
Alright, time's about up. I've read "Prince Caspian" and "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" the last week and now I've started "Into the Wild." I went through Chris Rice and Avalon singing phases and now I seem stuck on 4Him. "Be Thou My Vision" has been my most sung song over the last 3 days. Bye for now!
Thanks so much for writing - a good valentine's day gift. I'd been wondering how the debates are going, knowing you would be hearing both sides of a very involved and emotional and long standing issue or issues. I'm not so sure your bball stats are so bad - you haven't played much lately have you? Will you get a chance to journal on the EMU page sometime?
ReplyDeleteI just got back from small group with my valentine (we both wore red today) and found your post. (I complained to the group that it had been 8 days and nothing from Daniel.)
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you could hear the Israeli side too. Unfortunately since they have the most power and power tends to corrupt, probably justice does favor the Palestinian side. But both sides have their blind sides, so I hope you can spend a lot of time listening to the Israelis as you are in the Jerusalem University program the next weeks.
I love to hear the songs going through your mind. That would be a bad sign if no songs or negative songs were springing there. I love my son! (Looking forward to hugging your siblings next week; your blog, which was nice and long, is almost as good as a hug.)
I miss you!! So do a lot of other people around here. Manu's stats are only slightly better than yours. I'm controlling your team and I was temped to mess up your starting lineup, but instead I moved all your injured players to the bench. Kidd might go to Dallas, by the way.
ReplyDeleteyay! i was just thinking about you, cause i heard some kid laugh randomly as i was walking home just now, and it sounded just like you. my immediate reaction was, "what? daniel?" and then i was like, "oh, i miss daniel." true story. but then, here's a new blog! :)
ReplyDeletecory and i are watching ted and lee in sunday school. a vcr and a couple of the tapes randomly showed up in our little room the other week, and we finally decided to watch them. so we started fish eyes last sunday. pretty fun! perhaps we'll also talk about the palestine/israel thing some, too--but we're woefully uninformed, comparatively, i'm sure.
You know, last Sunday when we were sitting around the table playing scum, Darrel made some face or other, and someone shouted, "woah, you look like Daniel!!" We spent the next few minutes trying to convince him to make the face again... "do it again, I want to talk to Daniel!" We wanted to say hi :-)
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