I have arrived!!!

For years now, I have been telling people that I wanted to go back to school, but I never did. I wasn't sure exactly what it was that I wanted to do or where I would do it. Which is one of the main reasons why for 14 years I put off going to grad school. About a year ago when I was planning to go back for my last year in Palestine, my visa was denied. Obviously, the person in charge of applying for my visa went through the process of appealing Israel's decision but in the mean time I needed to figure out a "plan b". I was literally having a panic attack at my mom's house in Santa Cruz, highly aware that the end of August is not an opportune time to start looking for a fall teaching job. My mom, afraid of where I might end up (literally), suggested that I think about something outside of teaching english in a foreign country. She asked me what I do, if i could do anything? I don't know where exactly in me it came out of, but I remember hearing myself say, "the Montessori school in Bergamo, Italy". She got a huge smile on her face and told me to apply and we could sort out the financial issues when we got to them. So I quickly typed up an e-mail to the program and asked them if there was anyway that I could start this fall and gave them a very brief bio about myself. I was shocked out of my mind when 12 hours later they replied, "Yes but school starts in five days and you would have a lot to get done by then". So with the help of my sister I actually sat down and filled out their application and wrote the essay. (THE ESSAY.... the cause of such stress, it might have been the number 1 reason i had never applied for the program before. When I was a senior in high school, I might have actually chosen the colleges I applied for by who wouldn't make me write an essay)
In the middle of the process of getting this all done, I heard back from the Israeli Embassy that my application for a year long volunteer visa was approved. I quick wrote another email to the Montessori Program and told them that I would send in my application later in the year and that i would like to start in the fall of 2011. And off to Palestine I went.
Somewhere during the fall, I confided in a few close friends that I really wanted to go to grad school the next year but that I was going to have problems actually filling out the application because of some unknown to me fear. And I asked them for their help, Would they please pester me and harass me all year until my application was sent in. this is the point where I need to thank David, Bernadette and Jessica for all their persecution. Thank you for getting me here to Italy.
So here I am!!!
I am living in a convent that rents out rooms and provides meals for women. About half of the people from my program are currently living here and that might change as they find other places to live later on. For now, however it has been a great opportunity to get to know them and have a community right away.
Bergamo where I live is divided up into the upper and lower cities. The center where I will go to school is in the lower part, and the convent is in the upper part. The upper part of the city is the old city and was founded in 49BC!!!! The upper city, surrounded by Venetian walls built in the 17th century, forms the historic centre of Bergamo.

This is really what it looks like and in the top leftish/center of the picture you can see my bedroom window right under and to the right of the fortress.

This is what I can see out my window:

So there are some draw backs to living in the most beautiful place in the world. As I said the school is in lower Bergamo but the convent is in the upper city and the only way up and down in that direction is to walk.... and the sisters make lunch for us too... so twice a day I will be walking from the upper to the lower city. 30 minutes UP HILL!!!! OH MY!
and to have this amazing view also means that I have to climb up a lot of starts to the tip top corner of the convent (about 70 steps) to my bedroom. OH MY!!!!

bY the end of the year I better have buns of steel.

I arrived last Monday night in Milan but it was just two late to drive the hour plus distance to the convent so my friends who picked me up took me to one of their parents house for the night. The next morning, rested and showered I was driven to bergamo with Kendra another student (and now friend) who happened to be also be from Santa Cruz and who happened to be on the same flight as me. There were plenty of squeals of joy and amazement as we drove into the city. And more than once I shouted out that I live a very very charmed life.

In all the times I have arrived to new places since leaving home at 19 to go to Ohio for college, I have never had such a smooth transition. No one has ever met me at the airport with flowers before or taken such good care of me. books and horror movies could be written or made about all the disasters that have happened on my arrive to different places. I think the worst was when i arrived to korea in the middle of the night with not a clue where to go and randomly got into a van that swore it was a taxi and drove me for hours into the night to some strange person's house where i got locked in for three days. but that is a different story.

I have never arrived to somewhere so legit. I had the proper visas, my tuition has already been paid. I had people to meet me at the airport. My housing was previously arraigned. and on and on. I never live life this way, so well organized and prepared but i might be tempted to in the future. How pleasant it makes the beginning an experience in a new country and plus as i keep saying to myself: "this is ITALY!!! I am finally after 16 years, back in EUROPE!!!".

ahhhh happiness!!!

the current drama

I have a lot to say, but with everything going on right now here... it just doesn't seem relevant.
I have talked to my fellow expats who also live in the West Bank and we just don't know what to make of every thing going on.

In the past year there have been several events that have made us wonder if we should prepare for another intifada. But after a few days everything always calms down.
There was the annexing of the mosque in Hebron,
The assignation of a Palestinian in Nablus by the IDF,
A couple of stabbings and murders of IDF by Palestinians,
small fights about the Dome of the Rock,
the threat of elections,
and the list continues.

Each time we went through this whole saga of how to react. The Palestinian people around us carry on as if nothing is happening, which is my way to gauge how serious this is.

How ever, this is the first time the people around me, my fellow teachers, have started to seem worried.

A problem I have always had is knowing when to say enough. Many many years ago in China when we were put under house arrest for the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade I figured you just get through it. I didn't find out until about six months later that internationals left China in grooves during and following that incident. I went to Pakistan during a military cue and it was shockingly peaceful. (except in Kashmir, where they were fighting a civil war and where my mom told me not to go, and i didn't listen. She is still made at me to this day for going there! and she would tell you it is "with good reason")
I even was in Indonesia when the riots broke out all over the country there and was trapped in my hotel (i was the only guest left) for a few days until i was able to get a flight out.
I also went to Bosnia at the tail end of the war there back in the mid-90's.

I am not a stranger to conflict but what i never know is where to draw the line.

When do you pack up and leave?
When do you start stockpiling supplies?
When do you get worried?

I am leaving for a week long vacation in Egypt at the end of the month. Is it wrong for me to hope that if anything happens it happens when I am out of the country? Is that selfish?
I hate thinking that, especially since it will be Easter time and Passover. These are amazing times to be in the old city of Jerusalem.. a very crowded time and any violence would result in horrible blood shed.
so i guess i don't wish that!

So for my friends and family who are ready for me to leave RIGHT NOW...
I AM monitoring the situation and trying to figure out what I should do.
But most of all I am praying for peace!
And for both sides to take lots of deep breaths and to practice some anger management.

It was an accident..

At long last finally we got our washing machine fix today. Samir, the academic supervisor's husband and my student's father picked me up early from school today to go and pick up the repair guy so that I could bring them all home, let them in and supervise the whole thing. On the way home I was making small talk with Samir, who speaks English quite well from living in Chicago for ten years. I was asking him about the furniture in my apartment and where it came from. Since the day I moved in i was amused that it is identical to my furniture in China. I was asking if it was made in China or Nablus. He told me that it was made in Nablus, in fact it was made in his family's furniture factory in the center of the old town. Which lead in to a long story about the death of his brother.
Samir was different than his brother because he was serious about school and figured out a way to go to Medical School, move to America and become a doctor there. His brother was a much simpler man. He barely finished high school and went into the family furniture making business, worked hard at what he did and stayed out of trouble. He was forty years old in 2003, married and the father of three children. 2003 was the time of the three month curfew.
Everyone here as told me about their experiences during this time. Everyone was forced to stay in their homes for 10 days at a time. If you were to dare to step foot outside your house, you were shot. If you even looked out your window you were shot. Every 10 days the curfew was called off for 3 hours so that people could shop. Matters were made even worse because, here a two story house doesn't have an interior staircase. If you want to go up stairs in the same house, you first go outside and then up. So for those three months people couldn't get up or downstairs in their own homes. Everyone was confined to one floor and in the center room of the house, trying to avoid all windows or openings to the outside.
The day the curfew was called off for good that year, Samir's brother went to his factory to check on things. Hiding in the factory was a soldier who didn't realize the curfew was called off. He shot Samir's brother dead with one bullet.
Samir was quite clear that this was an accident. And seemed so matter of fact about it. He decided then and there to move his family back to Palestine from Chicago to full fill his family responsibility. He needed to be the uncle, brother-in-law, son to everyone who had lost. Except to express my sincere sympathy, what does one say?
Samir's children are all American citizens and can't wait for the day that they can return to the life they left and lost.
Again and again I hear stories like this. Some people are full of pain and grief when they tell me. Others have moved on.
I have met several families who were living overseas when the father's felt the incredible tug to move their families back to Palestine and do their duty to the ones left here. So far it, it is their children and adult children that I have met who all struggle with the decision to move back here. Some of them have come to peace with it and are trying to figure out how they can move back overseas but still try to take care of their elders and maintain a good Muslim Palestinian values where ever they go.
It is such a contrast to me from the people I am used to being around. Latino's move to other countries out of loyalty to their family to send money home for the people at home to survive. Filipinos do the same. In Korea I worked with a migrant workers community center and met people from all over the world who didn't like Korea at all but needed to be their for their families.
In Palestine, the people here feel like they need to hold their ground. If everyone seeks a better life in another country, there won't be anyone left to make claim to the country of Palestine and it will be swallowed up whole by their neighbors. Not only do the people who return feel like need to take care of their elders but also to respect the thousands of years of ancestors who lived here in Nablus not to mention their own future generations.
It is a lot to think about and ponder.

And it begins again

10 days ago I found out that I was being laid off from my job at one world market a fair trade non-profit store in Durham, NC after two years. Part of me was of course sad, but really I was pretty excited cuz it meant one thing to me.... FREEDOM to finally go back out into the big bad world and start back to the profession i love, Teaching..
The first thing i did when i got home late that night, (thanks Stacie for cheering me up)
was to go on-line to www.eslcafe.com and start looking again for a job.
Ironically I was IMing with Marty that night. Marty and I taught in China from 1997-1999. Since leaving there, I have talk on line with him less than a dozen times. I was greatly amused to be on line with him then. Way back when in China our favorite daily activity was just this... to be hunting for new and exciting jobs all over the world and planning trips. The world was my oyster.. I new i didn't want to go back to East Asia just yet but where?? I already was going to be going to the Holy Land with several family members in March, so I figured I would start there.
I like to think that I know the ESL market, it has been my industry for 12 years now, and in that time I had never seen a job in the West Bank before. But what the heck, I might as well have a look. And there it was

Pioneers Baccalaureate School (PBS) in Nablus is seeking experienced elementary school teachers. We are looking for teachers for grades 1-5. Our students have varying levels of English, so in the early grades much of the instruction will be ESL. In the fourth and fifth grades math, science, and English (of course) will all be taught in English and the teacher’s role will be much more akin to that of a grade-level teacher in an American elementary school.

We are seeking one teacher immediately and five teachers for next school year (September). Please indicate your availability date in your response.

PBS is unique in Nablus because we run our school on a western model based on inclusion, kindness, and active learning. The school was founded as a direct response to the sad state of education in our city. Even the best schools in the city have classes with 30-50 students, corporal punishment, rote instruction, etc. We are committed to doing something different. Please come and join us as we try to change Palestinian education from the ground floor.

Necessary Skills:

• Independence

• Ability to work in an environment with limited resources

• Initiative

• Willingness to commit to a two-year contract

• Ability to work with Palestinian teachers to combine the English and Arabic curricula (our teachers can all communicate in English)

• Strong in differentiated instruction

• Ability to blend art, music and science into the main curriculum

Provided:

• Stipend paid monthly. Accommodations in a shared apartment with other teachers. If you want to find your own living quarters we are also happy to help you.

About Nablus:

Nablus is encircled on all sides by the Israeli military. Despite that it is relatively calm but there is little or no nightlife and life can be very dull. The people are generally welcoming but conservative. Young women need to dress very conservatively.

So I applied...

and waited

and waited

and waited....

and finally today at 6 am my phone woke me up to a voice mail...
the school had called but my silly phone hadn't rung..

a few hours later they called back again, and we talked...
long story short,
They are going to pick me up from the airport in Israel when my plane arrives.
I am getting to Israel 4 days before anyone else and I will go to the school for those days to check it out and for them to have a chance to check me out too.

I will go on the pilgrimage and when everyone else leaves, I will find my way to Nablus..

and yes, once again I had to go on line and look it up on a map to find out exactly where it is.