i suck at this blog writing thing

I freely admit that I am just not very good at this blog writing thing...
HOWEVER my roommate/co-worker is...
for a more updated and better written story of my life, go to her blog
http://fahmidagoestopalestine.blogspot.com/

thank you USAID

Dear USAID,
Thank you so much for repaving the roads around Beirzeit. I used to get carsick every time I went through that town. I noticed that you haven’t yet put the hundreds and hundreds of speed bumps back in. They were the number one reason I had to think twice about taking a bus to Nablus. Now I don’t have an excuse.
However I have one more request. Could you please please extend the job to repave the road all the way to Ramallah???
Yesterday afternoon when I was coming back from Nablus there were torrential downpours and hail mixed with zero visibility fog. The driver seemed to think it would be “fun” to drive even faster along this part of the road. If the road was redone this might have been a bit safer. But between the speed bumps, the holes in the road, the parts of the road missing, and the on coming traffic, I thought for sure my life was coming to an end.
I can’t wait to see what project you work on next,
A teacher in Ramallah!!!

what makes maggie happy?

What makes Maggie happy….
How does she really know she is out of her 20’s.

What makes Maggie happy….
How does she really know she is out of her 20’s.

Thursday's are my light days at school. I only teach five classes. Two of them are nightmares. They are classes that I am in only once a week and kids just misbehave all over the place. But the other three are with first grade. We are working on phonics and singing simple conversations set to song so it is fun at least for me. This week I invented a new game (this isn’t anything I don’t usually do) for phonics. I divide the class up into two teams and give them names and make a score box on the board. One little sheets of paper I wrote out the alphabet several times and mixed the cards up. Then I pass out the cards to the students. Each one gets about 7 or 8 cards with different letters on them. I say a different sound of a letter (or a word and they find the beginning or ending sound) and the kids who have the coordinating letter hold it up. Each team gets the number of points according to how many kids in that group have those letters. Teams also can earn points by sitting quietly or can loose points if they misbehave.
Today I was playing this game with 1A and I named one team the flower team and the other the cat team. I was trying to figure out a way to get the students to speak in English while playing…
Usually they show out “I have it” “ I have the letter D” , “I don’t have it” etc.
But today was feeling a bit rowdy since it was a Thursday afternoon and we were about to be let out for a three day break celebrating the Prophet Mohammad’s birthday. And one of the kids was trying to figure out how to tell the other team they sucked…
So I told him to tell the other team
“you are stinky cats”
which he did and they looked at me for a reply
so I offered
“you are dead flowers”
Oh my gosh you would have thought it was a south American football match.
They all immediately understood what these insults meant and LOVED it and started screaming at the other team and then THEY STARTED MAKING up their OWN INSULTS TO SHOUT….
These were really their first autonomous words spoken in English…
I couldn’t believe it….
It was a Thursday miracle!!!
Maybe not really something I should be writing home about but they could do it!!! They could speak English!!!! They could yell at each other in English!!!
Who knew that after six months of English classes sat in silence they would all blossom at one moment, well maybe explode?


It was raining as class got out and decided to walk home in the rain and just enjoy it. I pulled out my camera and took dozens of random shots of Ramallah in the rain. I stopped at the produce shop and picked up a few odds and ends and made my way home. And plugged my computer into the internet and chatted for a little while on line…
There were lots of friends on line, which was random fun.
I then started peeling and chopping up veggies for a few recipes that I wanted to try. I have gotten really into food-based blogs lately and the recipes have been looking really interesting.
Soon it was time to go tutor a new family…
They are twin boys from my second grade class. Tutoring is a great way to boost up my income but the real reason I love it is that it is an amazing way to get to know families. I get one on one time with students and learn what makes them tick.
The boys and I had fun learning the different terms for weather, what weather you find in each month and what season each month comes in..
I know that doesn’t sound like a fun lesson but we made cards for each word and played “snap” a common card game only instead of playing cards we used our vocab cards. They seemed more than shocked that “school” could be fun. They were so lost in the fun of the game they didn’t seem to realize they were speaking English…. Ahhh another successful lesson. I stayed after for a bit to hang out with the older sisters and mom.
I had gone to their house earlier in the week to work out the details and while I was there they told me that they had only moved to Ramallah a few years before from Gaza.
So as I was talking to them I told them I was in the middle of making a traditional gaza lentil recipe that I had seen on www.gazamom.com
They were fascinated and I showed them the website.
They told me about a spice shop next to my school that grinds their own spices. They said you can tell them what you are going to make and they will mix up the right seasonings for each dish. It sounds like fun and I can’t wait to go and check the place out.
We spent a long time talking, It was wonderful!!!
And then they brought me home and I started cooking..
I love living in a stone house, because I can hear the huge biblically sized storm outside and yet I feel as snug as a bug inside… Candles on as the lights flicker from the wind. My computer on, playing all my favorite kinds of music from around the world…
I am like a mad scientist randomly mixing things together from the cupboards waiting to see if anything happens.
I am just so happy and in my element!!!

Three whole days off of school….
Still not sure what I am going to do with them but since it is raining so hard, it just doesn’t seem like the right time to hang out in the old city of Jerusalem. It gets really really slippery and I don’t need to break my neck while I am here.
So maybe it is a good day to go and spend the day with Safwan…
I am so in my element!

ooooppss i can't believe it has been two months

I apologize....
I apologize that I haven't been blogging...
I was in america for the past two weeks visiting family.... but not friends, there just wasn't time. i just got back to Palestine two days ago and have been busy moving into my new house and starting back at school. Tonight the landlord is suppose to come and fix the internet so that it is wireless. Right now i have to sit in my roommate's room to get internet which is obviously limiting my internet usage time.
But i wanted to let you know I am home safely and I think i will have more time and energy to blog now.
I finally really feel like things are on the up and up. Going home for Christmas even thought it was a short trip really did the trick and lifted me out of my doldrums.
Happy New Year......
Here's to hoping and praying that 2010 won't be filled with death....

my first week

I was always one of those dorky kids whose favorite game to play as a child was "school" I would get to be the teacher with imaginary students. Even at school I would pass the time day dreaming about the day I would get to be a teacher at a Catholic School. And despite all the years that I did teach, never did I have the opportunity to teach at a parish school
As overly active as my imagination was there was no way that I would have ever pictured myself finally becoming a Catholic school teacher in Palestine. I had never heard of Palestine. Or that my first stint in a Catholic school would be as an EFL teacher, or even that I would write a blog. I hated writing and couldn't spell (somethings never change) and was horrible in Language Arts and at any attempt at a foreign language. But life is strange and when you are just along for the ride it is amazing the places that you end up and the amazing things you end up doing.
A month ago or even three weeks ago when i got laid off, teaching in Ramallah at a school like mine was never even a possibility in my world. It is really all because of Abu Johnny (my parish priest in Nablus) that I got this job, that this job was created for me. I feel lucky!!!
There is something about the school that really makes me feel at home. It reminds me so much of the schools I went to as a kid. I was sitting outside one of the classrooms next to the drinking fountains the other day waiting for the bell to ring and a high school boy got sent down to wash all the gel out of his hair, it was completely and totally something out of my own school experience. And then later in the day after teaching my most naughty group (fourth grade) one of the kids came up and gave me a cough drop because he was sure my throat hurt after all the yelling i had just done. I had to laugh!!! and take it, cuz my throat really did hurt. Later I had to keep the entire class in during recess to punish them and the principal came down to yell at them for being so disrespectful. She told them to apologize but that I didn't have to accept the apology unless I was sure they were sorry. I told them that they could apologize now but that i wouldn't believe it until the end of 5th period when i taught them again if they really meant it. During 5th period they were perfectly behaved students. They all ran up to me and said, "see we really meant it, we are so sorry". There was something all about it, that i loved. I love that the administration is so supportive of the teachers. The students seem to be happy to be there and the admin keeps telling me how much the students love me.
Maybe it is a lot deeper... Maybe it is that I very much understand how culture shock and adjusting to new environments works. Maybe it is because when i first came to Palestine 8 months ago I was really looking forward to the initial honeymoon stage where nothing gets you down and you love everything about the new country. I was really looking forward to staying in that stage for as long as i could because I know that the next stage is to hate everything. But in the end because of events out of my control I never even got to experience the honeymoon stage. I went straight into grief and there is nothing happy about that. My whole experience in Nablus felt like it was surrounded by death. Not only have the people of Nablus experienced so much death in their lives but there are posters of people who died all over the city. My whole experience of life there was framed in the losses of friends. Dan, Aeryon, and Roxy the dog (who I pretended not to like, but i really loved) at the beginning and then I found out that Brian died my last night there. I wasn't the only one to have lost loved ones during my eight months there. My co-worker Isabel lost a good friend of hers in a helicopter accident back in Scotland. A summer co-worker Mike lost his childhood friend in a car accident and a teacher who came in the fall lost her cousin while here. It is a lot of death to handle in a short time and so far from home. I am praying that there will be no more death in my life in Ramallah. I can't take anymore.
Maybe, inshallah, my move to Ramallah means that I get to start all over again. Ramallah is such a different place than Nablus that it actually does feel like a new country even though it is only about 25 miles away. (imagine going from a tiny town in Louisiana to New York City, rather different. This time I am going to soak in it for all it is worth.... I am going to fall in love with Ramallah and everything it has to offer.
I feel like I am finally teaching, living with, and working for "my people".

images of Palestine

Every prepared and seasoned English teacher has one of those prepared lessons up their sleeve that almost always works and sets the tone for their first day of class. I have had an outrageous number of first days of classes and this is a well-rehearsed lesson. Last week I added something new.

I like to exploit the fact that on my first day the students are always curious about learning about my life so I start off by telling them through a series of pictures and gestures about my family and who I am.

This year I added something new. It know it is very unPC of me, but when has ESL ever been PC. When you are struggling to communicate at the most basic of levels with someone gross generalizations are going to be made.

I started my lessons by drawing five pictures on the board; A pyramid, a big hat, a bowl of rice with chopsticks, Mickey mouse, and a big clock tower. I then asked the students which countries each picture represented. I was really impressed that for the most part the students really understood and were able to do it. I then asked them which country I was from and why did Mickey Mouse represent my home. With the older kids I took it a step further and asked them what picture could we draw to represent Palestine? Each class seemed to really love that question and they talked about it and thought about it and first each class pretty much came up with the same answer. They said to draw Al-Aqua Mosque (the big famous one in Jerusalem with the gold top), they thought about it some more and decided they should draw a church, after some more thought they decided a Christmas tree and then after even more conversation each class came up with the idea of drawing an olive tree.
Part of me was relieved by their answers. I wasn’t sure where they would take it. In Nablus they might draw a big AK-47 or some rocks to throw at Israeli’s but because I now live in Ramallah things seem a lot more peaceful. Ramallah is definitely still affected every day by the occupation, but it isn’t as much of a moment-to-moment struggle like in Nablus. There are a lot more freedoms here and a much better sense of security.

I really found their answers and drawings fascinating!

Once you are here in Palestine for any amount of time or I guess even just being aware of the issues of this conflict you know that this mosque represents the heart of the issue. It of course is a single component of the drama here but it is the most emotional issue for both the Israeli’s and the Palestinians. Drawing the Temple Mount or the Dome of the Rock is the most obvious picture. Ironically of course it isn’t actually located with in the current lines of Palestine, which makes it all the more emotional. But since it isn’t in the technical current boundary lines, does it best represent Palestine? And because it is such an poignant representation is it the right thing to draw in this type of situation. I didn’t quite say that in those words but the students did and they decided to change the picture.

So we went back to the drawing board, that is when the classes decided to try a church or Christmas tree. I don’t know if I have been in Nablus too long or exactly why this surprised me. But they are totally right. A Christmas tree is a great representation of Palestine. But I actually almost wonder if Palestine is a better representation of Christmas? Maybe what got to me more was the tree part of it.
Last Easter when I was here I had totally forgotten the bunny, candy and egg part of Easter. In my thoughts about Christmas coming had I forgotten the tree and decoration part of the holiday? I have been so focused on trying to decide between spending the day in Bethlehem or at home with my sisters and mom that all the rest had fallen to the side. I guess I was amused that it was the students who reminded me about the whole other side of Christmas.
As we talked about how appropriate the Christmas tree or a church was we had to acknowledge that 75% of the students in the class are Muslim and did this embody them accurately?
The students consulted with each other again and decided that maybe an olive tree was a good representation of Palestine and all Palestinians.
An olive tree is symbolic to me of Palestine because it is what lead to my journey here.

A little over a year ago before I came to Palestine, I was working at One World Market. And they started carrying Palestinian Olive Oil. Every time a new produce came in, especially one so unusual we would research it and the story behind it. It was a combination of researching this oil and knowing that I was going to go on a trip to the Holy Land with my family that got me motivated to learn more and more about Palestine. I had decided to stay longer than the tour and to try and find a group to volunteer with for a few weeks. The first place I looked to was the olive oil people who said they took volunteers in an area between Jenin and Nablus. Neither place I had really ever heard of before…. And the rest is history….

It fascinated me that the students’ images of self matched my own symbols of my journey to Palestine.

fleeing to Egypt

These past few months my life has felt like one big survivor reality show. But finally my time was up and my fire was put out. It was time to move on. The vote hadn’t come from the rest of the contestants; instead the producers stepped in had had me removed from the show. I wasn’t done yet, I didn’t feel like my life in reality tv had come to a close. So, I called my agent (God) and found a place on another tv show called, the Amazing race.

When I got laid off, my boss and I talked about my next plans and she said she would get me to the bus or airport when it was time to leave. After all, I had gone WAY beyond the realm of kindness and call of duty in both picking up and dropping other people off these past few months. I even told her I would go to Jerusalem by bus on Wednesday night and spend the night there so that I could catch the Egyptian bus easily. She told me nonsense and that she would take me herself there or find me a driver on Thursday morning.

But when I called her the night before at 9pm to remind her that my bus was leaving the next morning from Jerusalem, she had no memory of any such promise and I was left on my own to figure out a way to get there. It was far too late to go to Jerusalem that night and I was going to have to find a way in the morning to get there.
On average it takes 3 hours to get from Nablus to Jerusalem. There have been times that I have done it in 2.5 hours and then other times where it has taken 4 or 5 hours. Even thought it is less than 60 miles away, the checkpoints, and road blocks add too many variables to play with.

In Nablus the Palestinian Soldiers go home between 12 am to 6 am because it is what I call, Israeli Time. Meaning, that those are the hours that the Israeli soldiers in their armored cars patrol the streets. You don’t want to be out on the streets during that time. So sharply at 6am I was in a shared taxi on my way to the bus station. There we had to wait a bit for a service (bus) to arrive. The first checkpoint was not a problem at all. We got through relatively easily. The next one at Zatair Circle was a monstrosity. We sat there for at least 30 minutes not moving at all when the lady who was sitting in the front seat turned to me in perfect English and asked which nationality my passport was for. When I told her American she asked for it and told the driver to switch into the Israeli only line, which was empty. We drove up there and she showed the guard my passport and her UN id and he miraculously let us through. At that point I begged the driver to take us to Kolandia the checkpoint that separates Ramallah from Jerusalem instead of taking the back way directly into Ramallah. Several other people on the bus were trying to get there too so he lamented. I got through Kolandia faster than I have ever before. And it was only 8am. Now I needed to jump in a city bus, battle J town’s morning traffic and get to the bus stop all in 30 minutes. It was not looking good for me. But somehow we did it. When we got to the arab station I jumped out ran to the taxi stand got a taxi the rest of the way and got on the bus just in the nick of time.

As I sat down I realized that there seemed to be a “tour group” on the bus. I asked one of them what group they were with, and she told me they were missionaries traveling around the world with a group called “the great race”…. Irony at it’s finest.

They were actually really sweet people and the bus ride down to Eilot was peaceful. I slept most of the way, an anomaly in Maggie World. When we got to the Egyptian border we were lead in to the immigration room where we were suppose to pay a border tax and cross over. There was a huge confusion because the company we bought the tickets through told us it was one bus taking us all straight to Cairo and clearly the bus we were on was filling up with people and leaving. In addition we had all paid the tour company the tax for the border, which they said would be paid for us when we got there. No one there knew a thing and the 20 of us from the bus were downright confused.
The immigration manager eventually called the company for us and figured it all out. We were suppose to wait for the bus from Tel Aviv to come down and meet us. Then the people from the Egyptian side would come over and walk us through to the Egyptian bus waiting on the other side of the border.
The whole reason I had used this company and not taken local transit (which would have saved me a bit of money) was that I was coming to Egypt on a visa run. I figured that if I disguised myself with a tourist group it would take away all suspicion of what I really do, work in Palestine. The fact that I came down with a group of missionaries was more then I could have hoped for. I have to admit sitting in immigration for FOUR hours had me sweating. When I looked up to the ceiling I could see random microphones hanging down like they would in a box ring. They were obviously there to “listen in” and find people like me. Plus they had this lady there doing a “survey” who wanted to know where you spent each and every night of your stay while in Israel. How was I suppose to have accounted for my last 90 nights, ALL of which had been spent in the West Bank. I gave her an elaborate detailed (very fictional) account of my whereabouts. She sat there with us making small talk the entire time. It was an interesting act of charades trying to blend.
But in the end, after hours of sitting there, the rest of our group did show up and I stood in the middle of them and got through immigration with out a problem. Now I am just worried about getting back in.


Once we crossed over the border and I walked in to the Egyptian immigration office, I had to hold onto every bit of self control not to turn around and scream out back towards Israel, “I WORK IN PALESTINE”…..

Instead I moved on with the travel agent guides who bribed the Egyptian border guards to get us all Egyptian visas. It was a bit strange to see it happen so obviously right in front of me but it was a good introduction to how things are done here.

Since I have been here the police are constantly asking me if I want them to do things, like stop traffic so I can cross a busy street for a “tip” or at the pyramids to let me climb them for a “tip”. In a way it is amusing and in a strange way liberating because I think I could get away with anything here for a small “tip”. But then on the other hand obviously it would suck to try find justice in a place that obviously doesn’t know the meaning of it.

Back to the new bus….. At this point but the time they bribed a visa for everyone and after waiting for the other group we had spent more time on the border than actually getting to the border. After another short wait an Egyptian bus showed up that was nice but not nearly as nice as the Israeli bus. We all piled in and started off and drove 100 meters down the road to the first checkpoint where it was discovered that the one Israeli on the bus had not paid the border tax and refused to. I didn’t actually understand why or what his justification was but all I knew is that the whole bus sat there for over an hour as he argued with them about paying the 15$ US. That was the point that I started to loose it. 11 hours into the trip and we had only gone 5 hours worth of driving. Eventually he gave in when he realized the rest of the people on the bus were going to turn on him and might physically remove him our selves.
Around 7 pm we were finally on our way up through the mountains of the Sinai. Even by moon light they are intense and barren. We went hundreds of meters worth of switchbacks up and up and up the mountains. There was no vegetation at all. And it looked like one huge rock.
A dear friend Marybeth had made a comment the week before that I was fleeing the holy land to Egypt just like the holy family did 2,000 years ago. As we were winding our way up the mountain I reflected not only on the Holy Families trip but also on Moses’ trip with the Israelites as they were fleeing the Egyptians and parting the red sea which reminded me of my friend Gabriel’s trip. Gabriel is my South Sudanese friend who escaped Egypt and ran to Israel seeking asylum ( go to www.4asylum.com) for his story. Eventually we reached the plateau and stopped several times for dinner in this little desert shack. I thought it was tasty but the missionaries on the bus were freaked out by the lack of cleanliness and bathrooms. What do you expect from mud brick huts?
One of the missionaries lent me her pillow and I was able to get a few hours a sleep as we continued to cross the desert. I assume that at some point we went down, I don’t know. I missed it and woke up as we went through a tunnel under the Suez canal.
Indisputably I was finally in AFRICA!!!!!
I called Lacey, a co-worker from summer camp in Palestine who now lives in Alexandria. She was going to meet me in Cairo and take care of me for the week. My first glimpse and impressions of Cairo was overwhelming. I don’t know why I didn’t realize how huge it was. I had never felt so intimidated by a city before. Maybe it was the exhaustion and lack of sleep or maybe it was the fact that we were pulling in at 1;30am. Either way I was too tired to process it at all and was beyond thrilled that Lacey was going to meet me there. Along the way before I got off the bus, one of the guys on the bus who was not with the missionaries mentioned that he also had lived in Nablus as a teacher a few years before. Since there are less than a dozen teachers in Nablus at any one time, it is a small group of people and the chance of meeting one was highly unlikely. We became instant friends and he decided to hand out with Lacey and I for the next few days.

Lacey met us at the Sheraton Hotel with a couple of her friends who very kindly drove us to the hotel where Lacey had already checked in. I immediately fell into a coma like sleep for 8 hours and only woke up because I was starving and my skin was itching it was so dirty. After a quick shower we headed off to a restaurant that Lacey knew where we met her other international co-workers, Sarah and Kirsty where were also in Cairo for the weekend. The menu had pages and pages of international options and I couldn’t make up my mind, I was so overwhelmed. It reminded me so much of way back when I was in China and would come home for holidays and not be able to make up my mind in restaurants or stores. When the food finally came, it has a huge platter. Someone made a comment about the American portions there… really? That is what we are served? Have I been away that long that this dish could feed 3?
From there we headed over to the world famous Egyptian Museum. One of the girls kept calling it the “British museum” And I had to laugh since really that is where the other half of the museum is.
I personally have been to a LOT of museums in my day but NEVER to one like this. It is HUGE and there are antiquities EVERYWHERE…. You could trip over them they are so jammed in there. Plus they aren’t behind anything and you can touch them!! Well, I don’t think you are suppose to touch them; but there isn’t anyone stopping you and you actually can’t help yourself. At this point. I was still tired from the bus trip and from the past month of Palestine in addition to just in awe of the place. I walked around for hours in a daze. The human mummy room and the animal mummy room were fascinating but gross. I would love to go back and send years exploring that place but never do I need to go back into either of those rooms.
All the history classes I took in college came flooding back. Someday, many somedays I will go back there and spend time really really looking around with a guide book and more focus. The whole time I was there I kept think about the movie, a night in the museum and how they really should have made it about this one. You can’t help but have your imagination run wild there. I also thought that this is the one place every 10 year old should go; or at least a 10 year old with an imagination and any sense of history or culture at all.
There was one other thing that really threw me off, so much so that I actually at one point had to find a bench to sit down and deal with it. I was really thrown off by what the other tourist were wearing. At first I thought it was because I had just come from Palestine where ALL the women (okay, you can find one here or there) wear full head veils and big coats all year round. But these women were wearing clothes appropriate for a beach or pool ONLY. I assumed they were Eastern European, but many of them were American and British. Didn’t they read the guidebooks or didn’t their tour tell them that shorts of any length are inappropriate much less ones where their butt checks are hanging out? Or that they should wear a bra with that itty-bitty tank top? I was uncomfortable and the people I was with were uncomfortable. It really was too much and kinda ruined my museum experience.
We left there and went to Konokolili where the famous bazaars and mosques are. They were everything you imagine. We stopped at the oldest coffee/ tea house for a drink and were just enraptured by everything going on around us. After wondering the bazaar, (I only took pictures, I couldn’t imagine buying another thing) we headed off to the Nile river for a “cruise”.