Mostly from an email to my friends... probably pretty redundant...

Keef halkum y'all?

It's been a while but I wanted to give a mini update...

Some of you have asked what i do here... Basically, I'm part of a program called Palestinian Summer Celebration (corny, i know) but it's part of the Siraj Center ( www.sirajcenter.org if you're interested...)

We take intensive Arabic in the morning and then I go to my volunteer job at the Beit Jala Public Library (Beit Jala is a town next to Bethlehem). There, with one other staff member (from the town) I've organized a summer camp for kids with 40 kids aged 3 to 14 (yes I KNOW!) and do things like arts & crafts, games, trips to the park, etc. Luckily they were very receptive to me teaching bboying/bgirling (breakdancing) to the kids so that's been a lot of fun. I just have fun with the little kids doing what i guess I'd call "breakercise" (a shout out to the "jazzercise" I took as a 6 year old where we dance to "Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!!" clearly, this guided me through my formative years...!) But I also have a core group of the older kids who are incredible and just lapping it up. We're doing a performance and then exhibition battle on Thursday. I can't wait!

After the library (4 hours a day) I head off to either a lecture on various topics, or to a documentary screening, or a debkeh class (traditional dance), or a cooking class, or just a bar-b-que with the gang. Other times I help out at the Rapproachment Center with the newscasts for a local news station (proof-reading the english newscast or, today, actually reading the english version!!) Wow. I'm famous. Who knew? "This is live from occupied Bethlehem with Heidi Rosbe and Ghassan Bannoura reporting" Amazing. "Gooooooood Morning Palestine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" For a transcript of the newscast visit: http://www.imemc.org/article/49489

Evenings are basically spent like this:
"Ya Heidi, Eat more Makluba [insert here mensef, or mashi, or falafel, or shawarma, or ...]! You must eat! You"
"La, shukran, I'm really very full"
"Buss heidi... you are not eating enough? Do you not like it? Here, you can have more [insert any food]!"
"Really, I'm stuffed, but thank you"
"Heidi Heidi! Really there's enough to go around... don't be shy... eat more... here let me fill your plate"
"No no... really..."
[later]
"no!!!!!!!!!!!!! my stomach hurts! Please no more food!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!"

Anyway, I'm safe and happy and eating well--Which of course is the most important after all.