Time out (middle) East

School trips and Oktoberfest

isabel_hunter — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 06:52:00 GMT

Hello! Sorry to have failed at repling to your last email - have been
really busy the past week. Thank you so much so my lenses - they
haven't arrived yet, but I await them with anticipation. I ordered 3
months supply from the US by post when I first arrived here and they
took 5 weeks to get here but they still got here which I think was
quite impressive. It was only $60 for the lenses and postage! I'm
going to try and send Granny a birthday card - i hope it gets there in
time. Have also just been given a month's free unlimited calls by
skype so will give her a ring tomorrow. Rosie said she's really on the
ball at the moment - so glad she's taking this in her stride. Awesome.

I just googled (I love how that's a verb) Tom Hurndall and i think i
have heard of him before. It really gets me how it takes a white
person to die for people to wake up and realise how shitty the
situation is here and even more so in Gaza. I suppose the riots of
Acre are also grabbing some headlines. It's good that people are
noticing tho. I think there some sort of high profile Palestinian
Fundraiser/awareness day in London sometime soon. It's at Cadogan Hall
in Sloan sq. - Colin Firth is a supporter I think. I always new he was
a good egg. The website you sent - for Birzeit University, that's just
outside Ramallah and I have a Palestinian friend that goes there.
They have a great arabic dept. apparently. I will write something. I'm
just really busy at the moment (still trying to get my bloody TEFL
done. It's so irrelevant to actually teaching but it's anecessary
evil) and I'm still getting on top of lesson planning and i'm still in
charge of sorting the library which has a deadline of October 30th,
not to mention th e Drama Club which starts after school next week as
well as my first Parents evening next Thursday! I think we're going
on a school trip to Jerusalem next week - just for the fourth grade.
It's such a cool idea because so many kids have either never been, or
can't go as their parents aren't allowed through the checkpoint. The
delay just now is getting permits for the Palestinian teachers.
Speaking of permits - my work visa finally came through and i have my
passport back!! Yay!

I went to Ramallah last weekend and from there to the small
(exclusively Christian) town of Taybeh which is where Taybeh beer is
brewed. They were having a sort of Oktoberfest celebration which was
fun. Lots of beer and authentic Germans walking around in lederhosen
and the highest concentration of Westerners I have seen in a long
time. All wearing Kafiyeh's. It's funny - Palestinians just don't wear
them. But there was singing and dancing and beer on tap, lots of
kebabs and Palestinian arts and crafts. It's nice beer as well. I
think you can buy it in the UK and Germany. Their slogan is "Taybeh.
Taste the Revolution". My phone was stolen though which is so
annoying. I left it in my hotel room and as soon as i went back they
said it wasn't there. I then demanded to look myself and the room
hadn't been cleaned or anything so i reckon they just took it as soon
as i said it was there. Boo. It was my nice phone as well. I'm now
stuck with a crappy nokia one. Hopefully the phone company will come
through and replace the sim card. They said it would take four days
but you never know!!

Mmm, cauliflour cheese and crumble. I'm mighty jealous. We only have a
gas stove here and no oven so cooking is getting a bit boring. I'm
sure i could be more creative - the spices in the souq are awesome.
I'll google some recipes or something. Had a good chat with Rosie
about the wedding. She seems rather stressed, but excited at going
dress shopping with you this weekend! I can't believe I'm missing all
of this. I always thought i'd be there for the whole process, i feel
like i'm just going to turn up without really knowing what's going on.
Oh well, that's life I suppose. Maybe it's a good thing - i get to
miss all the bi-family politics and the arguments over napkin colours!
She suggested Dad takes a few sample dresses to Egypt with him for
when I see him in January - that would be a laugh!! Can't imagine him
trying to explain them at customs. Oh, if he's definately coming - can
you pressure him to get things definate? Because if he ends up not
coming I need notice because it's my only real holiday so it's cheaper
for me to decide as early as possible where I'm going!!

Well, i'm going to go and have a my last beer that i smuggled through
the checkpoint. It's the weekend now and i'm really appreciating not
having to get up at 6am tomorrow. Our hot water still isn't working
which is a nightmare - showers are thoroughly unpleasant especially as
the weather is getting colder now. It even rained yesterday!

Ramadan's over.

isabel_hunter — Thu, 2 Oct 2008 23:04:00 GMT

Apologies for the lack of update in the past few weeks - things have got rather busy at school. There was a bit of a shakeup where the arab first grade (english) teacher was moved to teaching the Palestinian curriculum part of the course (basic grammar) which is best taught in Arabic and is only included because the PA insists it must. It's pretty boring and doesn't make much sense which means it's hard for us to teach purely in Enlglish. So he now teaches every grade for a couple of periods a week and I have been moved to teaching English to First Grade and not doing any drama (except for after-school stuff). The two classes are super cute - about 5-6 years old, although being taught their arabic ABCs simultaneously as their english ones... Getting rid of the Palestinian Curriculum also means I am entirely responsible for the year's planning and for getting them to benchmarks etc which would be fine if the parents weren't so interfering!! A couple have asked for my personal mobile number so they can check up on things or they just swing by after class asking how they're child is getting on. I've only had the class a week!! What am I supposed to say??? Anyway, excited to have a class of my own and some stability in routine. Ramadan has finally finished as well so at least i can refuel at school.

You'd think there would be a specific date for the end of Ramadan, but no - it's all by the moon. So people are all ready to celebrate Eid (which is like Christmas day) but they don't know exactly which day it'll be. They have to wait for the mosque to announce it the night before. The first day of Eid was just like Christmas day (for everyone else) - you can see everyone going round in their best clothes visiting relatives and all the shops were closed. We went to Ramallah and had filter coffee and beer. It was awesome.

I'm really excited as I've been contacted by a German author-illustrator who wants to do a social-artistic project in the region involving Jewish, Muslim and Christian children. He's coming to Nablus in a few days to come see the school and meet everybody. Will let you know more when I do...

Our work visas should be coming through soon but we won't have our passports until we do which is really frustrating. They're in Ramallah being stamped or something. It just makes leaving Nablus difficult. We used just photocopies of our passports to get through the checkpoint the other day but it looks suspicious - who travels to the West Bank without their passport??? And there were FOUR checkpoints on the way to Ramallah. That's FOUR in an hours journey within the West Bank. An area supposedly under Palestinian Control. Three of the checks were through official checkpoints and one was just an IDF jeep at the side of the road that decided to pull our bus over randomly. There was an Eyewitness person there (a roving reporter who acts as an eyewitness to the illegal occupation) asking us what we were doing. She said she wasn't allowed into Nablus.

Well i'm going to make the most of the sun and my holiday from school and go and read a book. Email me news (new address isabel.s.hunter@gmail.com).

Love xxx

So-called Land of Milk and Honey

isabel_hunter — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:12:00 GMT

Oh, how I long for milk and honey. And water actually. We used the washing machine the other night and now there's no water for showers, toilet flushing or drinking. Hopefully it'll come back soon…

Everything is mighty better at the school. I’m not teaching a full English class and am just doing Drama 8 classes (40mins each) a week and have no classes on Tuesday and Wednesday so I'm going to go to the University and volunteer with an NGO days or something. I've got my hands full at the moment with the school library which was, when I first arrived, a huge pile of books on the floor, English and Arabic. I've been given a huge list which is following some sort of system that makes limited sense. So I'm sorting and labelling about 600 hundred books and putting them on shelves and that's only the English Section! It's quite satisfying but I spent 6 hours one day all on my own just hunting for books and alphebetizing. By the end of the day my mind was so scrambled - I could hardly figure out where letters were in the alphabet. So, once that's done I'll work on the arabic section and then make an awesome system and I will have created a library. Done.

I'm also planning for the school play, which my boss wants to be a musical... and involve 30 kids. That's a challenge for high school students in English speaking countries, but hey, this is Palestine. Let's be crazy... So I'm directing "Peter Pan" which is going to be awesome. Hopefully going to go up in January. This is part of the after school activities programme, in which I'm also doing the 'Spelling Bee'. Crazy. It all starts after Ramadan though so I've got two weeks or so to plan everything. Although, Lana (my boss) has also got me writing grant proposals as the school is independent and relies on school fees and donations alone. So I'm applying to lots of funds for money. Wee. Wow, I really hope I get to stay all year. It would really suck if I had to leave in two months.

I've seen two of my friends from last year already. I went to see Ahmed last Friday who lives in the countryside and has ducks and chickens and geese and a lovely mummy and daddy who can't speak much English so I was exercising my arabic. They also made me drink during the day (as opposed to fasting), which made me feel so bad as they can't. Tasted good though. Mmmm. Everyone eats at 6pm here as that's when the sun officially sets and the mosque declares "Allahu Akhbar" so there's mass preparation to have everything on the table so everyone can just dig in. And then you can't stop the food and drink - tea, coffee, sweet pastries. His mum packed me up with home-made tzatziki (amazing) some pastry things and home grown grapes. Bless. They also decided that I should get married in Palestine and Ahmed is on the quest to find me a hubby... I saw my friend Mais two nights ago who was lovely as always and took me shopping before going home with her. Her mum is the most amazing person ever. It's so nice to be in a family environment. Her mum would hardly let me leave and made me promise to come back again and again.

We're all heading to Jerusalem this weekend for a much needed Nablus break i.e. we need some beer. There's NOTHING worse than coming home after a long hot, tiring and stressful day and not being able to have a cold beer. Really sucks. Am really excited to go out clubbing and drinking and generally having a blast. Weeee!!!! We're leaving straight after school tomorrow. My friend from the US who's working in Bethlehem is prob going to meet us there which is super cool as i haven't seen him for a year. He got through airport security with nothing more than and smile and 'enjoy your stay'. Freakin' Yemen.

Arrival etc

isabel_hunter — Fri, 5 Sep 2008 04:45:00 GMT

Jeez, I've never been made to feel more like a terrorist in my life. Arriving at Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv is reknowned for being pretty gruelling, espcially if you've got some dodgy stamps in your passport. Well, I've a bunch of Jordanian ones, an Egytptian visa and the best one of all... Yemen. Passport control are quite lovely until they see that one. Smile smile smile, oh Yemen... come with me. They asked me so many personal questions it was insane. They didn't buy my travelling for a few months story and made it pretty clear if I lied again they'd deport me straight away. I should have lied better, but it was 4am and they're tough. Are you a member of any anti-Israeli organizations? How much money do you have? (to this is replied, well £1500 savings and £1500 overdrawn, so about £0? They weren't amused). What were you doing in Yemen? Studying? For only two weeks? uh huh... What type of arabic do you speak? Is it Palestinian? Syrian? (basically wanting me to say I spoke terrorist). Anyhoo, so finally got to go past passport control with my 2 month visa ("you're on our system. Don't even try to leave and come back in") and got stopped at the next point by some other douchebag who wanted to search my luggage for an hour... Finally left the airport, some 4 plus hours after landing, got a bus to Jerusalem (who ripped me off), then rickety bus to Ramallah and even ricketier bus to Huwarra checkpoint where you have to get off with all your luggage and walk through a massive cage while Israelis point big guns at you. Got into a taxi to take me to Nablus, took out my phone to phone my contact to tell me where to go and lo and behold, my battery had died. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK. After much convincing, the taxi man took my to internet which turned out to be somewhere I had visted last year, the Yaffa centre which is a cultural centre mainly for the refugees in Balata Camp (which is, incidentally where about 60 kidknapped Hamas affiliates were held hostage last year). Well there was my knight in shining armour who gave me internet and called my contact and found me another taxi and took my bags and escorted me to my final destination. Ahmed = legend. Amazing, he even paid for the taxi.

The school itself is really nice, it's a massive building which has been donated to the school for 3 years. Crazy though, it's the same place I was in last year for the first week. So I arrived after this massively long and stressful journey and pitched up at the same place i arrived at a year ago. I just started laughing but my taxi driver didn't speak English and i was too delusional with lack of sleep to string any arabic together. My first two days teaching have been ok, but so tiring. You'd think they'd have no energy because it's Ramadan, but no. Bouncy bouncy. I took my first drama class today which was hellish. They can't take too much stimulation or they just go crazy. I took them to the gym (like a large classroom with no desks) so we could get space to do stuff but then they found the balls and it was downhill from there. It must have been quite funny to watch, I pick one up to put it away, turn my back for a second and BAM, there's five more rolling around. I think most of the lesson was taken up with me trying to get them back to the classroom again. I've decided to teach less drama, and more 'animated English conversation". We finish at about 2.30 every afternoon so i'm still going to try and volunteer somewhere as otherwise you just come home and nap and eat and then go to sleep again.

The school are really keen for us to stay the year - understandably. Vusa runs are too unreliable and that's not even an option for me. So they've hired an Israeli lawyer who's trying to get us work permits. Apparently the school are paying him quite alot (if he succeeds) but i don't know how it'll work out. They've also asked if I'm willing to just 'expire' which basicaly means stay here illegally for a year so when I leave they'll blacklist my name and i'll never be allowed back in to the country. I'm not so keen on this. They were mean enough the first time.

No bacon here and Ramadan is a bitch. I get so thirsty and there's no midmorning coffee or anything. My new favourite thing to do is buy ice cream on the way home from school and guzzle it the moment i get into the flat and out of sight.

I'm going to spend the day with a Palestinian friend tomorrow, he used to throw stones at the Israelis. It's going to be fun.