Leaving It All Behind

Important note before I start blogging. I am temporarily disabling my Facebook. DO NOT FREAK OUT. I will bring it back up once I'm back in the States. This is merely a precautionary measure in case airport security decides to be super thorough with me.

So the end has come. I leave in the morning to go to Ben Gurion Airport where I will face the gauntlet of airport security and long plane rides to get back to the States. Fun.

This past week has been a whirlwind. I've said many goodbyes: to the women in my English class, to the dozens of kids I've come to love, to my volunteers, to the translators that I've become friends with, to the wonderful TYO staff, and soon to the other interns. Lila left already, but tomorrow I'm the first to head out. So goodbye Tommy and Megan. It's been a blast.

Last Thursday we celebrated Thanksgiving. The Americans all cooked (except Lila and Tommy who got fired from cooking duty due to ignorance. They got set-up duty). I made a killer sweet potato casserole. The Palestinian staff have done Thanksgiving before, but you could tell some of it still mystified them. "What's this?" Futoon, our outreach coordinator, said as poked at the cranberry sauce in concern.

Thursday was also the field trip with the kids and my last sight of them as a group. I've seen a couple of the neighborhood kids since, but it isn't the same.

Over the weekend I had a horrible sore throat so didn't do anything which sucked.

This week there was a party for Samin where I got to see some of my women for the last time but other than that it's been cleaning, reports, cleaning, and reports. I never thought I'd find cleaning preferable to another activity, but I did and that's report writing.

I also got to hang out with the translators a couple of times which was good. The three of them (Ruba, Amani, and Mohammad) have worked with us so closely and I consider all three of them friends. Ruba especially since I spent about eight hours a week with her but all them are wonderful. Megan and I even got to go over to the dorm where Ruba and Amani both live and hang out one last time today. It was really sad to hug them goodbye.

So goodbye Nablus. Thank you for being so wonderful and welcoming.

Just Hanging Out in Nablus

First things first, I am safe. What's happening in Gaza has very little effect on my life here. The news sounds scary, but here in Nablus, it's pretty much life as usual. And now there's a ceasefire! So hopefully the violence will end!

This past weekend was three days, which was super exciting. Thursday was Palestine's independence day (when asked what this meant for a land under occupation, the Palestinians mostly said that it was about the hope for independence someday). We still had to work on Thursday so to make up for it, we got Sunday off instead. Yay three day weekend! Of course, we're all too broke to do any more traveling, and since we've mostly seen everything we really wanted to here, we decided staying in Nablus was fine with us.

We didn't just bum around the center either. On Friday Megan, Lila and I went to Hanin's house for dinner. Hanin is our Arabic tutor as well as translator for women's aerobics and IT. She made us the Palestinian version of dolmas as well as stuffed eggplant, stuffed zucchini and stuffed cucumber. It was a lot of fun, and her family was really nice. (Note Tommy did not come. He husband was apparently uncomfortable about having a "strange man" over.)

Yummy.

On Saturday we got even more food. Lila, Megan, and I went to the home of one of the women that we taught in aerobics class.  Abeer fed us more food than I thought I was capable of eating. She would not take no for an answer. Seriously. She took my spoon, heaped it with food, and PUT IT IN MY MOUTH. She's such a mother. We had a lot of fun. She's a total sweetheart who doesn't deserve to be married to the old jerk that is her husband.

This is chicken on top of rice and veggies (peas, carrots, etc.) with hummus, lebaneh, salad, etc. We also had fruit, cake, and tea later.

Now I'm in my final week of classes so it's been a lot of goodbyes. It's truly terrible. I've already cried once (one of the women in my English class gave a speech during our volunteer/intern appreciation ceremony about how much she liked my class--I managed not to cry until everyone left though so that's a win). I will certainly cry again.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving so I'll be making a sweet potato casserole for the staff dinner, and we also go to see The Lorax in Arabic with our kids. It's the last time I'll see them before I leave.

I'm going to be a wreck.

Buoyancy

I'm really starting to feel how little time I have left over here. Honestly, it's freaking me out. Three months is a very short period of time. Despite a craving for a steak, I'm not really homesick for America, and I know that when I leave here, I will miss a lot of people. The other interns, the women in my English class, my translator Ruba, and all of the children I have come to love. But it's still too early to say goodbye; we still have a few adventures left before heading home.

Today was one such adventure. Us interns did a day trip to the Dead Sea. Now I know that the Dead Sea is super salty and, therefore, people float in it very easily, but I had no concept of what that would actually feel like. Let me tell you, it feels weird. First of all, the water feels slick on your skin, like oil. Secondly, it isn't just easy to float, you have no choice but to float. You float so well that you can't even swim. As soon as you stretch out your legs to kick, your feet pop into the air. Then there's the salt. This is not water you want splashed on your face. A wave hit me in the face, and I had to have Lila lead me out of the water while I kept my eyes screwed shut because the salt burned. I didn't really open my eyes until she had a bottle of water ready to pour into my open eyes to wash them out.

But it was so much fun!!!

Floating in the Dead Sea while I read a newspaper. Actually, the newspaper is in Arabic so there was no actual reading happening, but we thought the photo op was cool.

The Dead Sea is not just know for its salt; it is also know for the mud. People sell that mud for exorbitant prices at spas, but we just scooped some into jars while there. We also slathered ourselves in it before leaving.

So here we are, covered in mud. I felt like a little kid again. Playing in the mud is always a blast. (Also, I can't quite figure out how Tommy managed to keep his shorts that clean...)

The Dead Sea is the lowest point on Earth. We're actually several hundred feet below sea level here. Pretty cool right? We celebrated with beer.

You can't walk by "The Lowest Bar in the World" and not stop for a drink.

So there you have it. A blog post, with photos. Yay!

In which I blame my slow internet for everything...

A few weeks ago I went on an amazing trip to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. I've pretty much told everyone who reads this blog about it by now, but I thought I maybe should put something about it on here anyway. The reason it's taken me so long? The internet here is SO SLOW that adding one photo to the blog takes so long that the thought of uploading them makes me invariably think of something far more productive I could be doing with my time.

Anyway, the trip was great. Highlights of Jerusalem included the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Jesus' burial site), wandering the Old City, and a very informative visit to the US Consulate. Less awesome was the fact that I was horribly nauseous the whole day.

Bethlehem was even more amazing. We were shown around by a wonderful cabbie named Murad who also took us to his house for lunch. We saw a lot of awesome street art as well as where Jesus was born. Many photos were taken. I think I'll just do a picture post eventually with photos and captions for you.

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Anyway, moving on. The weekend after that trip we stayed in Nablus. There was an awesome Halloween themed library day (we made the cutest crafts) but little else of note. Classes are going well. I'm no longer teaching at An-Najah University, however. My attendance was down to one person so we added him to Megan's class and I get to teach English to TYO staff members instead. This is actually a lot of fun since mostly it's just me getting to know them.

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Currently we are on the tail end of our week long break so I did some traveling with Lila and Megan and am now back in Nablus. Tommy went to Jordan so was not a part of our escapades.

We went back to Jerusalem first so that we could explore more (without me being nauseous and Megan having a cold like last time). I spent money shopping for souvenirs...and stuff for me. Getting to Jerusalem this time was kind of funny because the soldier that boarded the bus at the checkpoint (making sure all the Palestinians had their permits to enter the city) was SO CONFUSED by the three American women on the Arab bus. He kept looking at the visa stamp, then at the picture page, then at us, then at the stamp, then at the front of the passport, then at us. Obviously we got through, but he could not figure out what we were doing there, poor boy.

We also met up with two cool chicks in Jerusalem that Lila and Tommy met last time we were there. We had burgers for dinner and went to a cool waffle place for desert with them. It was lots of fun. Other highlights of the trip included having a gay Arab in the Old City make jewelry for us. Okay, so he didn't TELL us he was gay, but we all knew. I felt bad for him as he's going to be in the closet his whole life. Also, it was fun to see how far the prices would drop when we would talk about how we live and work in Nablus with refugee kids. I got some great stuff.

After Jerusalem we had a brief time in Tel Aviv. It was much the same as my last visit though we had a very American night where we went to a bar the US embassy people all hang out at and ate nachos, drank beer, and watched the Patriots destroy the Rams (they weren't playing the Packer game, but at least I got to keep an eye on the score). The next day we went to the Carmel market, spent a couple hours at the beach then wandered around Old Jaffa where we met a French artist with the coolest gallery. Seriously cool artwork.

After Tel Aviv we went to Haifa where we were so happy to be staying for more than one night as schlepping our bags around was getting real old. Haifa is a beautiful beach town renowned for the stunning Baha'i gardens there. Our first night we basically just got to the hostel and crashed. The next day we went to the beach where a Scottish-Israeli guy fell in love with Lila and introduced us to his cousin who's a lifeguard. We hung out with them as they were really cool. Also, it was the lifeguards birthday so they invited us out to his party and bought us drinks. The Scottish-Israeli guy--whose name is Barrie--engaged Megan and I in a very satisfying debate about Middle East politics in general and the Israel-Palestine issue in particular. It was a lot of fun, and we were all still friends at the end (the way a debate should be).

There was more beaching the next day (which also happened to be Halloween). Barrie was gone to Tel Aviv, but his cousin (the lifeguard whose name is Manny) taught us how to paddle board, which was super fun. I managed to be pretty good at it. Lila was the best, but she's a jock from SoCal so that's not surprising. We were also introduced to a wonderful tuna sandwich recommended by Manny at a beachside place where we also met a bunch of old men spending their retirement as beach bums. After the beach we tried to go to the Baha'i gardens but it was too late and they were closed so we went the next morning (they are pretty dang stunning). We then had a very brief beach visit where we said goodbye to our new friends and headed back to Nablus.

Shalabi, a Samaritan from the village here, picked us up and took us back. We made a brief stop at his house so he could introduce us to his family and show us this fruit thing he did on the ceiling. I don't know how else to explain that one, sorry. Eventually I'll have a picture.

Some of the funniest parts of the trip were us trying not to tell people that we worked in the West Bank. There were a couple of conversations that went something like this:

Person: So how long are you in Israel?
Us: We leave Thursday.
Person: You should stay longer!
Us: Well, we have to be back at work on Sunday.
Person: Oh? Where do you work?
Us: Ummmm....

So yeah, a blog post. Pictures will happen someday, I promise. Seriously though, the internet is SLOW guys.

The Blogging Conundrum

When keeping a blog, you inevitably run into a conundrum. When interesting things happen, you don’t have time to blog about them. By the time you get the chance to blog, you’re tired and blogging just seems like so much work (especially when you also have to blog as part of your job anyway). Of course, when nothing interesting is happening you do end up with the time to blog, but nothing to say. So I’m sorry that it’s been a while, and I’m sorry this post is going to be a bit long since a lot has indeed happened. I’ll try not to get so behind again, but let’s be honest: I’m sure I will.

Classes have been going on, of course. We have now finished our first rotation of our kids classes so I get a whole new set of kids for these next three weeks. I already miss my little 9 and 10 year olds, but I still get to see them during snack time even if they aren't in my class anymore. I now have the oldest group (11-12 years old), which is quite a shift. I'm already well on my way to becoming seriously attached to them too.

Last weekend we took a TYO sponsored trip to Hebron, one of the holiest places in the big three monotheistic religions as it is home to the tombs of the patriarchs and matriarchs. Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Leah, and Rebecca are the ones buried there (I think that’s everyone). We visited the site on the Jewish side as it was Friday so only Muslims could go in on the mosque side. It was a beautiful area and very interesting. The brochures we got were especially fascinating as they were part informational part propaganda.

Outside the tomb.

Inside the Jewish side. Such a beautiful ceiling!

Let me explain about the propaganda. In the West Bank there are Israeli settlers that carve out places to live for themselves. There are really two types of settlers: the ones that do it because settlements are subsidized by the Israeli government so they get cheap housing and utilities and the ones that do it for religious reasons. The first group is generally the majority, but in Hebron, a place where settlers live literally on top of Palestinians rather than in their own communities, it’s the second kind. They are there because it is their God given right to have this land. Now I’m all for living near a holy site and all of that, but what I don’t approve of is how they’ve done it. The settlers have pushed Palestinians out of large areas of Hebron. Streets that used to be lined with shops and bustling with people are empty, like a ghost town. In other places there are streets where Palestinians can only walk on one side and not the other. There are also signs talking about how the Arabs stole Hebron from the Jews and how Jews are kept within tiny portions of the city. While some of the facts on these signs are true, they only tell a small fraction of the story. I really wanted a picture of some of these signs, but Tala told us that it was better not to take pictures so as not to attract any attention from IDF soldiers.

One of the empty streets full of closed storefronts.

Enough of the depressing though. One part of our trip to Hebron was amazingly positive. There is a women’s cooperative there where handmade crafts are sold. There were so many beautiful things. I spent a chunk of money there, as did the other interns (the woman at the shop told us we gave them about as much business in our one visit as they usually get in a month). My favorite purchase is a beautiful hand embroidered shawl. Now I have something to wear over a fancy dress on a chilly evening. I also got some presents for people so I won’t tell you everything I got. While we were there, a family actually led us up onto the roof of the building they lived in so we could see a view of the whole city.

This was a little girl that lived in the building where we took pictures of the city. That's bunches of Hebron behind her.

This is the shawl I bought at the coop. It is so amazingly gorgeous.

The day after our visit to Hebron, we had a TYO library day for the neighborhood kids. I won’t talk about that here since us interns wrote a blog post about it that you can read there. It was fun though so check out the blog. There are lots of pictures.

On Sunday last week, we finally got to go on the long-awaited tour of Nablus’ Old City neighborhood. As one of the poorest residential areas of the city, we get many kids from there at the center. There are of course markets and shops, but it is not the best place to live. Leftover signs of violence are everywhere. It was hit hard during the second intifada, and you can still see piles of rubble that used to be buildings and walls are covered in martyr posters and plaques commemorating those that died (and not just in attacks against Israelis but anyone that died, including children). It was definitely an insight into the lives of our kids. We also got to visit a wonderful spice shop, a soap factory (Nablus is famous for soap), and a kanafeh place. Kanafeh is a wonderful sweet dish involving cheese and sugar. Nablus is famous for its kanafeh. I must say that I’ve had kanafeh in only one other place so far, but Nablus’ is so far superior.

A plaque built into the wall commemoration martyrs.

A residential street in the Old City.

The spice shop!

This is what kanafeh looks like. This picture was actually of some kanafeh I had a week later in Taybeh, but it pretty much looks the same. Nablus kanafeh tastes way better though.

This most recent weekend that we just had was also an experience. Thursday night, we decided we had to get out of the center so we went to see The Dark Knight Rises at the Nablus movie theater. They have one screen here, but the movie theater/café really feels like a piece of America in the middle of Nablus. We were all a bit surprised that some of the racier scenes in the movie didn’t get skipped over. Nothing was cut.

Friday was a day of intense laziness. Saturday we ventured out of Nablus to Taybeh near Ramallah. Taybeh is a Christian village here in Palestine and as such it is home to a brewery. This weekend they had an Oktoberfest celebration that we went to. There was live music, traditional dancing, a small craft fair, lots of food, and, of course, beer. It was a really international festival too. We met people from England, France, and the US. There were people from Brazil, Japan, and many other countries as well. It was odd to hear all the English being spoken around me. It was a generally fun day though we had some frustration at the end because our taxi couldn’t get into town to pick us up because of traffic so we walked the entire length of the town to go meet it.

Traditional dancing displayed at the Taybeh festival.

I had to take a picture of this banner. I did not expect to see Japanese in the midst of Palestine. It pretty much says "There is Palestinian beer!" Yup. I also saw several women at the festival in yukata. It was a bit surreal.

And now you’re caught up. Friday TYO is sponsoring a trip to Jerusalem and then us interns are planning to head to Bethlehem to spend our Saturday. Sorry for the long post. I also meant to post this two days ago, but our internet has been especially slow. Most of this was written Sunday, but I had to wait for a better connection so I could upload the pictures.

Worlds Apart

Orientation is over, and I've had my first week of truly working at TYO. It was a crazy week that left me rather exhausted by the end, but it was generally a really positive kind of crazy. If you've been following TYO, you may see the intern blog posts on their site. Some of my experiences are already documented there (we are required to blog once a week so you can keep an eye out at http://www.tomorrowsyouth.org/blog/ for news of me).

The work week here begins on Sunday, which is mostly meetings but includes a professional competency course that we interns give at An-Najah University here in Nablus. Since I am working an unpaid internship rather than a job with an income, I'm not sure how qualified I am to talk about professional competency. And in fact, this class was my greatest challenge of the week. I had about 30 students registered on my list; nine people showed up (and 5 of those nine were not on my list). Of that group, one had good English and a couple more could mostly follow what I said, but the majority were totally lost. It's supposed to be only advanced English speakers since I have no Arabic to fall back on if someone gets confused. Hopefully today will be better.

My classes here at the center are a far more positive experience. We started off on Monday greeting the morning core program students (the core program is taught by Palestinians. In the morning they have 4-5 year olds and in the afternoon they have 6-8 year olds. The intern program is for older kids).

Two of the cuties that we got to briefly hang with.

This little girl grabbed my hand and didn't want to let go. I don't even know her name, but she still touched my heart.

Later that morning, I had my first beginner's English class for the Women's Group. The Women's Group is for moms in the community, especially the moms of the kids that come to TYO. I'm REALLY enjoying teaching basic English to these women. Since I know no Arabic, I have to get my English points across by using over-the-top gestures and expressions and generally acting like an idiot. It's a LOT of fun.

On the mornings I'm not teaching English, I'm co-teaching women's aerobics. This is another funny experience. Lila, the intern teaching with me, and I have a translator for this one so we can coherently tell women to not stick their butts in the air when they do push-ups, but I still get to act a bit silly and dance around to Enrique Iglesias. I get a work out too so along with my healthy eating habits here, I'm probably going to come home in much better shape than when I left. One of the most interesting parts of aerobics is that we close the curtains and doors so that eh women can take of their outer layers and wear work out gear. They all come in with their heads, arms, and legs covered but shed all that so they're in tanks and leggings to work out. I especially find the women who have their hair styled interesting since no one sees that.

The afternoon is for my kids' classes. They are a lot of fun though exhausting, but then that's the case of kids the world over. I work with a fantastic translator named Ruba (she's so awesome, I can't even explain. I hope that she makes it to the States someday; she's actually hoping to get a Fulbright to get her Masters in the US).

This is one of my girls. Her name is Nahida. I had them draw a school bus (back-to-school theme, plus we read a Magic School Bus book) and put their names on it to decorate the classroom.

For the second class, we made our own puzzles. These boys are drawing the picture that they will turn into puzzle pieces.

A piece of the puzzle.

And now they're working to put their picture back together.

Once the week was over, Megan, Tommy, and I went off to Tel Aviv for Friday and Saturday. Lila had to stay behind because someone needed to be here to let in the BBC (I'll talk about that some other time as it isn't over yet) and Humaira, Tala, and Samin were also out of town for the weekend.

Tel Aviv is a little over an hour away from Nablus, but it is completely different. Nablus is a conservative city, even for Palestine: Tel Aviv is where Israel goes to party. When we arrived on Friday, we spent day wandering around the Carmel market before taking a brief beach break on our way to Jaffa, the old city next to Tel Aviv (Jaffa is mentioned more than once in the Bible. It's where Tabitha was raised from the dead and St. Peter dreamed of being allowed to eat pork--I'm paraphrasing).

Here we are in Jaffa with Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean in the background.

That evening we hung out at our hostel and met a lot of cool people. We were staying in a four bed room, and our room mate was from France (making me realize how incredibly terrible my French has become. It was awful, but I tried). We also met a British couple and several Israelis from Nazareth (though they were originally from Russia, I guess).

Saturday we slept in and then spent the whole day on the beach. Tommy and Megan impressed the chair and umbrella rental guy by speaking Arabic (he was from Sudan). Two of the food/drink servers on the beach we were at also came and hung out with us whenever they had a moment. They were also Russians that came to Israel. They seemed impressed by our work with the Palestinians. Also, Tommy took a picture with a Bavarian.

Tommy with the Bavarian lady. He's pretending to be holding a beer.

All in all, it was a good weekend getaway. Now I'm back in Nablus, and the difference between the two places could not be starker. I'm pretty happy to be home though even if the BBC has taken over temporarily.

Working hard

Orientation has been quite busy especially once we had to write our curricula for the session. Interestingly, we were supposed to have a couple of tours of areas in Nablus (the Old City and the largest of the refugee camps: Balata). Those tours got cancelled due to strikes and protests going on here in the West Bank so we had "free time". I'm not sure HOW I would have gotten everything done without that "free time". As it was, there was some staying up late and getting up early to get everything done.

Today, I went hiking with Tala and the other interns at Wadi Qelt, one of Earth's lowest points. Jesus apparently walked there when he was going to Jericho. There's some other Biblical stuff that I can't remember too. The Romans built an aqueduct to direct water through the area that is still in use today. There's also a Greek Orthodox monastery at one end that's been there for over a thousand years. Very historical. The hike itself was STUNNING. None of the pictures I took come close to capturing how beautiful it was. I've always been a fan of desert beauty, and this was rock formation at their most beautiful. So now, I'll give you some pictures!

My favorite thing about living at TYO: the huge amount of produce we get to consume. So many yummy fruits and veggies. As a grad student shopping for just me, I never got a lot of produce because it would go bad before I could eat it. Not a problem here.

Wadi Qelt! So beautiful.

Another view. Really, every angle of this hike was stunning.

The Roman aqueduct.

Another beautiful view. The cave dwellings are used by Bedouins. We saw some of them herding goats during the hike.

More beautiful desert.

This was taken inside St. George's monastery at the end of the hike. If I hadn't been so tired, I would have liked to look around more. They were also renovating so it wasn't the best time to see the place.

Tomorrow TYO has a library day for kids and then Sunday I starting teaching! Yikes!

Orientation

I've been here a few days so I guess I should talk about experiences so far. We've started the orientation process so we're learning about our classes, issues that might come up, scheduling stuff, etc. Not really all that exciting to blog about really. I've now gotten to meet most of the staff here. The international staff, of course, lives here at the center so I see them all the time. We got to meet most of the local staff yesterday at lunch.

The other interns seem to be very cool people. I almost feel sorry for Tommy as he's the only guy living with a bunch of women, but he seems fine with it (except that there have been several chick flicks watched, which interests him not at all).

Nablus is interesting so far. We haven't been out very much. We've gone grocery shopping and we've also visited a juice shop near the center (AMAZING place, he makes the juice fresh while you wait) and a yummy falafel place (SO cheap as a falafel there is 2.5 shekels which is approximately 63 cents) as well as a place to buy cell phones and sim cards. The center itself is a pretty nice place to live and makes commuting very easy (Time for a meeting? Just go down a floor or two). I also have my own bathroom connected to my bedroom, and there's a huge balcony patio with a great view of the city. On that note, pictures!

Part of the view from the balcony.

Another bit of view.

And more.

A mosque we can easily see from the balcony (you can see it in the first picture.)

My Palestinian cell phone. Look how tiny it is! Absolutely basic functionality. Reminds me of a slightly smaller version of the cell phone I had in middle school.

So now you have some visual context for where I am :) We've got some trips into Nablus coming up so I might blog about those (that will probably be rather serious as we will be visiting a refugee camp and the poorest section of the city). Until later!

And here I am.

I am safely arrived in Nablus. The flight was about what I expected, not much fun. I swear my arrival gate and departure gate in the Newark airport were as far apart as they could possibly without having a train to make things go faster. The best part of the ten hour flight was that I had a large selection of movies to watch including Brave and The Avengers :D The woman sitting next to me said that The Avengers was a bad movie, silly lady.

Arriving in Tel Aviv was interesting. I got detained at immigration though I think it was mostly cuz the guy at passport control didn't want to deal with me. He only asked me a few questions before sending me off. The woman who questioned me after that didn't speak very good English so I'm not sure what she was supposed to get out of that interview. Oh well. I got through that and met up with the other interns and the intern coordinator picked us up and I'm now here at the center in Nablus. I didn't sleep very well last night or rather I slept great from 6am to 10:30am when I got up and dozed every once in a while the rest of the night. Stupid jet lag.

Today is just a lazy day. Tomorrow begins the whirlwind of orientation.

Preparations

My flight is booked! I leave Chicago on September 5th and arrive in Tel Aviv on September 6th! I'm not looking forward to the jet lag.

Things that I will miss because I'm out of the country:
-Thanksgiving--my favorite holiday
-The release of the Avengers on DVD
-The new season of Doctor Who
-Most of the football regular season (Go Packers!)

But I'm sure I'll be doing so many cool things, it will hardly matter.

An Old Blog for a New Adventure

I've been accepted to an internship in Nablus, Palestine. I'll be out out the country for about three months woking with a non-profit called Tomorrow's Youth Organization. I'll be working with kids which I love while living in and learning about a part of the world I haven't experienced yet. The internship starts on September 6th and goes through November 29th.

In order to document this experience, I decided to resurrect this blog. So here's the beginning of a new chapter! Stay tuned!

(Note: I realize I never actually wrote that last post for my return from Japan. I blame jet lag, reverse culture shock, and how emotional I was about the whole thing; leaving my host family was incredibly hard. Obviously I got home okay.)

日本, さよなら

This is not going to be a full blog post. While I could describe my last few days here in Japan and post some pictures, that will have to wait until I'm back in America.

I am just here to say goodbye. Goodbye to this wonderful, confusing, busy, cultured, ancient, kind nation that has been my home for over ten months now. Tokyo has become home to me just as much as Los Alamos or Galesburg. And my host family has become real family to me.

I have cried and will cry again before leaving, but as my program's resident director Watt-sensei said "I hope you too shed a tear or two before you leave. That's one kind of evidence that real contact was made".

Blogging as a form of procrastination.

It is finally that time. That horrible time when schools decide that they actually have to make sure we learned something. That's right: finals. It may be mid-July, but I'm in the midst of finals. Monday I had my final sociolinguistics paper due, today was my final group presentation in Japanese, tomorrow is my media studies exam, and Thursday is Ainu. Basically, yuck.

What does this mean for you? I'm blogging because I'm tired of looking at old powerpoints from the media studies lectures.

I will go back to Wednesday of last week. Despite a very bad morning, I decided to go to class and go through with plans I had previously made. It was a good means of distraction. Besides I didn't want to hurt the feelings of Mami's parents. They had reserved a really nice restaurant for dinner. This place had these little private parlors with a traditional set up (tatami, table with a pit under it so you sat at floor level) and a view of the garden. You can sort of see our view in the above picture. This dinner was meant as a farewell for myself and Jeremy (he leaves Japan at the end of the month).

The only way to get Su-chan to be quiet and to sit still at this fancy restaurant was to bring the PSP loaded with Anpanman episodes with us. Looks pretty cool in those headphones doesn't he?

Here is my main dish (there were several other courses, but this was the only one I remembered to get a picture of). This is the BEST STEAK I have EVER had. Seriously. Interestingly, they gave us forks and steak knives (even though the steak was already cut). I actually didn't notice until after I'd finished eating. I've gotten too used to eating everything with chopsticks I guess :P

Here is a picture of Jeremy and Mami's father (Jeremy is Mami's parents' host student if you don't remember). I was going to get a photo of the whole group, but my camera's batteries crapped out on me.

The best part of the evening came after dinner when the restaurant turned off all the lights so we could see the fireflies. It was so wonderful just to sit in the dark and watch them. Very peaceful. Except for the loud laughter of some rather inebriated men in a room nearby. Sadly, that was probably the last time I'll see Mami's parents before I leave. They are wonderful people.

So this picture gets lots of explanation. Last Saturday I went to Hakone, a place about an hour outside of Tokyo that is well known for it's onsen (hot springs). I went to what I like to call a hot spring amusement park with some friends (many of the same people that were are the Fourth of July beach party).

No pictures from inside as I didn't bring my camera and even if I had, would not have much to show for it since water + camera = dame desu (if you don't know what that means, I'm sure you can guess). There were a LOT of weird baths (chocolate, coffee, wine, sake, green tea, etc.). The weirdest of all was this bath with fish in it that would eat the dead skin off your feet. It tickled SO BAD! But it worked rather well. There were also water slides and some more normal baths.

Now the picture is of a plushie I bought of the place's mascot. It's called a spakoneko (spa kitten) and I thought it was adorable so I bought one for myself.

Other than that, life has been rather boring and more than a little stressful. I've started to feel that I have too much to do and too little time. Seriously. On top of finals, I have to cancel my health insurance, cancel my cell phone, close my bank account, pack, go to little farewell get togethers so I can say goodbye to friends and family (host family that is).

Just as a warning: this may or may not be my last blog post from Japan. I can't guarantee I'll have time in the next six days to update again. However, I will be doing at least one wrap up post when I get home so it's not like I'm just going to end it here. Thought I'd warn you though.

Just a few pictures.

So I decided that I'd stick a few of the Fourth of July photos that Cat took on here just for those of you who aren't on Facebook. I'll post about my recent exploits (which include a wonderful dinner with Mami and her parents) sometime later when I'm feeling less down. As a few of you know, I recently had a tragedy occur in my life so my heart just isn't in the blogging at the moment.

First picture is me, Paula, Peter, and Rachel (Tackett--not the Rachel I usually talk about here, that Rachel is Rachel Leppert--strangely enough I know FOUR different Rachels here in Japan). Not sure what we were going for in this picture, but Peter decided we looked like a band of super heroes. I think Cat's going to be drawing a comic about us now...

Me looking perhaps a little too eager with the sparklers. I believe these are the ones we put on the USA birthday cake we made out of sand.

And nighttime. Here I am lighting some fireworks. The wind was crazy so lightinng stuff with a lighter was super difficult. What we'd do was light a sparkler and then use that (because it wouldn't blow out in the wind) to light the bigger fireworks. I feel some of our pyrotechnics were a bit abunai (a Japanese word meaning something like "dangerous") but we all came away safely.

Hope you enjoyed this small selection of photos...

Two weeks and counting.

I've been putting off blogging for two reasons this time:
1. I've actually been busy so I haven't had the time.
2. I've been lazy with my camera so don't have much in the way of photos to show you so I was waiting for other people to post some up on Facebook I could steal, but they are being too slow.

So here goes.

A week and a half ago on Friday, my host family left to go on vacation in Hawaii. I found it ironic that they went to America while I stayed in Japan especially with my homecoming so close. Because of their absence, I tried to fill up my time with stuff that got me out of the apartment which meant I was super social.

The day after they left, I went to Kate's house for a birthday party. We ate really yummy food, played with kittens, cats, and one dog, then lit a bunch of sparklers out in the street. Super fun.

Here's the group gathered for cake. Me, Kerry, Megan, Rachel, and Kate. Kerry and Megan left before we broke out the sparklers sadly.

This is the birthday cake! It says "otanjoubi omedetou Kate" That first part just means Happy Birthday. Japanese people seem to favor strawberry cakes for birthdays. Interesting.

This is one of the kittens investigating a bag of dried mango I'd bought earlier that day. I would have more kitten pictures, but once again I have two reasons that I don't: 1. kittens don't stop moving when you're playing with them so they're hard to get good pictures of and 2. I was far more interested in actually playing with them than snapping photos. This particular kitten is my favorite. They're rescue kittens and are all up for adoption so they don't actually have names. Kate calls him Marumaru and I called him puff ball though. It's sort of the same thing in the end ("marumaru" gives sort of a round image).

No more pictures from here on. Sorry. If I get my hands (digitally speaking) on some, I will do a picture post later on.

The day after Kate's party, my program had a farewell lunch gathering that included host families. Tomo and Hiro came (with Ryo-chan, of course) since my family was in Hawaii. If you don't remember, Tomo is Mami's younger sister, Hiro is Tomo's husband, and Ryo-chan is their baby (he's six months old now! He wasn't even born when I first got here!). That was nice though not terribly exciting. It's our last official gathering as a group, however. In reality, that was probably the last time I will have every seen some of them. I'm not exactly best buddies with everyone in the group.

Then the week of classes started. It could have been worse, but I'm really tired of class already. Thursday was cool though because my Japanese class went on a field trip. This time we went to a disaster training place (not sure what else to call it). We were taught how to correctly use a fire extinguisher, what to do in an earthquake, and how to escape a smoke filled building. All of these came with us actually doing these things (seriously they have an earth quake room that they make shake while you hide under the table). It was pretty cool.

After the field trip, Rachel and I had plans to go to Harajuku, but it was raining that day and so neither of us were actually terribly enthused. Rain sucks.

Friday I was incredibly productive in a boring way. I got a lot of pre-leaving Japan stuff done (my winter clothes have been safely shipped to Knox on a slow boat). Not much to tell really though I was excited to get all that stuff done. That evening I babysat and then the family I work for fed me dinner since they knew I was alone for the week. It was okonomiyaki which is a favorite of mine.

Saturday was the 4th of July. I missed Thanksgiving, Christmas was pretty lame, I was NOT going to miss out on having some fun on the 4th. A bunch of us went to Enoshima for a day at the beach. We were super lucky as the weather was warm and surprisingly clear. I swam, ate hamburgers, then when it got dark we lit sparklers and set off some fireworks! It was so much fun! I hope I can get some pictures from that day at least to show you.

Yesterday (Sunday) I went shopping in Shibuya with Cat and....Connie! Los Alamos Connie! Connie that I hadn't seen since graduation! She's in Japan for an internship so we met up to hang in Shibuya. Cat knew a little shop with really cute (and really cheap) dresses that were nice enough for us to wear to the SILS closing ceremony. We ate at Mos Burger and just had a good time hanging out.

And that's about it. My host family got home around 7PM last night so I'm no longer home alone. Only two more weeks here in Japan.

There's always something missing...

So my friend Rachel posted something similar in her blog, and I thought it would be kind of interesting for me to do the same since I have very little news of my doings to put up here (I do have a little news, that will come later).

Things in America I miss the most (in no particular order):
1. my cat actually pets in general but especially Quillo
2. anything involving green chile
3. being able to read signs, magazines, newspapers, books, etc. Believe me, there is something very frustrating about being pretty much illiterate
4. being able to invite people over. While it happens sometimes, it is a much bigger deal here. I could never invite a friend over without permission from the host family and advance warning.
5. my books, oh how I miss them
6. dry air (currently this is at the top of my list--I miss people yes, but sorry, right now you rate after dry weather, this damn humidity is making me melt)
7. not feeling like an idiot every time I open my mouth. No matter how much my Japanese improves, I still manage to feel stupid most of the time when I converse.
8. real classes. I never thought I would miss all the homework and papers and tests but seriously SILS classes are such a joke that showing up is painful (especially when it's so hot and humid! What is with class in the summer?)
9. The ability to hang with friends and have fun without spending lots and lots of money.
10. Hugs. Su-chan will hug me but he squirms.
11. Being inconspicuous. Being an obvious racial minority is very interesting but it gets old fast when people stare at you all day long.
12. Small school. I definitely know that I made the right choice in choosing a small school.
13. Not having to go to a doctor every time I have a cold.
14. Understanding what garbage goes where. Obviously I've gotten the usual moeru/moenai/pet bottles/cans set-up down, but you should see the garbage room at my apartment building. They separate out EVERYTHING and all the signs are in kanji. Mostly I make an educated guess and hope for the best.
15. The ability to call people. Not just people that I'm away from, but people in the same area as me. I miss being able to call and hash out plans because that take two minutes whereas by text it takes half an hour.
16. A room I can spend time in. My room here is tiny. There is a bed and now a desk and the world's smallest closet. All crammed together. I can't spend much time in there comfortably.
17. Big sky. There's too much in the way here.
18. Stars.
19. Quiet. There's an izakaya across the street so even late at night we get to here drunken business men.
20. Sleeping in. Having a 2-year-old in the house means that if I sleep past 8, it's a miracle.
21. No curfew. I'm not much a one for staying out all night but it's very annoying to be out having fun with your friends and realize that it's 11:30 so you have to go so you don't miss you last train. It's either be home by midnight or be out all night. Not very flexible.
22. American washers and dryers. My host family's washer is puny as in five days of clothes is a good sized load. Yet it takes five hours to do one load of wash.
23. A five minute commute. Sure my commute is comparatively short (about 30min where as many people have times that are an hour or more), but still, that's much longer than five minutes.
24. People. Obviously I miss my parents and friends and everyone back home. You guys are sort of a given.

Things I will miss about Japan (in no particular order):
1. My host family (this one is rightfully at the top). Mami is wonderful, Su-chan has stolen my heart, and even Goro has grown on me (especially after we had a conversation about Gyakuten Saiban which is the Japanese name for Phoenix Wright).
2. vending machines. Yes, they exist in America, but unless you've been to Japan, you just don't understand.
3. Sasodango. Mmmmmmm...delicious. The first thing I ever ate at my host family's and an eternal favorite of mine.
4. Public transportation. Ah Tokyo and its wonderful subways and trains. I have become so spoiled.
5. Interesting places to go. Harajuku, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Baba, Ueno, etc. Los Alamos and Galesburg just can't compare.
6. Potato stick thingies. Addictive. They're like a hybrid between french fries and potato chips.
7. Steam cakes. Amazing. Seriously yummy.
8. Onigiri. Oh no, I'm on a food kick... I guess I could make my own onigiri but they won't be the same.
9. Japanese curry. I am going on a curry quest when I get back to find Japanese curry tablet thingies.
10. Tea. Okay, let me explain since it's not like I never drink tea in the States. The varieties of tea you can buy from a bottle here are staggering. Jasmine is my favorite.
11. Weird fashion. I love that people actually go out in public dressed like total goths or lolitas. I always get a kick out of it.
12. Male fashion. The guys back in America are going to look soooo slobby to me! Seriously, what's wrong with wearing clothes that fit and look attractive. Nothing. Japanese guys, in general, understand this.
13. Hyakuen shops. You know how in American dollar stores, very few things are actually a dollar and most of the stuff is total crap? Well, hyakuen stores are not like that at all. I have gotten some very useful things at them including stationary, decals for my phone, a mirror, and a cute fan that I can use when I'm in one of the crappily air-conditioned classrooms at Waseda.
14. Politeness. People here are so polite. They will apologize to complete strangers for accidently stepping on their toes. They will ask if you need help if you wind up staring confusedly at a train route map that is entirely in kanji. Very nice.
15. Crepes. This country has an obsession with that particular french food. Also, kebabs. I put them in the same place because every time I go to Harajuku I think "crepe or kebab?" and wind up getting one of each. I'm such a pig.
16. Purikura! Must do it again before I leave...
17. Engrish. To quote Rachel's panda shirt "Laughing got tired" There's more but I don't remember...
18. Learning a language. It's been awesome to see my progress especially because Japanese is kind of ridiculously hard.
19. My keitai. Despite the fact that I can't understand how to use about 95% of my phone's features, I still love it. And I love texting in Japanese even though it takes me forever. And texting in general. I am an addict.
20. Being able to throw Japanese words into my sentences and be understood. There are few people to whom I can say things like "You are super genki today."
21. Onsen. So relaxing. And the one Mami and I go to near her parents is only about 700 yen. Try finding a hot spring that cheap in the US.

There is more, much more, for both lists, but those are the ones that were jumping in my brain today.
---
News! It's been a while. Not much to report though. Last Saturday was nice weather so my host mom rented a car and drove us all (herself, Su, Goro, and me) to a beach where we played and I swam (YES!). Below we have Su-chan and Goro intent upon their sand tunneling project.

Sunday I was babysitting Su-chan because Mami had a wedding to go to. Not much to report there. We watched Cars twice. That kid loves that movie even though it's in English so I'm not sure he cares about the story he just likes the akai bubu (red car in kid's speak).

Yesterday was pretty awesome. Rachel and I had a lady date. We did dinner and a movie. Dinner was Saizeriya (cheap and they had a drink bar so I had like three glasses of melon soda. Melon soda should be on that list of things I'll miss about Japan...) the movie was Star Trek. Which was AWESOME! Completely worth the exorbitant amount of money we had to pay to see it (1500 yen--about $15--and that's with a 300 yen discount because we're university students). Yeah, American movie ticket prices don't seem quite so bad anymore do they?

Tomorrow my host family leave for their Hawaii vacation which is a bit sad. I plan to use their time away to do some serious preparation for going home. Maybe get the non-necessaries packed up, etc. That way I won't be making a mess while they're around.

That's about all there is to report at the current moment though...

The blogging gets harder as time goes on...

I have become a terrible blogger. I totally apologize. In my defense, very little of interest is going on, however, that doesn't excuse me from taking so long to blog about the retreat. There's not a lot to tell, but it's something.

Anyway, last weekend was the ACM/GLCA retreat which took place at the same place where we had our last one back in November. There were less people this time though since a few people left after the first semester and several people just didn't come on the retreat. It was a lot of fun though. The weather was better this time so I actually ventured outside and went to the lake with a bunch of people.

While at the lake, we saw a swan that swam really close to shore where we were wandering about. Lydia chased some minnows and a bunch of us went wading. Cory, who is a photography junkie, brought his camera and kept taking photos of us. At one point we decided to take advantage of this and did a picture of us all jumping. We forgot that we were backlit by the lake though but it was really okay since the silhouettes look pretty cool too.

Eventually some other people from our program made it to the lake. Ian and Yuchen decided to take a dip so they stripped down to their boxers and got in leaving their clothes on shore. This was too tempting for us. Rachel, Lydia, Briana, Kate, and myself stole their shirts and Yuchen's hat. Really that was way nice of us since we could have taken their pants and shoes. That would have been awkward for them. Yeah, we're pretty tame pranksters.

In order to show off our spoils, we draped Rachel in the shirts and stuck Yuchen's hat on her. We decided that she looks like Ashton Kutcher in that hat. It's the hair...

The evening was time for a group meeting. We had five Japanese students that will be going to American colleges in the fall with us so some of us did some skits illustrating the challenges of small liberal arts colleges to them. We covered stuff like room mates and drunk frat boys. Many Waseda students live in rooms to themselves and partying here is much different than in the States. Plus, classes will be hugely different. Waseda is a big university and they're all going to small colleges.

After the group meeting we had a party during which we taught the Japanese students an American drinking game called king's cup. After that was done we played a Japanese drinking game and another whose origin I don't remember... That's all I'm saying about that.

The next day started way too early. I don't think any of us got more than a few hours of sleep (except for maybe Laura and Sarah who didn't drink and went to bed around 10 or 11). We had to get up in time for breakfast at 8am (in my case, I had to be ready 15 min earlier since I was helping with breakfast set up).

After breakfast we just hung out really. Played some cards, etc. until lunch and then after lunch we headed back to Tokyo. And that's it.

In other news, there isn't much. Classes continue which is beyond annoying. I don't like this class in summer thing especially since Tokyo is incredibly humid. Sometimes I wonder whether I really homesick or if I just want dry air.

I also had a really bad cold last week so I went to a doctor for the second time. I'm so glad Mami knew of one that speaks English. Being sick really impairs my Japanese. I couldn't even remember the word in Japanese for fever when I was trying to explain to my Tuesday Japanese sensei why I missed class.

Yesterday was kind of cool. I went to a cake buffet with some friends. The idea is that you pay 1500yen for 90 minutes of cake free for all. They had ice cream, jello, chocolate mousse cake, cakes with fruit, cakes with nuts, mochi with fudge on top, cream puffs, and more. So awesome.

And that's about all I have to say about recent times.