Dear People,
I remember that when I was little, Dad explained to me that the Dead Sea is so salty people walk in and just float. Since then I have always wanted to float in the Dead Sea, though I thought I might have to make do with the Great Salt Lake. But behold! Yesterday we drove down and swam in the Dead Sea. You really can just sit in the water. I sat and lay flat on my back and rolled around. Some people played cards or silly BYU games like "Bunny Bunny." The water felt like baby oil, and since nothing can grow in it it was clear and clean and blue. You had to be careful, though, not to get any in your eyes or mouth.
The week before, we went to Jordan for four days. I love Jordan. We spent an entire day at Petra, the place with all the beautiful rock-carving in the cliffs. You have probably seen part of it (The Treasury) in photos, but it's a huge complex, with cliffs and colored rocks like something out of Southern Utah, but filled with ancient carvings. Lazy Utes, not providing us with ancient carvings.
Jordanians seem generally very nice. We had to have a Jordanian guide by law, but he was cool. He spent twenty-eight years in the US, so he had perfect English, and he's Catholic. He explained to us why he likes the monarchy--because he feels a democracy would discriminate against the Christian minority.
On two nights we got to spend free time in Amman. Three friends and I wandered around the streets until we stumbled upon a zoo. The man at the gate told us it took 1 dinar to enter, but we didn't have any money on us. We had a pleasant conversation with him using his ten words of English and Ryan's ten words of Arabic. Everyone said their name and where they were from and smiled at each other, and then he waved for us to go in for free. The zoo had white peacocks and a parrot that spoke Arabic and squirrels. The sign on the squirrels' big cage said that their natural habitat was the mountains and they prefer to live in "ancient oak trees." We decided that if we had never seen a squirrel before, we would think it was adorable and coo over it.
Love,
Stella
Monday, April 12, 2010
A Lack of Color
means it is the January of my junior year of high school, and I am Depressed About a Boy. I turn off the lights in my room, close the blinds, and sit in front of my computer listening to "A Lack of Color" on repeat.
Marcie comes in and makes me turn on the lights and watch Ask a Ninja until I laugh and am happy again. It is my favorite memory of my friend.
And when I see you, I really see you upside down. But my brain knows better. It picks you up and turns you round, turns you around. - Death Cab for Cutie, "A Lack of Color"
Marcie comes in and makes me turn on the lights and watch Ask a Ninja until I laugh and am happy again. It is my favorite memory of my friend.
And when I see you, I really see you upside down. But my brain knows better. It picks you up and turns you round, turns you around. - Death Cab for Cutie, "A Lack of Color"
Saturday, March 27, 2010
March 27
Dear ones,
I spent almost two weeks in Galilee. We stayed in little bungalows right off the Sea; coming out of my door, I only have to walk twenty feet to find a grassy slope down to a little brown beach, with the Sea of Galilee beyond, and green mountains on the other shore. Every other day we went on field trips around the area; otherwise we stayed behind in Ein Gev, the Kibbutz that hosted us. On those days we had three hours of New Testament class in the morning (it went surprisingly fast) after which we had a whole free day. We mostly spent the time relaxing on the beach or the grass overlooking the beach. Everyone brought books. I brought The Bronze Bow from the Jerusalem Center library, a perfect book since it's set in Galilee.
The sun was warm, but a cold wind blue off of the water. We wore sweatshirts and wrapped ourselves in the itchy pink blankets from our rooms. The cold didn't keep us from swimming. For the first couple of days the wind was strong enough to make big waves, and we frolicked in them. I didn't swim much after the wind died down; I'm not sure what to do in water if there are no waves. The Sea was stunningly beautiful when it was still, though--silver-green during the day, bronzy-red at sunset, black at night with gold streaks from the reflection of Tiberias on the opposite shore. We came in the best season of the year, when everything was green green green. My favorite days were spent reading or talking on the shore, or standing ankle deep in the water skipping stones, or making castles and pots out of muddy clay.
On three nights we had bonfires where we sang and told stories, baked scones over hot coals, and made 'Smores. It's hard to find regular marshmallows in Israel, and impossible to find graham crackers, so we ate 'Smores with pink, fruity-flavored marshmallows and giant animal crackers. One night we played "Ride that Pony," one of those games you learn at EFY or during your freshman year at BYU. It involves singing a loud, fast song. Some Jewish girls were sitting up the beach from us, and they ran over to join us. "You know that?" they said, surprised, and sang us the Hebrew version. Then they played with us. For the last bonfire we had a testimony meeting that went for three hours.
On the days we went out, we went everywhere. We saw a plethora of ancient synogogues and more churches than you can shake a stick at. Memorable churches include the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, this huge modern-art 60's building our professor called "a monstrosity." Inside they seemed to be going for a factory-like asthetic with cement walls, twisted iron candelabras, weirdly sloping ceilings and columns, abstract stained-glass windows with lots of red. The church was filled with paintings of Mary from all sorts of different countries. The one from the United States was modern and angry-looking, but I liked the painting from Korea that depicted Mary as a Korean woman in traditional dress.
My two favorite churches were the Church of the Transfiguration and a little church marking the traditional site where the resurrected Jesus gave his disciples breakfast. Church of the Transfiguration stood on top of a mountain, a towering building of white stone, beautifully carved. Inside, you walked over a grate in the floor where people slipped their prayers on folded-up paper. The ceilings soared, held up by plain wooden beams, and the altar was inside a little cave, backed by stained glass peacocks and surrounded by mosaics of angels with peacock wings on a blue background. All light and airy and large. My other favorite church was exactly the opposite, a tiny, one-room building built out of black basalt, within a vast garden, right on the shore.
Every church we went we sang. They all have beautiful acoustics. Other tourists filmed us with their cameras, and once my friends Michael, Jeff, and Allison sang, "Be Still My Soul" and made three German women cry.
Also we saw many ruins. We explored an entire ruined town, a Hellenized town featuring a bathhouse and a temple to Bachus, all destroyed in an earthquake. I climbed on toppled-over columns and the remains of walls. My favorite ruins were the remains of a Crusader/Muslim fortress, up on the top of a mountain. A lot of the walls remained or had been restored, and towers we could climb. Signs everywhere said, "Danger Abyss," and if you looked over the sides of the Crusader walls the mountain dropped straight down to green valleys. I would call the height "dizzying" if heights made me dizzy. A castle on a mountain! Really!
We swam in swimming holes where locals have been swimming for thousands of years. The water was blue and warm, and fish nibbled at my toes; it reminded me of floating around in my friend Sam's pond in Mississippi, where the fish would try to eat us, only here the water was clear enough to see the fish approaching my feet. We rafted down the Jordan River and splashed cold green water on each other. We visited a spot on the Jordan where people come from all over the world to be re-baptized and watched a Protestand minister give a little sermon and re-baptize his congregation. It was funny to hear him describe to these old people how to hold themselves--"Hold your arms like this, and I'll hold your arm there. You can hold your nose closed if you want to..." I came to the odd realization that, as young Mormons, we're unusally good at being baptized.
One day we took a boat across the Sea of Galilee back to the Kibbutz. The owners of the boat put up an American flag and played "The Star-Spangled Banner" over their speakers. Then they played "Put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee" and I thought of Dad.
We went to Akko, a Mediterranean port city where the Crusaders had their capital after they were driven out of Jerusalem. After the lecture, they set us free to roam the city. Kate, Snarky Jonathan and I bought bubbles. Then we went up on a short tower by the blue blue water and blue the bubbles which the wind off the water ripped away. A Jewish showed up to look out over the water as well. A little boy with a blue kepah and soft blonde sidelocks and his two sisters danced in our bubbles and laughed and shrieked.
On the modern side of things, we walked through a green and viny park, where a spring runs to the Jordan river in a thousand little trails, to an overlook where we could see Lebanon to our left and Syria to our right. Ein Gev was right up next to the Golan Heights, where Syria used to shoot rockets down at the Israeli Kibbutzim below. Israel took over the Golan in 1967, and there are still bunkers and trenches everywhere, and fields surrounded by fences with signs that say "Danger! Active Mines!" Israel is considering giving the Golan back to Syria in order to make a strong Arab ally, but it's a tricky situation because of the water sources there and the usual Israeli groups who hate giving up land. The Druze villages up in the hills sort of keep a foot in both camps, serving in the Israeli military while keeping up a connection with Syria. The Druze are an interesting little religion, an offshoot of Islam who keep their rituals perfectly secret. We drove through some of their villages and saw men in traditional Druze clothing working in the apple orchards, men in baggy pants and white caps.
One night we were taken to a fish restaurant and served "St. Peter's Fish," which they fry whole. Jeni, Kate, Elizabeth and I made a pact that if we each ate our fish's eyeball we would go on a roadtrip to California this Thanksgiving. We all managed to eat the eyeball, though not without some difficulties, so now I have plans for Thanksgiving! Yay! Afterwards they took us around the Sea of Galilee to Tiberias. I love Tiberias. We only spent an hour there, but it was a beautiful hour. We got icecream and wandered up and down the boardwalk. An old man sat on a folding chair playing the accordian. We held hands and ran around in a circle in the street in front of him, doing our best clumsy imitation of an Israeli folk dance. Then he played "Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu," a song our Hebrew teacher taught us, so we were able to sing along and clap our hands. Then he announced (with a heavy Hebrew accent) that he would play us some Strauss, and we fake-waltzed. At the end of the night he told us, "Thank You" and we told him, "Todah."
A beautiful, beautiful two weeks. We went on so many field trips that by the end we felt overwhelmed by all the sights we had seen and all the things we had learned (I've only given you a sampling). On the other hand we had a lot of free time, days worth of time to read and contemplate, to listen to the sound of birds and frogs and to look out over the water for hours. Very spiritual, very sweet.
Love,
Stella
I spent almost two weeks in Galilee. We stayed in little bungalows right off the Sea; coming out of my door, I only have to walk twenty feet to find a grassy slope down to a little brown beach, with the Sea of Galilee beyond, and green mountains on the other shore. Every other day we went on field trips around the area; otherwise we stayed behind in Ein Gev, the Kibbutz that hosted us. On those days we had three hours of New Testament class in the morning (it went surprisingly fast) after which we had a whole free day. We mostly spent the time relaxing on the beach or the grass overlooking the beach. Everyone brought books. I brought The Bronze Bow from the Jerusalem Center library, a perfect book since it's set in Galilee.
The sun was warm, but a cold wind blue off of the water. We wore sweatshirts and wrapped ourselves in the itchy pink blankets from our rooms. The cold didn't keep us from swimming. For the first couple of days the wind was strong enough to make big waves, and we frolicked in them. I didn't swim much after the wind died down; I'm not sure what to do in water if there are no waves. The Sea was stunningly beautiful when it was still, though--silver-green during the day, bronzy-red at sunset, black at night with gold streaks from the reflection of Tiberias on the opposite shore. We came in the best season of the year, when everything was green green green. My favorite days were spent reading or talking on the shore, or standing ankle deep in the water skipping stones, or making castles and pots out of muddy clay.
On three nights we had bonfires where we sang and told stories, baked scones over hot coals, and made 'Smores. It's hard to find regular marshmallows in Israel, and impossible to find graham crackers, so we ate 'Smores with pink, fruity-flavored marshmallows and giant animal crackers. One night we played "Ride that Pony," one of those games you learn at EFY or during your freshman year at BYU. It involves singing a loud, fast song. Some Jewish girls were sitting up the beach from us, and they ran over to join us. "You know that?" they said, surprised, and sang us the Hebrew version. Then they played with us. For the last bonfire we had a testimony meeting that went for three hours.
On the days we went out, we went everywhere. We saw a plethora of ancient synogogues and more churches than you can shake a stick at. Memorable churches include the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, this huge modern-art 60's building our professor called "a monstrosity." Inside they seemed to be going for a factory-like asthetic with cement walls, twisted iron candelabras, weirdly sloping ceilings and columns, abstract stained-glass windows with lots of red. The church was filled with paintings of Mary from all sorts of different countries. The one from the United States was modern and angry-looking, but I liked the painting from Korea that depicted Mary as a Korean woman in traditional dress.
My two favorite churches were the Church of the Transfiguration and a little church marking the traditional site where the resurrected Jesus gave his disciples breakfast. Church of the Transfiguration stood on top of a mountain, a towering building of white stone, beautifully carved. Inside, you walked over a grate in the floor where people slipped their prayers on folded-up paper. The ceilings soared, held up by plain wooden beams, and the altar was inside a little cave, backed by stained glass peacocks and surrounded by mosaics of angels with peacock wings on a blue background. All light and airy and large. My other favorite church was exactly the opposite, a tiny, one-room building built out of black basalt, within a vast garden, right on the shore.
Every church we went we sang. They all have beautiful acoustics. Other tourists filmed us with their cameras, and once my friends Michael, Jeff, and Allison sang, "Be Still My Soul" and made three German women cry.
Also we saw many ruins. We explored an entire ruined town, a Hellenized town featuring a bathhouse and a temple to Bachus, all destroyed in an earthquake. I climbed on toppled-over columns and the remains of walls. My favorite ruins were the remains of a Crusader/Muslim fortress, up on the top of a mountain. A lot of the walls remained or had been restored, and towers we could climb. Signs everywhere said, "Danger Abyss," and if you looked over the sides of the Crusader walls the mountain dropped straight down to green valleys. I would call the height "dizzying" if heights made me dizzy. A castle on a mountain! Really!
We swam in swimming holes where locals have been swimming for thousands of years. The water was blue and warm, and fish nibbled at my toes; it reminded me of floating around in my friend Sam's pond in Mississippi, where the fish would try to eat us, only here the water was clear enough to see the fish approaching my feet. We rafted down the Jordan River and splashed cold green water on each other. We visited a spot on the Jordan where people come from all over the world to be re-baptized and watched a Protestand minister give a little sermon and re-baptize his congregation. It was funny to hear him describe to these old people how to hold themselves--"Hold your arms like this, and I'll hold your arm there. You can hold your nose closed if you want to..." I came to the odd realization that, as young Mormons, we're unusally good at being baptized.
One day we took a boat across the Sea of Galilee back to the Kibbutz. The owners of the boat put up an American flag and played "The Star-Spangled Banner" over their speakers. Then they played "Put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee" and I thought of Dad.
We went to Akko, a Mediterranean port city where the Crusaders had their capital after they were driven out of Jerusalem. After the lecture, they set us free to roam the city. Kate, Snarky Jonathan and I bought bubbles. Then we went up on a short tower by the blue blue water and blue the bubbles which the wind off the water ripped away. A Jewish showed up to look out over the water as well. A little boy with a blue kepah and soft blonde sidelocks and his two sisters danced in our bubbles and laughed and shrieked.
On the modern side of things, we walked through a green and viny park, where a spring runs to the Jordan river in a thousand little trails, to an overlook where we could see Lebanon to our left and Syria to our right. Ein Gev was right up next to the Golan Heights, where Syria used to shoot rockets down at the Israeli Kibbutzim below. Israel took over the Golan in 1967, and there are still bunkers and trenches everywhere, and fields surrounded by fences with signs that say "Danger! Active Mines!" Israel is considering giving the Golan back to Syria in order to make a strong Arab ally, but it's a tricky situation because of the water sources there and the usual Israeli groups who hate giving up land. The Druze villages up in the hills sort of keep a foot in both camps, serving in the Israeli military while keeping up a connection with Syria. The Druze are an interesting little religion, an offshoot of Islam who keep their rituals perfectly secret. We drove through some of their villages and saw men in traditional Druze clothing working in the apple orchards, men in baggy pants and white caps.
One night we were taken to a fish restaurant and served "St. Peter's Fish," which they fry whole. Jeni, Kate, Elizabeth and I made a pact that if we each ate our fish's eyeball we would go on a roadtrip to California this Thanksgiving. We all managed to eat the eyeball, though not without some difficulties, so now I have plans for Thanksgiving! Yay! Afterwards they took us around the Sea of Galilee to Tiberias. I love Tiberias. We only spent an hour there, but it was a beautiful hour. We got icecream and wandered up and down the boardwalk. An old man sat on a folding chair playing the accordian. We held hands and ran around in a circle in the street in front of him, doing our best clumsy imitation of an Israeli folk dance. Then he played "Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu," a song our Hebrew teacher taught us, so we were able to sing along and clap our hands. Then he announced (with a heavy Hebrew accent) that he would play us some Strauss, and we fake-waltzed. At the end of the night he told us, "Thank You" and we told him, "Todah."
A beautiful, beautiful two weeks. We went on so many field trips that by the end we felt overwhelmed by all the sights we had seen and all the things we had learned (I've only given you a sampling). On the other hand we had a lot of free time, days worth of time to read and contemplate, to listen to the sound of birds and frogs and to look out over the water for hours. Very spiritual, very sweet.
Love,
Stella
March 14
Dear lovelies,
Tomorrow morning we head off to Galilee for two weeks. It's going to be so nice because we only go on field trips every other days. On the in between days we stay in the kibbutz, have a few classes in the morning, and then are free to wander around the kibbutz and its beach. I'm bringing a copy of The Bronze Bow from the library here, since it's set in Galilee.
Today a bunch of us went to Tel Aviv on the coast. We spent hours and hours wandering along the shore of the Mediterannean, playing in the waves, and exploring Jaffa, the old city where the whale spat up Jonah (we found a whale-shaped fountain commemorating the event). I always thought of the Mediterannean as warm, but here, at least, it was cold. We got in anyway and splashed around anyway. It made me really miss Gulf Shores. I kept telling anyone who would listen about how the gulf is warm and green-grey and you can see little silver fishes in the waves and you can smell the salt in the air. The Mediterannean tasted plenty salty, but for some reason you couldn't smell it in the air, which disappointed me. I realized that this is the first time I've been to the beach since coming to college.
After the sun sent we walked down the street and got kosher pizza.
There have been some tensions in the Old City, an increased police presence and lots of demonstrations. Some kids even started a fire in the street down near the lower gate of the center. We stood out on our terrace and watched. It'll be nice to get out of Jerusalem.
-Stella
Tomorrow morning we head off to Galilee for two weeks. It's going to be so nice because we only go on field trips every other days. On the in between days we stay in the kibbutz, have a few classes in the morning, and then are free to wander around the kibbutz and its beach. I'm bringing a copy of The Bronze Bow from the library here, since it's set in Galilee.
Today a bunch of us went to Tel Aviv on the coast. We spent hours and hours wandering along the shore of the Mediterannean, playing in the waves, and exploring Jaffa, the old city where the whale spat up Jonah (we found a whale-shaped fountain commemorating the event). I always thought of the Mediterannean as warm, but here, at least, it was cold. We got in anyway and splashed around anyway. It made me really miss Gulf Shores. I kept telling anyone who would listen about how the gulf is warm and green-grey and you can see little silver fishes in the waves and you can smell the salt in the air. The Mediterannean tasted plenty salty, but for some reason you couldn't smell it in the air, which disappointed me. I realized that this is the first time I've been to the beach since coming to college.
After the sun sent we walked down the street and got kosher pizza.
There have been some tensions in the Old City, an increased police presence and lots of demonstrations. Some kids even started a fire in the street down near the lower gate of the center. We stood out on our terrace and watched. It'll be nice to get out of Jerusalem.
-Stella
March 11
Dear people,
Lately, I have spent all day, ever day, doing Things. Last week we had finals, and now we only have two classes. Every afternoon is free, and so we head out into the city looking at sites. There are so many old or beautiful or cool churches here. My favorite is Dormition Abbey--it was built in 1910 to honor Mary. It's light and airy, with lots of white and grey stone, and the chapel has beautiful acoustics that make two girls singing sound like a choir. In the crypt below there's a statue of Mary and mosaics of Old Testament women.
The older churches are cool because they're old, but they tend to be somewhat crowded and gawdy. For example, on Monday we went to Bethlehem and toured the Church of the Nativity. It stands above the cave where, traditionally, Jesus was born. The church was huge and smelled strongly of incense. Mosaics on the wall crumbled away to show bare stone, and painting of saints on the columns have worn down so that you can barely see their faces. A lot of walls have been bare and grey since the Ottomans took their white marble coverings to put in a mosque.
We went down into the cave in a stream. It was covered in brocade hangings, with paintings all around. The manger cut into the rock was covered in marble, and in the spot where the birth supposedly took place they drove a fourteen-pointed iron star into the ground. All very ornate. My favorite part of the trip was when we left the church and gathered in the courtyard of the newer church next door to sing hymns. We sang "Once in Royal David's City," and "Little Town of Bethlehem" and "Silent Night." Some German tourists passing by joined in for "Silent Night" and filmed us with their cameras.
On Monday we leave for Galilee to live in bungalows on the beach for two weeks. I'm so excited!
-Stella
Lately, I have spent all day, ever day, doing Things. Last week we had finals, and now we only have two classes. Every afternoon is free, and so we head out into the city looking at sites. There are so many old or beautiful or cool churches here. My favorite is Dormition Abbey--it was built in 1910 to honor Mary. It's light and airy, with lots of white and grey stone, and the chapel has beautiful acoustics that make two girls singing sound like a choir. In the crypt below there's a statue of Mary and mosaics of Old Testament women.
The older churches are cool because they're old, but they tend to be somewhat crowded and gawdy. For example, on Monday we went to Bethlehem and toured the Church of the Nativity. It stands above the cave where, traditionally, Jesus was born. The church was huge and smelled strongly of incense. Mosaics on the wall crumbled away to show bare stone, and painting of saints on the columns have worn down so that you can barely see their faces. A lot of walls have been bare and grey since the Ottomans took their white marble coverings to put in a mosque.
We went down into the cave in a stream. It was covered in brocade hangings, with paintings all around. The manger cut into the rock was covered in marble, and in the spot where the birth supposedly took place they drove a fourteen-pointed iron star into the ground. All very ornate. My favorite part of the trip was when we left the church and gathered in the courtyard of the newer church next door to sing hymns. We sang "Once in Royal David's City," and "Little Town of Bethlehem" and "Silent Night." Some German tourists passing by joined in for "Silent Night" and filmed us with their cameras.
On Monday we leave for Galilee to live in bungalows on the beach for two weeks. I'm so excited!
-Stella
February 28
Dear ones,
On Friday, an Israeli folk dance teacher came and taught us dances. We danced in circles with our arms flung over each other's shoulders and jumped up and down and frolicked the night away for over an hour. The instructor, Boaz, invited us all to a Purim party at his dance studio.
Purim started tonight at sundown. It celebrates Esther saving the Jews, and it's essentially Jewish Halloween. Everybody dresses up. We were planning to go out on Ben Yehuda street, where there are lots of shops and bakeries and gelatto places, but there's been freezing cold rain all day. And also apparently people are into drunken revelries on Purim, so we decided to go to Boaz's studio instead.
There we met a lot of middle-aged people who have been taking his class for months and knew all the steps. Everyone was in costume and there was a chocolate fountain.
All in all, excitement and joy!
-Stella
On Friday, an Israeli folk dance teacher came and taught us dances. We danced in circles with our arms flung over each other's shoulders and jumped up and down and frolicked the night away for over an hour. The instructor, Boaz, invited us all to a Purim party at his dance studio.
Purim started tonight at sundown. It celebrates Esther saving the Jews, and it's essentially Jewish Halloween. Everybody dresses up. We were planning to go out on Ben Yehuda street, where there are lots of shops and bakeries and gelatto places, but there's been freezing cold rain all day. And also apparently people are into drunken revelries on Purim, so we decided to go to Boaz's studio instead.
There we met a lot of middle-aged people who have been taking his class for months and knew all the steps. Everyone was in costume and there was a chocolate fountain.
All in all, excitement and joy!
-Stella
February 26
To All and Sundry,
So the teacher for our Islam and Palestinian Civilization class is a Christian Arab man from Bethlehem. A couple weeks ago, Dr. Musallam couldn't come to class because of "technical problems" with his permit--it wouldn't scan right, and the soldier at the border wouldn't let him through. He came the next day, but then he was sick, and then the "technical problems" flared up again. And he went days before he could get a new permit. Brother Brown drove to Bethlehem to bring Dr. Musallam our take-home midterms, and we sent a big yellow card with him that said, "We miss you."
According to Sister Brown, he was deeply touched by the card. Sister Brown sent us a photo of Dr. Musallam holding up the card and beaming, and forwarded us an email from him thanking us and saying that he missed us too. He was able to come yesterday, and today we were supposed to have four full hours of his class to make up for the missed period. But then, this morning, the Israelis closed the border. Purim is on Monday--a festival celebrating Esther, basically a Jewish Halloween. Apparently it's harder to deal with security and identifying suicide bombers when everyone is in costume, so they're closing the West Bank until after Monday.
It's sad, but I think it was good for the students to see the human side of our teacher.
-Stella
So the teacher for our Islam and Palestinian Civilization class is a Christian Arab man from Bethlehem. A couple weeks ago, Dr. Musallam couldn't come to class because of "technical problems" with his permit--it wouldn't scan right, and the soldier at the border wouldn't let him through. He came the next day, but then he was sick, and then the "technical problems" flared up again. And he went days before he could get a new permit. Brother Brown drove to Bethlehem to bring Dr. Musallam our take-home midterms, and we sent a big yellow card with him that said, "We miss you."
According to Sister Brown, he was deeply touched by the card. Sister Brown sent us a photo of Dr. Musallam holding up the card and beaming, and forwarded us an email from him thanking us and saying that he missed us too. He was able to come yesterday, and today we were supposed to have four full hours of his class to make up for the missed period. But then, this morning, the Israelis closed the border. Purim is on Monday--a festival celebrating Esther, basically a Jewish Halloween. Apparently it's harder to deal with security and identifying suicide bombers when everyone is in costume, so they're closing the West Bank until after Monday.
It's sad, but I think it was good for the students to see the human side of our teacher.
-Stella
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