First of all, happy (thoughtful? sad?) 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor -- a date which will live in infamy.
As those of you who I'm friends with on Facebook likely saw, this past Saturday I took a tour of Bethlehem and Ramallah. Rather than spend the day thinking about how I wasn't in Egypt, I decided to take advantage of a free day to do something fun! So on Friday afternoon I messaged my friend Arielle and Carolyn to see if they'd like to join me for the fun. We agreed to meet right outside at 8:00.
As those of you who I'm friends with on Facebook likely saw, this past Saturday I took a tour of Bethlehem and Ramallah. Rather than spend the day thinking about how I wasn't in Egypt, I decided to take advantage of a free day to do something fun! So on Friday afternoon I messaged my friend Arielle and Carolyn to see if they'd like to join me for the fun. We agreed to meet right outside at 8:00.
The day got off to an exciting start as I was awoken by the buzzing of my phone. Thinking it was my alarm, I glanced on it as I muted it, but saw that it was a call from Arielle. I looked at the time and jerked awake -- it was 8:11. Eek! So I told her I'd be down ASAP and got ready in five minutes flat. She called the tour coordinator to let him know we'd be late, and we managed to make it by 8:40, only 10 minutes late! Whew.
We hopped in the car and drove to Bethlehem to the walk-through checkpoint. Very uneventful -- they barely glanced at our passports. On the other side, we met our tour guide, Yamen. He was awesome :D We started walking and stopped to see a bunch of urban art -- a lot of it is from Banksy, as well as some anonymous Palestinian street artists, largely regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Lots of awesome stuff...I had to SERIOUSLY trim down which ones I posted, so check out my Facebook (eventually) for more! This is one of my favourites, which has unfortunately been partly covered: the five fingers each represented one of the five major world religions.
Non-Banksy urban art protesting the wall of separation. This wall has severely infringed upon the rights of Palestinian citizens and has been ruled illegal by the United Nations...but no move has been made to take it down.
The kites each display the flag of a country that supports the creation of a Palestinian state:
A plea for freedom from the wall.
We stopped by the shop of one of Yamen's friends for coffee, which is adjacent to an unofficial outdoor movie theatre which is set up over a Banksy piece! To the right is a delicious (non-kosher!) menu for the restaurant next door.
Another Banksy:
One of my favourites:
Me with a very famous Banksy piece, a little girl frisking a soldier. I'm helping :P
We also went to Yamen's father's shop, where I bought a bunch of Banksy art postcards -- one to send, but the rest for me! I now have a full set :D
After we'd wandered past a bunch of urban art, we visited Aida Refugee Camp.
We met some ADORABLE children who were very friendly and excited to see us, and Yamen pointed out bullet holes from the second intifada -- an Israeli military tower is nearby and during the conflict, there was significant property damage, injury, and death.
We also visited the Lajee Center in Bethlehem, which was created for refugee children to have a safe space. In the schools in the camp, they often don't have a budget for art, PE, music, computers, and so son, so the center tries to provide these things for children. One of the biggest things I took away from the trip was something one of the workers at the center said. He didn't want the refugee center to have money, he said...he wanted people to come in and take their stories to the world. The story of freedom of Palestine is everywhere. But the story of a Palestinian child who wants to go to the zoo or the sea but isn't allowed to because her parents cannot go into Israel -- people need to hear that.
On our way out of the camp to Manger Square, we also discussed with Yamen the right of return. Palestinian refugees have taken the keys to their houses with them, and dream of one day being able to return to their villages. A lot of the art in the area speaks to this.
After this, Yamen hooked us up with a different tour guide for a quick trip to the Church of the Nativity while he found parking. As you know, I've been there and done that, so I didn't take many pictures. It was fun to see during Advent, though! Once we'd finished we wandered through the souq, bought some delicious sesame cake (which reminds me, I should snack on that when I get home!), and then headed to lunch: falafel, pitas, chicken shawarma, hummus, and...HOT PEPPERS.
Arielle, not realizing how hot they were, popped an entire slice into her mouth. Man, did she regret that choice! After lunch we were introduced to our sweet ride:
Oh yes. We had a 1.5 hour drive to Ramallah, so we all snoozed in the backseat. On the way, we stopped to check out two more famous Banksy pieces:
Yamen managed to convince Carolyn that, when we were going to visit the flower-thrower, we were actually going to go see the oldest gas station in Palestine. NAHT! After a nice snooze, we stopped in Ramallah at the tomb of Yasser Arafat.
In Ramallah, we wandered the city a bit...it's a very lively city, very different from Jerusalem! We also visited one of my favourite Palestinian sites:
No, no, not Starbucks...Stars and Bucks! There's no Starbucks in Israel or Palestine, so instead we went to Stars and Bucks. While it's similar to Starbucks in some ways with its delicious coffee beverages, they also offer food, cocktails, and hookah. Yamen was under the impression that Americans refer to hookah as "hubbly bubbly," so we've decided we'll never call it anything else!
Finally we headed back to Jerusalem on the bus. Going through the checkpoint on our way back was quite an adventure! We were in a very crowded line (fenced in on two sides with a revolving gate in front of us and fencing above us) with lots of pushy people. Arielle and I both received injuries from the violent revolving gates. Quite a different experience than coming into Bethlehem that morning!
Overall, a very fun trip :) Since then I've jumped back into getting as much reading as I can out of the way before M&D arrive -- only 367 more pages and 13 days! I'm also going to try and make some headway on my final papers before they get here to take a little of the pressure off finals week.
Tomorrow I'll be out all day on a field trip with my Biblical Israel class, but I don't think I'll have time to update about that before the weekend! For details on my insane weekend schedule, click here. I'll try and update about one or both on Sunday night, but I make no promises -- I'm going to be EXHAUSTED! Have a great weekend, everyone...I know I will <3
Overall, a very fun trip :) Since then I've jumped back into getting as much reading as I can out of the way before M&D arrive -- only 367 more pages and 13 days! I'm also going to try and make some headway on my final papers before they get here to take a little of the pressure off finals week.
Tomorrow I'll be out all day on a field trip with my Biblical Israel class, but I don't think I'll have time to update about that before the weekend! For details on my insane weekend schedule, click here. I'll try and update about one or both on Sunday night, but I make no promises -- I'm going to be EXHAUSTED! Have a great weekend, everyone...I know I will <3
No comments:
Post a Comment