Palestine, My Love

During the Eid break I took a trip to Palestine. Silly me I didnt blog every day while I was there :( so I'm just going to blog about a few stories.


Jerusalem ( Occupied Palestine)


Jerusalem ( Occupied Palestine)
I was shot ( with a BB gun but still! lol), frisked, bumped with an M 16,and interrogated. The whole time I was there I just kept getting this queasy feeling in my stomach. It was like I was in the Twilight Zone, with all of these people walking about like everything was fine, the Israeli’s walking around like they'd had this land for ages, like the spirits of those they'd killed to be there did not exist, but I felt them and the haunting sound of injustice whistled through the streets. I was angry. I did not want to be there, did not want to spend any money, and longed to spit on the ground that the Israeli soldiers walked on, but alas my sweet tooth screamed louder than my silent boycott and I bounced into a chique little frozen yogurt store. While paying I dropped a coin and before I could bend down to pick it up a six foot, grim looking, Israeli soldier, with a giant gun hanging by his side quickly swooped down and handed it to me with a smile. That little act of kindness instantly caused a " Crisis of Conscience", added a huge glob of grey into the "black and white" mindset that I'd created for the whole Palestinian conflict, suddenly the green suited gun tooting monsters suddenly seemed... human. Now, you may be wondering why I felt so strongly against the Israelis. I was staying with a Palestinian family who told me stories of their personal horror's they'd seen and encountered with Israelis. The Uncle even went as far to show me the bullet scar that he has in his forehead that he got one day just walking to church and my friend began to tear when recalling a time when she was hit with a gas bomb... so yea call me biased.

Nov 12 Eid

Today, was quite the eventful day. To begin with I was cast in a music video! Funny thing, it was all in Arabic so I don't remember the singers name and don't remember the name of the song but I was a blast. We all had to dress up in World Cup jerseys and they shot it on this huge soccer field at a school. This was the first gig from the modeling agency I'm doing some work with. I managed to befriend this college student from the University of Jordan who became my translator for the day and who later on drove me to my friends house, he was a life saver. But yea, so I sit down and they call the eight of us from the modeling agency and tell us that they want each of us to sing a part of the song by ourselves with the camera straight on! I start to panic ! The song's all in Arabic !! AAAHHH!! What am I going to do? ! I mean I know Arabic well enough to carry a conversation but this!! So I think back to an episode of America's Next Top Model where the girls have to do a whole commercial in another language and think to myself " If those ditzy twigs can do it, then so can I!" and believe it or not when I sat down at the camera everyone said that I did the best job out of all the other models, lol.

So when thats over my new friend an I trek over to my friend Saba's house where I am greeted with by smiles, hugs, food, and a bed to nap in. Now who is Saba, you may be wondering ? She's one of the kindest people that I've met in Jordan. She's a 27 year old lawyer who is like a big sister to me and I wonder what my time would be like here if i hadn't met her .

Beautiful Jordan

So I realized that this blog can get a little negative and perhaps its even morfing into my venting site, so Ive decided to dedicate this post to the many good things about Jordan.
1. Falfel: Jordan has some of the best and cheapest falafel. Its amazing!

2:The beautiful skies: You've never seen a beatiful sky until you've visited Jordan.



3: The people/ the students: some of the sweetest students Ive ever had. One tradition the King decided to bring over from Deerfield ( the school this one was modeled after ) are sit down lunches. Basically they are formal lunches with random groups of students that rotate every 3 weeks. So far Ive had great tables but my last one was by far my favorite. I had a group of roudy boys and one freshman girl. Our lunches were far from formal but instead were filled with laugher, jokes, and crude Arabic lessons. Now everytime I see them in the halls I always get a hello or a hug, I love those boys. The picture below is depicting a small pot given to me by my friend in the ceramics department, another example of how nice people are here.


4: My Office: We may have had out issues in the begining but the women here are truly amazing.