Here in the Holy Land

Hello again dear readers! As I write to you at the end of March (or the beginning of April now.... oops), I have only three months left here in Palestine. It is hard to believe I have been here so long, and that I have so little time left. With this in mind, I have been trying to soak up every moment and reflect on all the ways I have grown and changed this year. Many of these are hard for me to articulate, especially to an audience who has not experienced life here the way that I have over the past seven months (seven months!!!). For this reason, I am incredibly grateful for the other members of my cohort, who have all been incredible sources of support over the course of the year. So I want to take a moment to acknowledge how much we have been through together this year and to thank my fellow JWB YAGMs for walking with me through all the challenges life has thrown at us. In mid-February, we had a big retreat in Jordan. We spent a few nights in Petra, a few nights in the desert in Wad

  Hey there! Oh, boy. A lot has happened since my last newsletter! The biggest thing, of course, was the Christmas season and the start of a new year. As I’m sure you can imagine, Christmastime in Bethlehem is an especially rowdy time of year. People come from all over Palestine, and indeed from all over the world, to witness the tree lighting in Manger Square near the Church of Nativity, honored as the location of Jesus’ birth. The streets bustle with pop-up markets full of gifts, treats, and handicrafts. To be totally honest - I was overwhelmed! I chose a few activities to participate in, then took some time to get some much-needed rest. On Christmas Eve, I sang with the Olive Branches Choir at two services seven hours apart: 5pm at Christmas Lutheran and the midnight mass at Bethlehem University. Singing in church has always been an important aspect of worship for me, and it was soul-feeding to be able to sing songs both new and familiar as a means of participating in Christmas in t

When you prepare yourself to spend a year abroad in volunteer service, you go in with the expectation that you will be changed by the experience. Transformed, even.  What you can't prepare for is exactly how  that will happen.  Before I left home in September, many people asked me what my expectations were for the year. I often answered that I was trying not to go in with strong expectations, since I knew how likely I was to be wrong. All I knew is that I would be deeply impacted by my experience in ways that I would be unable to fully predict.  At that point, I was thinking of change as additive : everything that I felt and knew about myself would remain true, with additional feelings, thoughts, and values added on top. I don't think I would have been able to consciously articulate that at the time, but looking back, that's how I felt. This is, of course, not how change works.  I have wanted to live abroad for a long time. Ever since my first trip overseas with my mom when

Welcome to the second issue of my newsletter! I am writing this newsletter piece by piece during my downtime while on a YAGM retreat to Galilee. The retreat started unofficially on Thanksgiving day, when we all got together at the home of our country coordinators, Adam and Jordan, and prepared a Thanksgiving meal together. It was comforting to be together for a tradition from back home that doesn't exist here, but at the same time was a bit strange to be celebrating a holiday that is specific to the North American context and history while living in the Middle East. It has been two months since my last newsletter, and so much has happened since then. (If you're interested in hearing from me more frequently, consider following my blog - there is a button on the left sidebar where you can follow to be notified of new blog posts.) Since my last newsletter, I have moved into the home I where will be staying for the remainder of the year, I have started volunteer work at both of my

It's olive harvest season in Palestine.  So far, I have been invited to participate in three different harvests. One with the rest of my YAGM cohort on land owned by my host family, one with students from several schools in the Bethlehem area as a part of my volunteer work with the Environmental Education Center, and one with some friends I have made since moving here. It has been a unique and joyous experience. In Palestine, olive harvesting is all done by hand. Tarps are laid around the base of the tree to collect olives as they drop to the ground. Those who are harvesting will stand on the ground and pick olives from the lower branches, climb ladders to pick from the high outer branches, or climb the tree itself to pick from the inner boughs. Others will sit on the tarps and collect the olives in buckets as they fall, separating out leaves and twigs as they go. My favorite thing to do is climb up the tree to reach the inner branches; it is a fun challenge to see how far I can sa

Hey friends. Last week I published my first newsletter, but I am eager to share some of the ups and downs of my first official week of service here in the West Bank. And there have certainly been both ups and downs. First off, I want to say that no amount of orientation time, no matter how thorough, could have truly prepared me for this experience. And honestly, I wasn't really expecting it to... I knew this year would be hard in ways I wouldn't be able to anticipate. But I am beginning to see the reality that knowing  that something will be hard is very different from  experiencing  how hard it actually is. Before coming here, I knew that I would stand out, that it would be obvious that I was a foreigner in this land. But now I know the feeling of many strangers' eyes on me as I walk the streets I am hoping to soon call home. Before coming, I knew that I didn't speak (much) Arabic... but now I know the feeling of constantly struggling to both understand and be understo