The Coffeehouse

..would be the title of a study done on The Coffeehouse. I am so ashamed I've turned this place into such an unworthy blog. I'm not exactly sure why summer does this to me. It's not like I'm extremely busy, just extremely lazy. Extreme laziness has come over me, procrastination, all that good stuff. Also, I want to spend every minute of my day outside, I can't stand to be in my room. If I'm at home, I'm out on the front steps or in the backyard, I can't seem to get enough of the sunlight, I feel like punching a hole in the wall to let more light in. Ideally, I would also be typing this post outside in the backyard.

So what have I been up to? Well, I did get a summer job, this time at the Ministry of Energy. Which is why I was kicked out of jury selection. "Excused" is the term they like to use, since you volunteer to "excuse" yourself, but I still think it's a kicking-out. It wasn't my fault the trial date was to fall on the first day of my job, I wanted to perfom my civic duty. Whatever, the justice system lost a loyal, open-minded, justice-loving juror. That was yesterday. I expected it to be like them John Grisham novels, or like the show The Jury, "real life drama" like the lady said in the video they showed us (I'm not kidding, she promised we'll see "real life drama unfolding in front of our eyes"), but no. No drama.

On Victoria Day, my family decided to visit the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton. I'll leave it to the pictures.

It was cold, white, and bright...

* York University campus.

That was the title of a presentation going on in a study room at the library, no jokes. Some of the study group rooms look out right into a main hall of the adjacent building, so that one of the walls of the study room is actually a floor to ceiling window, and whoever is in that room "studying" is pretty much stared and gawked at by whoever is passing by in the hallway. I walked down the hallway and noticed at huge bright pink sign saying "Attracting Women 101" and on the chalkboard "class in session". I'm pretty sure the room did not pass fire regulations as it was packed, with very good looking men (puzzling?). I pass by 15 minutes later, there is standing room only, and now they have some females in the audience (attempting to disprove the 101 theories, no doubt). I was trying to take a picture with my camera phone without looking like I was taking a picture (ie, by pretending to talk on my phone), but it wasn't working so well and I gave up, hmph!

Okay, so I've decided there's too many pictures to post (and yet, not enough), so I've uploaded them onto my flickr account. But I will share one with you here....

I am a prospective juror!

This is exciting! I know that I may not be summoned for another couple of years, but I WILL be summoned to serve eventually, woho! I know so many people who tell a bunch of lies and make excuses when they're summoned so that they don't have to serve, but I don't understand this. Some people have good excuses, but other than that, why wouldn't you want to take part in delivering justice to people in your community?

Onto other things...

Okay, here's the deal: I have 741 photos and 21 videos (I realized that the video of the boys wasn't working, but it's fixed now :D) from my four weeks in Jordan & Palestine (minus the pictures/videos I deleted), and I have 626 photos and 5 videos from N, my friend who traveled with me (minus the ones SHE deleted and others), giving us a total that is very close to 1,400 pics.

So last week I decided to finally develop some, 'cause they were all on my computer and I wanted to have some copies on-hand to show people on campus and to show family & friends.

Guess how many I developed?

Just GUESS...

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Five-hundred-and-eighty-one.

And I found a 600-pics photo album to put them in :D

I've been back for a week, and I never thought I'd have this hard of a time readjusting and returning back to my daily Canadian routine. In many ways, I feel like I've changed. I've learned new things, I have a different perspective on life, and even my outlook for the future has been redirected.

I went to Palestine with a good friend of mine. We planned out our trip, booked our flights, and made arrangements a couple of months ago, all the while not knowing if we were in fact going to make it into Palestine. I had no expectations whatsoever and actually prepared myself for the worse.

Getting into the West Bank is an adventure. We decided to enter through Jordan. We went through the Allenby Bridge which is a bridge over the Jordan River between Jordan and Palestine. Israelis control all entry and exit points to the West Bank, so we had to go through Israeli border checks. The first time my friend and I tried getting into Palestine we were made to wait for 7 hours at the border, then told to go back to Jordan and try again the next day if we wanted. Of course we wanted, so we tried again and waited another 6 and a half hours, this time we had to deal with body searches, luggage searches, and interrogation, but we were finally let through. May none of you have to lie as much as we had to, to be able to enter your homeland. May none of you be treated like criminals when you've done absolutely nothing wrong. May you never be treated like scum simply because you are of a different race or religion.

I spent most of my time in Bethlehem and the surrounding area, and Aida Refugee Camp, a camp in Bethlehem. I also spent some time in Al Quds, and Rahat, an Arab town in Israel proper, or as I like to put it 1948 land, near Beer Al Sabi'. My friend and I made sure to visit most of the West Bank, Al Khalil (Hebron), Ramallah, Jenin, Nablus, the Dead Sea (where most of the beaches are for Israelis only), refugee camps, and towns like Al Walaja, Abu Dis, Al Azaria where land has been confiscated to build the apartheid wall. We saw a lot and had some awful experiences at checkpoints where a Palestinian friend was beaten up by soldiers. Even so, the occupation leaves such a huge impact on everything and runs so deep, you can't truly know the situation until you've lived through it.

My family is orginally from a village in the outskirts of Akka (Acre), about 5 kilometers from the Lebanese border. No Palestinians live in the village now, everybody was chased out to Lebanon back in 1948. There is an Israeli colony beside it though. My intention was to visit it during my stay in Palestine, but with the rockets flying back and forth between Israel and Hezbollah, I knew I couldn't. Even after the ceasefire, I knew that matters could change within an hour, and I'm sure that there were tons Israeli soldiers within 5 kilometers of the Lebanese borders.

The trip out of Palestine ripped my heart to pieces. While we were traveling on the highway on our way to the northern Jordan Valley border crossing, we could see the hills of Nablus and Jenin and the rest of the West Bank on our right, and 1948 land on our left. We passed through no metal detectors at the Israeli border, our bags stayed in the car the whole time, we only left the car to get our exit stamps on our passports, half an hour, MAX. It was crazy. We had to work so hard to get our entry visa, yet with one quick, swift movement, we got the exit stamp and it was all over.

This past week back in Canada has been very tough for me. My family and friends have missed me so much, yet I haven't and would very much rather be back in Palestine, I grew so attached to the place. Three weeks was too short of a time to spend in Palestine, a place I've wanted to see my whole life. I wish I could explain to them what I saw and what I learned and who I met, but I feel that I wouldn't be able to do it justice, I can't seem to communicate it in a way that won't cheapen it. And to some degree, I feel like my time in Palestine was very personal, and I don't want to share it. Maybe I'll get around to it, someday.

I'm back from my trip, but my mind and soul are still wandering through the hills and valleys of Palestine...

Bethlehem

Aida Refugee Camp

Al Khalil (Hebron)

Jenin

Mar Saba Monastery

Ramallah

Balata Refugee Camp

Nablus

Al Quds (Jerusalem)