If I were president.... Was the question I put to my students some time this week. Other topics have included the Wonders of the World, making up an Agatha Christie style murder and matching bizarre english idioms with their real meaning. I have no idea whether it holds any benefit for them, but it amuses me no end to watch them wrinkle their brows as they try to work out what exactly having a whale of a time entails. Whilst not preparing for classes (ever an up...

I have realised that it has been far too long between now and my last entry for me to actually give anything in detail without it turning into some vast extended and gratuitous essay on the mundanities of daily life here. I will try my utmost to curb these tendancies to give an accurate yet relatively concise image, unlike Rousseau. I may be so bold as to juxtapose two events that took place precisely a week apart and involved the same journey and the same desti...

انجنَت في فلسطين! A week hath passed since my arrival at the phoenix centre - time to spill the fuul. Well, a little bit about the phoenix centre. It was founded burnt down and re-built three times since its establishment in 2000, hence its name, al-feniq in Arabic. It is run completely by volunteers for the community of the Dheishe camp where it is situated and beyond. The camp was formed by the arrival of thousands of villagers from around Jerus...

So, a week hath passed it has since I arrived here. My time has been spent on a myriad of different things, from visiting a vast and swanky shopping centre in the centre of Jerusalem that was built on the ruins of a destroyed Arab village (they kindly named the centre after it), visiting people and places and finding somewhere to volunteer for the next month and a half. Well, I have been staying in Ramallah with Lazar, the one whom we all met up the mountain in ...