[George Rishmawi, the Mayor of Bethlehem Dr. Victor Batarseh and Sami Awad]
Today the entire group met at the Bethlehem Hotel for our first full day of orientation. We were greeted and welcomed first, by the newly-elected Mayor of Bethlehem, Dr. Victor Batarseh. We learned about the culture, stuff about our host families, some of what to expect for the entire summer, and we got an orientation/bus-tour of the Bethlehem-area, including Beit Sahour, where I am living for the summer.
This is a basic example of my daily itinerary:
Monday-Friday
9-12pm: Volunteering at the Bethlehem Peace Center
12-1pm: Lunch on my own
1-3pm: Arabic class at Bethlehem Bible College (the first hour will be learning the alphabet/script and reading/writing and the second hour will be conversational Arabic)
On Saturdays we will take excursions to Jenin, Haifa, Ramallah, Jericho, Hebron (to meet with the Christian Peacemaker Teams) and other areas. There is another organization in Gaza who will be taking 4-5 of our students to go live in the Gaza Strip for a week at the end of July. Only 4-5 will be selected – I am interesting in pursuing this, as it will enable me to see some of the more intense areas.
We have Sundays free and the time can be used to take other trips, head into Jerusalem or just relax with our families. I’m really looking forward to getting into a type of daily rhythm here in Bethlehem-area. I’m going to be walking to work each morning, so I can save a few shekels and so I might be able to shed a bit of the beer-gut that I got during my first year of seminary – no freshman-15 for Adam, just the Seminary-Beer-Gut. Funny.
It feels good to be here, my stomach is handling things well and the family we are with (as all Palestinians do) are feeding us incredibly well. It was a little hard to have okra-sheep soup twice yesterday, but…I’ll get used to it.