Sunday 22 July 07, Ramallah

So this is the first post of what I hope will be many short pieces on things which strike me, living here in Palestine for a month. It's a week into my working trip and things have been super busy so far. Every night we stay up late making resources and writing lesson plans and even socialising with local people in the camp has been sidelined by the (crazy) amount of time this is taking up at the moment (I'll explain why in a bit). There's a trail of glasses with bedraggled mint leaves and sugary gunk from the kitchen to our balcony planning station. A blog makes sense insofar as lengthy email updates just aren't going to happen and often skip the interesting bits. Little and often will be more manageable. It's also a waste of time to be patching together long accounts over sticky keyboards when I could be talking to people, or (more likely) adding to my growing arsenal of grubby flashcards. This will provide glimpses of life here: small details that I notice, conversations I overhear, things I do, people I meet, thoughts I have. It'll be short on political analysis - for one, because I think a different kind of perspective is useful, and secondly, because I'm not the person for that. Not now, anyway. Unless I change my mind. It'll also be short on any kind of continuous narrative - I don't want to bore you or (equally importantly) myself recounting exactly what I've done everyday. I'll just bore you in small segments. If you think I should be finding out about something in particular, just ask and I'll see what I can do.