The sun was a ball of red, orange and pink, rays shooting off over the hills as it slowly, inch by inch, slipped beneath the rolling horizon last night. Casting a comfortable enveloping glow over the valley and wrapping our smiling faces in its warmth, the setting took in our little group spending time together and softened some of the conversations that still are difficult to get a grasp on.

It was the first "official" gathering off all of us from the School for International Training who after our time on campus last year choose to make our way for different reasons out to these lands. We spent hours together cooking, eating, conversing, laughing, reflecting, and looking around on the same land where last week I took a much needed break with Chris, Ziad and Nasser on Nasser's family land. This time our group was a bit bigger and included Nasser's wife Salam and two young daughters, Dina and Sofia.

The food was excellent, chicken and vegetables cooked in a below ground fire pit covered over in mud, skewers and racks of beef grilled over a small flame, several different kinds of hummus, and an assortment of other foods went into our overflowing stomachs. After eating we all walked down into the garden and onto the land surrounded by crumbling stone walls over a hundred years old. We laughed as a stone throwing contest emerged though to think about its history in the Palestinians world is troubling.

As we stared out at the setting sun, Ziad pointed over the hills where his home village of Zakryya used to be, past the Green line that was established in 1967. We could see this non-physical border and past it to what is currently Israel. To our left the headlights of cars zoomed down the settler road and under the WALL. A dirt road is carved into the side of the hill extending off into the distance. Ziad told me that the village of Adam's (the Ibdaa youth teams soccer goalie) family was down that road. Nasser talked about how the military used to make excursion out onto the land we were standing on.

Later, Ziad and Nasser laughed while telling stories about being in the jail, about painting graffiti on the WALL, about throwing stones...