The nights have grown quite cold here in Palestine. The chill nips at the skin.

I went into Jerusalem yesterday for a meeting or two. What I came out with was fifteen thousand new thoughts, new questions, and new ideas. I met with a man born in Canada who moved to Israel when he was 13. He lives just outside of Jerusalem. It was my first one on one talk with an Israeli. We sat at Cafe Hillel on a bustling street corner just up the street from City Hall for over 2 hours. We talked about connecting Palestinian and Israeli youth using the media. He opened my eyes to many things I hadn't thought about, to many things I still need to learn on the Israel side of things. The one point that really stuck with we had to do with thinking about how youth can possibly connect when one is living on the land previously inhabited by the other youth's families.

I walked down the street, back towards the Damascus gate. Jerusalem always seems like such a different world to me. I think my passport should have two stamps for each country I am in here. I had just dialed the number to my next meeting when I heard my name called out on the street. It seemed impossible that they were yelling for me in this unfamiliar place so I kept walking but there is was again, "Pablo." I turned and there was Bilal, one of my basketball players who had run out of the restaurant that he works in to catch me. I sat in his restaurant, wondered how he felt about wearing a shirt all in Hebrew, and ate a delicious schwerma.

My next stop was at the offices of Sabeel, a Palestinian Christian organization. I wrote an article for Sabeel that they published in their latest newsletter. In addition Sabeel is where two of my friends from the United States who work for the same organization that employed me in Guatemala are stationed. Though on a side note, one of them is no longer in the area because she was deported in what I can only say sounds like quite a harrowing experience (and people ask why I don't tell the security at the airport what I am doing here!) I walked in on their weekly communion service. I didn't expect to sit down for a few minutes of a bible lesson, I didn't know I was going to be taking communion, I didn't realize how powerful it would be to do this from a Palestinian woman and to hear the prayers in Arabic. I'll leave it at that.

The Hamas leader in Bethlehem was arrested the other day, he was the same one who I listened to speak here in Ibdaa last week or so. The military has been in the camp almost every night, late. Yesterday they arrested a young man just up the way from Ibdaa. I read about it in today's news. Fatah had a huge rally in front of the Ibdaa office this afternoon, Ibrahim and I were standing up in the 4 th floor restaurant looking over the meeting as it began to come together. Ibrahim offhandedly mentioned that he was shocked there weren't more people there and that most of the ones there were there were youth. Maybe it has something to do with the rally in Gaza the other day to commemorate the death of Arafat where a number of members of Fatah were killed.

That's the news from this part of the world. Seems normal to me now, I wonder how it will feel when I am back stateside?