It's impossible to gauge time around here. It seems like just a few hours ago that I got back from Nablus but in an uncanny way it also seems like weeks and weeks ago that I was walking through the streets of the Belata refugee camp just outside of Nablus. In the news the other day I read about an Israeli military incursion into Belata just a few days after I was there.

It's hard to believe that it is October. I started coaching the Women's Basketball team in the last few weeks and they had their first game tonight. It's a very different job than coaching the men. The women are more attentive though they laugh all the time at my attempts to pronounce all of their names. They lost their first game with me tonight but it was a positive experience as I got to see them all play and figure out a little more of what we have to work on in practice. It doesn't help though that I sprained my ankle really badly yesterday at the men's basketball practice and am hobbling around today.

I'm tired. This last month has both been very busy and very emotional, as my mind has been trying to wrap itself around some of the experiences that I have had. Infectious, inherited, implied, ...I have been trying to find the right word that starts with "I" for the feeling I had the other day. For some strange reason, I have this intuition that it starts with an "I." I have traveled town several times in Jerusalem and now, outside of the West Bank into Israel and I have felt uncomfortable each time.

My work and experiences have brought me closer to the Palestinian youth. When I walk around the center, once again just like Guatemala, my name follows me around the halls and up the stairways. Even when I don't know what the youth are saying, I smile when they use my name. But I have heard them tell stories, stories about how they feel about the WALL, stories about whether or not they think they would be able to sit down and talk with an Israeli youth, stories about how they feel about the occupation and its hard not to be affected by them.

It's hard to think about how we can move forward in this conflict if we cant get past those barriers, those walls and have the youth from both sides sit down and talk to each other, so they can hear stories of what's its like in their own worlds. Maybe its not possible yet. But I still have this crazy idea that through media there might be a possibility, that if just one Palestinian youth can sit down in front of the computer and watch a video made by an Israeli youth or vice versa...

Not sure where I am going with all this and, as you can tell, its a lot to wrap my mind around.

On the media front we just posted our first cultural exchange project (in English and Spanish) on the website. You can view an Introduction to some of the youth that I work with by clicking here! They are quite amazing...