Hello Friends and Family,

So sorry we lost you for a few days.  We were without internet service in Ramallah and Nazareth.  We were so frustated at not being able to communicate.  SO MUCH has happened since then.  I will  try to catch you up and get back on track.  It is 9:00pm our time and 11:00am your time.  We had to go through another Daylight Savings time change.  That was a little rude.  So, here we are on our way to Ramallah Friends School.  The first photos are of the wall that Israel is building around Palestinian terrritories in the West Bank.  It snakes around through villages and farm lands.

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On our way to Ramallah, we stopped at a Play Center in the Amari Refugee Camp.  This is for pre-school children in the Camp.

Here we are at the Ramallah Friends School.  The Friends School was started in 1869, for girls, since girls were not able to go to school at that time.  In 1910, the Boy's School was built.  This is the Boy's School. The Schools are co-educational now, but the Pre-School/Elementary School is still called the Girl's School and the Secondary School is still called the Boy's School.  These schools have an excellent reputation in the community.  The students are Palestinian, both Muslim and Christian.  The school is 70% Muslim and 30% Christian.  The ratio of Christians used to be much higher, but most Christians are leaving Palestine, for a better future.

          Gymnasium/Multi Purpose Building                                                                New Science Building

Interestingly enough, the School has a Resource Center for Special needs students.  So, that is the classrooms Jeanne chose to visit first.  The director here was wonderful and she was so interesting in sharing ideas, since this program is just a few years old.  There are no models in Palestinian Schools, which are large and at least 50 students per classroom.  They (Palestinian schools) are funded by the UN. Jeanne hopes that students where she works can began to write and e-mail back and forth.  The teacher was very excited about that.

   One of the students wanted us to see his work.                 The lady in the middle is the teacher with two aides.

Next Jeanne went to a US History class.  They were studying the Recontruction after the Civil War, exactly where we are in our 8th grade Social Studies Class at Crossler Middle School.  I took this picture for Mrs. Smith who teaches the class where I work.

The best part of our trip so far has been spending four days with a Palestinian family with a Muslim background.  We grew to love them.  The next pictures are a combination of the next days with them.  Salam, Ismail, Sara (9) and Noir (5).  The first night, Salam, who works for Care International was down in Gaza because of a disaster there.  The septic system exploded killing many people and displacing thousands more.  She left Gaza at 3:00pm, which is about an hour trip, but did not arrive home until almost 10:00pm because of the many checkpoints where she was delayed.  More about that later.  The next pictures are of our days together.

 The first evening Sara and Noir surprised us by making these hats for us.  Jim's, of course is a Santa Claus hat with a bell and mine is a queen with a scepter.  These are packed in our suitcase with fond memories.  The next night we were privileged to go to Sara's piano recital.

They took us on a wonderful trip to the countryside where we picked wild flowers.  These are just some of the images, there are many more we want to share.  It looks idyllic, but their lives are very hard and we will share their stories with you when we get home.  We loved talking with them late into the evening and sharing with their friends.  Their kindness and love was immeasurable and we were blessed that they shared their lives with us.  Their daughters are extremely bright and full of life.  We hope to share many more memories with them. Ismail is a film maker and is working on writing a feature film now.

More tomorrow,

We love you all,

Jim and Jeanne