I am beginning to enter that stage where your daily surroundings have started to become familiar, and you are no longer as surprised or enamored by new circumstances.
However, I think that writing this blog and recording my experiences will help me remember how lucky I am to be living abroad and having unique encounters.
Last night, I went to a debate with two of my co-workers. The debate was sponsored by my NGO and took place among university students in the city of Haifa. The topic of the debate was very interesting and sensitive to the Palestinian community within Israel - the pros and cons of the separation of church and state (or in this case, mosque and state). The youth participating had received special training in debating techniques.
I couldn't understand too much of the arguments; the speakers (obviously) spoke at a rapid pace, but my co-workers and their friends explained some of what was said afterward. ;-) When surrounded by many people speaking very fast, I often feel as if I were a fish swimming alone in an endless blue sea, and occasionally I see the shimmer of another fish in the near distance, and this means I have understood a sentence or a word - yay!
Aside from the actual points made, I was impressed by how confident the speakers seemed and how structured the discussion was. You don't have to fully understand a language to see that someone has good public speaking skills.
The students included religious Muslims, secular Muslims, Christians, and probably non-religious and Druze people too. I wish that Western governments could see Arab youth in action like this, and that the mainstream media like CNN or the BBC would pick up on these kinds of events. I'm so tired of seeing headlines about bombs or the potential threat of war.
I got to interview various people (from the moderator who is a professional debate expert in the Arab world, to a very religious student, to a woman who served as a judge in the debate) and write an article for the NGO's website, which I was pretty stoked about. ;-)
Today, I met with a locally-based British journalist named Jonathan Cook. (Here is a link to his website: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/). It was fascinating to talk with him about language bias in the media (the use of different terms regarding the same topics, which can affect public opinion.) For example, calling the Israeli military the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) or occupation forces, or saying that people were "arrested" versus "kidnapped."
I wanted to meet with him to get to know other foreigners in Nazareth, and also to ask him for help with ideas for an article I'm trying to write about language bias in the Israeli media.
We ended up going to the cafe I like to frequent, which my new friends (though maybe not so new anymore), this Arab Christian couple, own. After he left, I hung out with my friends for a few more hours, trying to understand jokes in Arabic!
Now my only question is, how do you write "haha" in Arabic? Is it
حاحاحا or هاهاها or perhaps خاخاخا?
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