These are the days of our lives...
No, not exactly a soap opera but we'll survive somehow.
Things have improved a bit in my mood. I'm still not so stoked about living so far away from where I was told I would live but I started looking at it in a different way: I wouldn't have the closeness to the situation if I were living here. I mean, I already feel pretty isolated from the real world here but the feeling would be greater if I lived here and never left. As it is, on my walk to La Maison, I'm confronted by the separation wall on a daily basis as well as the insecurity I feel about leaving here at night.
Actually, I'd like to write about the insecurity. When abroad, I've often had the attitude that if it's good enough for the locals, it's good enough for me. That goes for living conditions, food and booze and whatever else that affects my day to day living. However, this is an attitude I cannot reconcile with my own security. Sure, many people walk around at night around here but they don't look foreign, they speak the language and they know their way around better than I do. While I would like to say that if an Arab woman and I share the same risks in walking around here after sundown, the reality of the situation is not such. As we used to say in Korea, "I'm just a dumb foreigner." However, while that may work with certain authorities, street thugs will not respond to it quite so passively.
In any case, I've made friends with the bus driver of the tour bus here. He's about 35-40, married to a Swiss woman and has 2 kids. I met them all and they're very nice. Karim is an Arab Christian which means a lot. He also has Israeli citizenship, something that most Arabs do not easily come by in these parts. It helps that he's Christian. His wife recently acquired Israeli citizenship, though not after a difficult 8 years of waiting and applying and waiting and such. I really dig Karim. I asked him why he didn't just move to Switzerland. It would be easier for him. He wouldn't have to deal with checkpoints and employment problems and racism that Arabs go through here. He told me that if everyone who married a foreigner did that, essentially, there would be no one here to fix the problems. It was a very telling statement for me. I'm hoping to head out for beers with him tonight (and maybe smoke some nargile... I think I need to buy one of those, if they're not too expensive...).
So, there's also the kitchen help, Mohammed. He's 17 and I feel like he's my little brother. I tease him and he takes it. We get along well because we both speak English.
Also, (beware the Dear Diary moment here) the Turk and I are still on chatting terms though he is quite busy these days. I think I still dig him and he appears to still dig me, as per the e-mails he sends me almost daily.
Things have improved a bit in my mood. I'm still not so stoked about living so far away from where I was told I would live but I started looking at it in a different way: I wouldn't have the closeness to the situation if I were living here. I mean, I already feel pretty isolated from the real world here but the feeling would be greater if I lived here and never left. As it is, on my walk to La Maison, I'm confronted by the separation wall on a daily basis as well as the insecurity I feel about leaving here at night.
Actually, I'd like to write about the insecurity. When abroad, I've often had the attitude that if it's good enough for the locals, it's good enough for me. That goes for living conditions, food and booze and whatever else that affects my day to day living. However, this is an attitude I cannot reconcile with my own security. Sure, many people walk around at night around here but they don't look foreign, they speak the language and they know their way around better than I do. While I would like to say that if an Arab woman and I share the same risks in walking around here after sundown, the reality of the situation is not such. As we used to say in Korea, "I'm just a dumb foreigner." However, while that may work with certain authorities, street thugs will not respond to it quite so passively.
In any case, I've made friends with the bus driver of the tour bus here. He's about 35-40, married to a Swiss woman and has 2 kids. I met them all and they're very nice. Karim is an Arab Christian which means a lot. He also has Israeli citizenship, something that most Arabs do not easily come by in these parts. It helps that he's Christian. His wife recently acquired Israeli citizenship, though not after a difficult 8 years of waiting and applying and waiting and such. I really dig Karim. I asked him why he didn't just move to Switzerland. It would be easier for him. He wouldn't have to deal with checkpoints and employment problems and racism that Arabs go through here. He told me that if everyone who married a foreigner did that, essentially, there would be no one here to fix the problems. It was a very telling statement for me. I'm hoping to head out for beers with him tonight (and maybe smoke some nargile... I think I need to buy one of those, if they're not too expensive...).
So, there's also the kitchen help, Mohammed. He's 17 and I feel like he's my little brother. I tease him and he takes it. We get along well because we both speak English.
Also, (beware the Dear Diary moment here) the Turk and I are still on chatting terms though he is quite busy these days. I think I still dig him and he appears to still dig me, as per the e-mails he sends me almost daily.