At the ripe old age of 24, I have my first grey hair. I told the girl that found it that it was from her making me crazy. I may not be that far off. I just got back from a 4 day field trip with 40 girls in my center. I slept in the same room as the girls, guaranteeing that I would not sleep more than four hours per night. I was in a great mood by the time I got back. But there was something sort of comforting about all 40 of them crowding around to talk to me at once. I felt like I had made a connection with them as they all fought each other for my attention. Warms the cockles of my heart. Here is what I knew going into this camp: where it was and that I was going. Much as I pleaded and begged for the schedule and what might be expected of me beforehand, I got nothing. I had no clue the entire time. A perfect example is when we were finishing lunch and I asked what was next. And by next I meant in the next fifteen minutes. I was informed that I had an hour and a half long workshop with the girls. About anything I wanted. They could provide me with a piece of paper if I needed it. SURPRISE!! It was great. I guess they don’t realize that I don’t actually speak Arabic and might need a little more time to come up with a topic and something to say. But, I was confident that I could do a better job than the blowhard from the army who showed up and wouldn’t take his sunglasses off indoors, because he looked cooler that way. So I came up with a workshop… an hour and a half long one. And then I waited. And waited. And waited. And an hour later was informed that I had a half hour in which to do said workshop. Great. So, I blew up at the supervisors and told them that I needed time to plan things and execute them. And that I was tired of being made to look stupid because I am perpetually clueless as to what is going on. They then reminded me that the girls needed fifteen minutes to get ready for our trip. So I gave them what I could of my workshop in 15 minutes and went off to sulk alone. But I cant ever hide from them, so I went on the trip as well.
That night I overheard someone say that the girls should let me sleep before one am, otherwise I was likely to start a war. I think that sort of sums up my trip. But I think to get a really good idea of what it was like you should sit in a hot room for five or six hours and try to focus on a book on tape, in Swahili.
There were a couple of high points. The best is when my coworker told me that she supposed the men in that town were so tall because they were proportionate to other parts of their anatomy, if you catch my drift. I told her that in America we thought that it wasn’t so much height, as shoe size.
And that is what I was doing this week as the world burns down around me over here… stay cool y’all

Today on the news there was a Lebanese man holding a small child’s body. It was grey from the ash and dirt and rockets. It had no arms. It had nothing below the ribcage. And though it had a perfectly clear face, the back of it’s head was missing. What the fuck, Israel?!?
How this is appropriate retaliation for the abduction of two soldiers escapes me. In fact it certainly seems like collective punishment to me. everyday i feel more and more like i am living next to a napoleonistic little warmonger of a country. I found myself being asked to defend Israeli foreign policy. And I found myself being asked to support American foreign policy for supporting Israel. And I refused. I couldn’t. as I think about most of the surrounding countries here, all I see are problems. And those problems didn’t just pop up by themselves. A woman said to me, “we just want to know what we (arabs) did wrong to make you hate us.”
‘Nuff said.