reflection. (highlight in order to read, i know its weird!)

1. Class Discussion/ Facilitation/ Conversation

This seemed to be a bit of a problem in our class. There were always long pauses, lulls in the conversation where people would just kind of sit and stare at each other until somebody else started the conversations up again. I hate awkward silences, and so I often would be the one to break it, even if I didn’t really have anything particularly profound to contribute. Perhaps next class if there was more of a set rule/grading system of participation it would help. Or if every day there were 2 or 3 discussion leaders that came up with questions or discussion topics?

2. Video Conferencing

I loved the video conferences! They were always something I would look forward to that week. Besides the occasional technical difficulties, they were a success. I am so thankful for this technology, because it opens up, literally, the world to us. A world of opportunities for conversation and discussion and dialogue and discovery… its really incredible. Its weird to think that im sitting there, watching a person that’s halfway across the world, having a conversation with them with just a second of a lag. Seeing faces is so different than hearing a voice or reading an email.

3. Readings and the topics

To be completely honest, the Karen Armstrong book was a real struggle for me. So many names and dates over and over again- they tended to blend in. not that I didn’t learn from it, because i did, but it was hard to read. The other readings tended to be a lot more interesting and easy to digest, thank goodness. Sometimes the reading load was really heavy, though.

4. Lecturers and Speakers

I loved all the lecturers and speakers that we had. I thought it was a really good idea to have us all write a few questions out beforehand, especially considering the conversation issues we sometimes have. I felt very fortunate to have had the calibur of speakers that we had in class.

5. Blogging

a.Class Blog

I love what our class blog turned into- the page itself is beautiful and whenever anybody found anything interesting they would put it on the page so we could all enjoy it- super cool.

b. Individual Blog

I had never blogged before this class, and it really took some getting used to for me. I had to constantly remind myself to update, and it took me forever to follow everybody I wanted to and that kind of stuff- I am not good with technology.

c. Individual Responses and Comments to other people's blogs

this is something that I think needs to be altered a bit for the next class. And I am totally guilty of this, too, but we were not very good at going on other people’s blogs and commenting/reading. I think if there was some sort of guideline about a minimum number of weekly comments that would be really helpful.

6. Syallabus and its clarity

save for a few small typo-ish errors, there were no real problems with the syllabus. At the very beginning I was a bit confused with due dates because of the way they were layed out on the syllabus, but once I figured it out it wasn’t at all an issue.

7. Final Project

a. Own Project

it took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to to- I have never really had so much choice in the matter of a project like this so I was a bit shocked about the freedom! My mind isn’t really too creative, so I considered writing a paper, but with another term paper due the same week (14 pages) I opted for a multi media project. Shannon and I joined forces since we were doing the same idea, and it was such a good idea.l I LOVED DOING MY PROJECT. I loved every minute of it. the interviews were all so incredibly interesting and made me SO EXCITED for the trip! I loved how diverse the people that we interviewed were, they gave so many different perspectives.

b. Learning from others people's projects

it was so interesting to see what other people had chosen to research, what stood out to them, what they were so interested in. there were some projects, like Sarah’s, that I had never heard about before, but I learned so much about. (great job, Sarah!) I was impressed with the papers and the powerpoints AND the videos, like Charus! She did sooo great! Jenna’s painting was also INCREDIBLE. I was so impressed with out class and the work that everybody did!

8. Personal Reflection

a. what you have learned and how you have grown

I feel so much more informed about the area and about the history of the city of Jerusalem. I had no idea, or I guess I just had never really sat down to think about how much had happened, how many rulers had risen and fallen and how many people had lived or died there. Incredible.

b. what were you initial opinions and how have they changed throughout the class.

I went into the class with an open mind, slightly leaning towards the Palestinian side of things. Im proud to say that I am more neutral now, mostly because of the personal interaction that I had with some jews/Israelis. That’s where I wanted to end up and Im so happy I got here.

c. what will you do to learn more if you wish to do so.

I want to keep up with the news and hopefully try to keep in contact with some of the people I meet.

project update

well, shannon and i have now joined forces and are doing our project(s) together! yay!

we did our first two interviews yesterday and they were SO GOOD! one was my friends mother, and it was really cool to get her perspective (her father is palestinian) and the other was Kasa!

Kasa's interview was incredible, so heartfelt and deeply important to her. it made me so excited to go to this city that is so incredibly important to her.

she also told us some of the cool spots we need to go to in Jerusalem and shes going to hook us up with her sister and/or cousins!

basically yesterday made me 10000 times more excited for our trip to jerusalem! is it june 9th yetttttt?

readings for thursday

so this reading talks about the Basic Law:Jerusalem Capital of Israel 1980. and in this Basic Law, there are only 2 parts- seems pretty simple, pretty easy to not violate.

notttt. because the second part, the one that talks about not allowing and wall or structure to be built that separated West Jerusalem from East Jerusalem. well. not only did they violate that, they actively did it themselves. that is kind of mind blowing to me- that they could completely go against 50% of the law that they wrote THEMSELVES.

but as soon as i started to get indignant, i remembered part of the interview that shannon and i did today with Kasa. (yay Kasa! i love that woman) Kasa was saying that everything Israel does is for the good of everyone there, that Israel always acts in the interest of protecting people, israelis and palestinians. it would be easy to understand and justify a lot of Israels actions if you had that viewpoint.

im also SO EXCITED to meet with PYALARA tomorrow! i felt like since we just met with a jewish/israeli group it would be kind of unfair if we didnt meet with a muslim/palestinian group, seeing as al Kuds is boycotting and we dont get to speak to them. i was interested to read the overview of the group, because when i asked my (palestinian) boyfriend about them he had never heard of the group, which i found surprising. i really really like their well-being program, i feel like something like that is really useful to the youth in such an... intense area. i hope that they are really using their efforts for good, and not for a brian-washing type deal. their Youth Times magazine seems incredibly impressive.

i found the overview of the political context to be a little harder to read, and i tried to figure out the chart on youth population % to be impossible to read/understand. i think it was missing some headings or something.

i cant wait to meet with a big group of students tomorrow!

my interview questions

ok. this is the third time that ive typed this post. lets all say a little prayer before i continue that it shows up this time.

so these are the questions that i plan on asking. i tried to keep them simple, because they could elicit lengthy answers and off-shoot questions.
i would be incredibly grateful to any help that you guys could give me- comments, suggestions, anything!

1. have you ever been to Jerusalem?
if yes:
when did you go there, and why?
what did you think about the city itself? and was the divide between Muslims, Jews, and Christians obvious?

2. what did you grow up hearing/knowing about jerusalem? was it brought up a lot in your religion? in your family?

3. when you hear about Jerusalem, what comes to mind?

4. what would you like to happen in the future for Jerusalem? (stay divided between Israel and Palestine? unite under one of the countries? ect)

5. do you think the world has an accurate perception of the city? is it biased towards one side of the other?

i think this will post, inshallah.

video confrence

well i am a tad bit peeved because i typed out this longggg descriptive post about the video confrence we had last week and apparently my computer took the liberty of deleting it. fantastic.
so to sum it up, i had positive and negative feelings looking back on the video chat. i still think its SO COOL that we can carry on a conversation and see a group of people across the world! and i love michal, i thought she was great and i LOVED the point she kept making about how in day to day jerusalem the conflict isnt like we think it is and there arent all these negative feelings that we think are so prevalent.
i was disappointed in the number of students that showed up, though. i felt like the two girls might have been a little nervous or overwhelmed withall of us asking the two of them questions. i also felt bad that we, lovely americans that we are, had to conduct the whole thing in English. however, i thought those girls were a good mix of backgrounds and i loved their responses.
im so excited to meet this class when we go to Jerusalem!

Project outline

i know this is late guys, i had mucho trouble figuring out what my project would be.

I want to conduct a series of interviews with different types of people about Jerusalem, what the city means to them and how it affects their lives.

and my "different types of people" i mean a Palestinian Muslim who grew up in Palestine, a Palestinian/American, and I'm hoping to get Kasa, possibly a few American Jewish people, including people that have traveled to Jerusalem and a Christian or two.

I want to get tons of different perspectives on the city, and see what they do or dont think about the city, how important it may or may not be to them.

week 8 readings

the first reading i read, "seizing locality in Jerusalem" was not over a topic i would normally consider interesting- yeah, architecture doesnt really whip me into much of a frenzy. but what i DID think was interesting was the fact that the Israeli government was trying to use architecture to unite the city of Jerusalem- i never thought it could be used like that. very interesting application.

in the next group of readings i was kind of disappointed by the poem. not by what it said, but there was nothing really poetic about it to me, just the spacing.

"Jerusalem has and continues to be the center of strife. The stones of Jerusalem's history have been carved in history. Palestine represents a point of intersections wherein numerous civilizations flourished."

thats the first couple lines put into paragraph form... i feel like it could have been in the jacket of Armstrong's book.

the next reading i found interesting because of the idea that Israelis have that they have to be in control of the city in order for it to be kept an "open city". hm. i probably wouldnt consider Jerusalem as an open city, especially bc of the wall that they build splitting it.

in my opinion, the type of wall that the Israelis built is a wall of agression. again, open is not the word i would use to describe.

i hope that when we go to Jerusalem the walls are less of a problem than they seem to me now, that the city is as open as the Israelis like to claim

reaction to the movie

i really liked the movie!!!!

i thought it was really interesting though, that by the time we really saw the two rappers they were no longer friends. they showed a flashback (the one on the bus) of the time when they were good friends, but by the time the documentary got underway it seemed that they were enemies, or frienimies as they appeared.

i also thought it seemed kind of sad because subliminal was gaining a lot of (mostly local) fame, performing in packed bars and huge festivals, while TN was having a harder time gaining popularity.

though the reviews i read claimed that both rappers were becoming radicalized, i really only saw that with Subliminal. he was talking about zionism constantly, trying to promote his ideals, while it seemed that TN was just trying to make people aware of what was being done to the palestinians.

overall i liked the movie a lot, though in the beginning i had a hard time following who was who and what was what.

tamari articles

in Tamari's Popular Music article he mentioned the four communities in Jerusalem- Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Armenian. umm... Armenian? scuse me? now i just feel stupid because i was completely unaware of this other community, but the more i think about it the more i realized that Armstrong didn't really address them either. so its not just me =)
i really like the idea of this reading, that it was all informed from the diaries of a person (jewish musician) from the past. i would be interested in reading The Memoirs because theyre told in an ancedotal styple, which is one of my favorites to read- you get the same information but in a much more entertaining and easy-to-read style.
ps whats an Ud? is that the thingy in the picture? kinda looks like a guitar.
i love the phrase that Tamari uses that describes when Wasif would skip out of work- "creative truancy" haha that made me laugh.
wasif's diaries were incredible descriptive of the city both inside and outside the city walls.... i feel like in my diary entries id be crying about a boy or a math test and not chronicling the growth of the neighborhoods outside of my city.
i found the "Lepers, Lunatics and Saints" article to be SO cool and interesting. now-a-days we never really hear about leprosy.... we (or at least I) think of it as a biblical disease, something so far in the past. but here we are, talking about it from 1948, an era not so far from us.
i found it disgusting, however, that all arab leprosy patients were marched to the eastern front. MARCHED. these sick, weak people were marched from place to place.... ironically remiscient of the Holocaust.
i also found it interesting that this article mentioned that one of the chief ideologies of the Zionists were that Palestinian arabs had no "crystallized conscious nationalism of their own" and so they could be easily absorbed into Hebrew culture. uhhh yeah im pretty sure if you talked to my (Palestinian) boyfriend's family they would have a bigggg problem with that statement!

movie reviews

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117925365.html?categoryid=31&cs=1

what i like about this review is the physical descriptions of the two rappers, and the fact that the jew is dark skinned and the palestinian is so fair. kinda ironic

http://www.fandango.com/channelsofrage_88382/movieoverview

interesting phrase used- "poets of wrath"

im really really excited to see this!!!

armstrong 16-18! doneeeeeeeee =)

chapter 16 starts out wth "the nineteenth century started out badly for jerusalem" (armstrong, 347). my automatic thought was well duhhhhhhhhhhh. poor freakin Jerusalem, nothing ever goes their way. at this point the muslims were the majority with 4000 inhabitants, christians has 2750 and 2000 jews. this made me wonder, though, how do they have accurate numbers like that? were records that good back then? it also seems like whatever records they had would probably be exclusive- muslim christian and jewish records kept separately and probably would misrepresent the other groups.

around 1834 christians, jews and muslims started rebuilding, separately, of course. this quote stuck out to me "almost every new development in Jerusalem seemed doomed to increase the sectarianism and rivalry that now seemed endemic to the city" (armstrong 351). what a sad concept. rebuilding a city, repairing the damage that had been done was harming the city further? was ripping it farther apart?

reading about Israel and all the decisions that Great Britian was making about their future slightly annoyed me. i guess because the US has never been an imperial power, its hard for me to understand why the fluff Britain should have ANY say in the formation of Israel, whether its before or after WWII.

the last chapter was much more familiar information to me (FINALLY), both from my own reading and through my middle eastern studies classes. something i had never considered though, was the overlapping israeli/palestinian laws. they were kind of trying to punish eachother by enforcing laws that conflicted beliefs- like the one that was refusing to allow jewish women certain rights, like the right of marriage and divorce. this seemed to be a sort of civil disobediance

thursday's class

the past student who came in thursday (i've forgotten her name and i gave my flier away) blew my mind with her videos.

its one thing to hear about the resettlements in the israeli/ palestinian areas. I've heard that and thought "thats not fair", thinking about how hard it would be to move.

but to see these people? talking about how their homes were taken from them, how their lives were ripped apart.... was literally heart-wrenching to me. the man who had rebuilt his house 4 times was so incredibly brave and you could tell that he was so strong and wont give up. how disheartening, though, it must have been for him every time his house was destroyed, especially when they destroyed the foundation. i mentioned in class how i was surprised that even after international attention was called to this specific event that Israel didn't back down or cut the family any slack.

i also really liked the clip of the jewish woman talking about when the soldiers came to her house to force them out. she tried so hard to talk to them, to make them feel something. it sickened me that for the longest time, they all sat there like stone, totally unfeeling. i was relieved when she told about the one soldier who broke down when her daughter took him into her bedroom, made him actually feel something.

i would LOVE to go to this exhibit, im so upset that im out of town the entire weekend it shows. i want to contact her and see if she would send me the clips??

chapters 14-15

i like chapter 14 for the reason that i described in class when Anthony brought up the usage of the term "jihad". for those of you who werent there, i find the usage of this word, both present and past, interesting because in my Middle Eastern Studies class my professor discusses almost daily the term 'jihad' and how it tends to be wildly misunderstood, both by muslims and by westerners. not so much meaning "holy war" it really is intended to mean "struggle", and mainly the personal struggle to bring their lives closer to the way of God. you hear all the time about muslims "waging jihad" against the united states or the west or some other body.... these people are abusing the term and the religious excuse. in my opinion, anyway.
something that kind of resonated with me was t he confusion that the jews felt when the christians and the muslims were battling for control of jerusalem... a place that they considered to be THEIR city. the jews had returned to their roots to try and find healing, and found themselves to be displaced, yet again.
just like the people were vulnerable, everyone searching for a homeland that they belonged in, Jerusalem was left unprotected when its inhabitants fled as the Crusaders neared. the people must have been terrified, running through the streets weeping and ripping their clothes- clearly mourning Jerusalem, feeling as if the city was already dead and gone.
the ottoman takeover offered relief to the inhabitants, and the ottomans seemed to be generous in early years. is it just me, or am i starting to sense a pattern? the conquerers seeeeeeem to be generous, seem to offer equality to all the people, or stability, or protection.... thennnnn things get nasty. when there are 3 religions living in the same place, all believing that this is their city, their homeland, peace is next to impossible. it sounds cynical and maybe it is.... i hope so actually, because i would love to see a solution in the present-day Israeli/palestinian conflict.... i just dont know if it could happen. when the conflict is in such a core of a peoples' beliefs, compromise seems unlikely.
i also found it interesting that the scientific revolution called attention to the fact that Jerusalem could not be the center of the earth, which in turn led them away from "religions of the imagination". .... yeah, because Christianity, Islam and Judiasm are so unpopular these days?

tuesday readings

this group of readings spans a huge span of time, and i mean huge- from 362 to 1187. its incredible to me how in a book on the history of Jerusalem, this time period is only 4 chapters. no city in the united states has been around NEARLY that long! i am reminded again and again (and again and again and againnnn) that Jerusalem has an incredibly long, eventful and intricate history that almost anyone would have trouble grasping.
here we see the muslims enter the scene- it started out well, too, with a system that let the Jews and Muslims and Christians all live together.... but they were definitely separated to a point (with different districts and shrines, ect).
al-Hakim, who they funnily refer to as the mad caliph. he went so far as to replace Gods name with his own in prayers??? are you kidding me???? how crazy can you get?? and how unfair that when the muslims were appalled by his behavior (and how could they not be) he took it out on the christians and ended up leaving the christian section of jerusalem in ruins. SHOCKING, a huge part of the city being destroyed, once again. this place just cant get a break.
i liked hearing about the crusades from this perspective, where the christians arent portrayed in a positive light. its easy to see, though, how the roots of problems between Muslims and the Christian west start though... the Crusades seem to certainly be a legitimate reason to hold a grudge.

rewindddd

hey guys! i wanted to start out with an apology for missing class on thursday. because, well, im sure i was incredibly missed and some tears might have been shed over my absence. i just dont want you guys to think i was blowing off the class because i was hungover or just didnt feel like coming to class- i was up with a delightful stomach flu-type deal all night and didnt feel like sharing it with you all. but no worries i will be there on tuesdayyy!

it was also brought to my attention that i have been sort of vague in my recent blogs about the readings, so im going to try and highlight better some info from the readings. enjoy!

in the batch of readings for tuesday i kind of was concentrating on what the changes meant to the people of jerusalem. its different to think of things from an abstract point of view- like oh yeah the CITY was taken over by alexander of macedon in 333 bce. but its not the buildings and streets that are important- the "city" should be thought of as the people living there. alexander really took all these people into his empire, became in charge of all of them. luckily for them at this time, life didnt really change for the Jews- they were allowed to practice their religion. but the clash between jewish and greek culture started here.

then when alexander died, a series of battles broke out to see who would be the ruler- jerusalem was conquered 6 times in 20 years. SIX TIMES!!! thats so crazy! these poor people were subjected to so many changes and were in constant turmoil. i, living here all my life, cant even begin to understand what that would feel like.

and it just kept happening! the ptolemies really changed the way of life for the jews because they lived secularly.

the destruction that i talked about in my last post is also sad for the people. these events, the takeovers and the events of destruction, happened over a long period of time, i get that, and an individual person wouldn't experience many changes in their single lifetime, but i bet some of them experinced too much for their own taste. And seeing something as sacred as a temple get torn down and destroyed must have been so hard and demoralizing.

by the time Titus' soldiers were done with Jerusalem, "visitors found it difficult to believe that Jersulame had ever been an inhabited city" (armstrong, 153). the jews had fought so hard and so long to keep their city, which had been utterly decimated. and was now basically a Roman headquarters. i couldnt imagine living in a city that no longer felt like my own.... but it was harder to relocate back then, so what could they do?

by 323 constantine was the emporer of the whole Roman empire. even though he did want to spread christianity, lucky for those of other faiths, it wouldnt be at the cost of their beliefs. he built himself a city (creatively titled Constantinople) that could be an entirely christian city.
as time went on, pagans became the new scapegoat, as christianity spread. though not entirely wiped out, many were pressured to convert. i wonder what it would be like to all the sudden, not entirely of your own will, to start to believe in something entirely different, to change your faith for someone else. it seems to me that some people probably just changed superficially so it would seem to any outsiders that they were christian, but still retained their own believes in their hearts.

armstrong 5-8 yay

ok. when Dr. H told us that this book was chosen for this class and agreed upon by both sides, i figured i was about to read a kick-ass book.
no offense to anyone... and wait, am i allowed to swear??.... but i do not like this book. maybe because its still so far back in the past, still seems so hard to grasp.... like dude seriously what the hell do i know about the byzantinians? i hope that as the book comes closer to modern times that i will be able to get through it easier, bc its a slowwwwwwwwwww process as of now.
random fact- ch 6 is called "Antioch in Judea"- i was born in Antioch, california. yeah. im pretty famous.
and whats with all this destruction and rubble? depressing. imagine working so hard and for so long to build something to call your own, in a place that you believe is so important, just for it all to be demolished in a few decades. jeez.
i like that the chapters are starting to discuss the societies though, not just as a name and date. like how in chapter 8 they started talking about the divide between jews and christians. not that im glad to see these hostile divisions start., im just glad to get some real humanity up in hurr.

week 2 readings

not at all surprisingly, Jerusalem has had a rich and interesting history for thousands of years. of course a lot of events and changes have happened here- it is the central place to 3 of the world's biggest religions. it is incredible to me how many people, from the Romans and the Byzantines to the Arabs and the Crusaders have fought over this place in the past- how many people have lost their lives to try and gain control of this city.
these articles enforce the fact that there has always been changes, often major ones, in Jerusalem. in the past the changes were sometimes slower- a few hundred years in the control of the Israelites or Greeks, and sometimes quicker; the Babylonians ruled for less than 50 years.
in modern day, though, the changes go quicker.
Khalidi made an important point, though- the histories of the region is different depending on who you talk to.
it is seriously incredibly how many different civilizations have risen and fallen in the same city. sounds like an archeologist's dream!

Identity

this post isn't going to be what Dr. H wanted i think, because A. my camera is broken and B. i dont really think that my surroundings in any way reflect myself.
my room here is incredibly bland- white walls and a plain brown and green bedspread. i meant to decorate it, but never got around to it. i dont think my room at home really reflects my identity at all either- i never spend time in my room.
there are objects in my room, however, that could me min-representations of me.

RUNNING SHOES.
working out keeps me sane. if i skip the gym for more than a day or two i get cranky and i lose all my energy. next to my shoes is usually a pile of clothes i wore to the gym. (ps im messy)

BOOKS
i have piles of books in my room- both from my classes and because I LOVE to read. sadly, because of all the assigned reading i have i dont have as much time as i would like to leisure read anymore, but there is always at least one book (usually from the Twilight or Harry Potter series, my favoritessss do not judge me) next to my bed in the hopes that i can read for a few minutes before i fall asleep

PRODUCTS
i like to smell good and my crazy big/curly hair requires a lot of mateniance and lots of different products to tame it. i have tons of different bottles and jars of random girly things.

CLOSET
full of clothes and shoes-wayyyy too much. my style is really eclectic- one girl hated me in HS because she got mad that I would dress "preppy" one day and wear a band shirt the next. i wear what i want. i dont care what genre its from, as long as i like it.

COMPUTER
its gonna be on my facebook page. ill be honest, i freaking love facebook.

i dont have any religious symbols in my apartment. this was an unconscious choice but its reflective- i consider myself catholic"ish". i share a lot of basic beliefs with catholics, but the God i believe in doesnt hate or discriminate against people (i.e. homosexuals). im a passionate believer in gay rights and this has distanced me a little bit from catholicism, and organized religion as a whole.

OSUUUUUU!
my living room is obnoxiously covered in OSU crap- pillows, blankets, posters, Fatheads, flags, banners, yeahhhhh. we likeOSU. a lot.


part of the reason this assignment was kind of hard for me is because im going through a time in my life where im not so sure about my identity... its hard to find myself sometimes.

video

I really liked this film!
i think i went into it with low expectations, because Dr. H said that it wasnt a good film. but i thought it was good! i liked it a lot.... i thought the part on the bakeries were really interesting- its a cool way to judge the development (or decline) of growth in an area... im excited to visit the bakeries in jerusalem!
maybe Dr H was referring to the quality of the video... it looked like it was old. thats probably because there wasnt a ton of funding?
i liked it though, it made me excited for the class and for the trippp =)

Festival readings

these readings actually kind of discouraged me.
it was so interesting to see all the representations they were looking for of jerusalem- the art, the music, the languages, the history. its incredible how different yet how similar the different sides of the same city can be. no other city in the world has such a divide, and maybe this is why jerusalem is so rich in culture.
which was why it was so sad that a celebration of this city failed to happen. i feel like it would have been really successful, especially since it was in America and it would be more open for cultures to cross. it seems really unfair that they let the planning go so far as that they figured out the actual set-up and then they cancelled it.
i also thought it was super cool to see Dr H mentioned in the article!!! shes famousssss

Assignment 1...again

At this point, I'm really not sure how I feel about this class. Well, that's not true. I'm excited for the learning part- I can't wait to learn more about the city I'll be traveling to this summer. And obviouslyyy I am super pumped to go to Jerusalam!

It's the technological aspect to the course that scares me a little bit. Well, a lot of bit, actually. Computers hate me. And to be honest, I am not that fond of them. They like to crash on me or start randomly speaking German at me (yes, that really happened) and so I avoid them for the most part, facebook being the obvious exception. Duh. However, so far this doesn't seem so bad, so maybe I will survive.

The video blogging, though? Superrrr weird. And scary. I don't like people looking at me in general, and through an unflattering lens this idea sounds even less appealing. Am i supposed to do my hair and make-up before every class? I don't want to make a bad impression on the middle east.... man. I feel pressured. I also wonder about possible language barriers? And I hope they can find people on both sides to participate- it would really lessen the experience if we didn't have a basically equal representation of both sides. Would kind of defeat the purpose, actually.

It's also strange to know that other people will be reading this. That you guys are reading this right now. woah. weirdddddd. hi! ...weird.

as for whether this blog should be open or closed, I'm not really sure what the best option would be. I like the idea that our discussions could be seen and could possibly influence (hopefully in a positive, open-minded sort of way) the minds of others. But would this blog really reach anybody besides us? on the other hand, i would never want what happened to the girl last quarter to happen to anybody else. So I guess if nobody else objects to it being open, I am ok with it too.

I am interested in this class for two main reasons. The first is that I am a Security and Intelligence major, and an arabic minor. I am really interested in the Middle East and hope to work there/study the area in my profession. This is a really volatile, interesting and important place in the Middle East, and it would be great to learn more, and I'm sure it would be useful to me in the future, even in general reference. And also, I'm currently dating a Palestinian guy. Even though he was born here in Columbus, his parents immigrated from Palestine and he has close ties and alligances there. I used to think I was pretty neutral in the Israeli/Palestinian debate; i could see both sides and recognize both positions. Hearing, though, of the particular injustices done to Palestinians, including the unjustified Israeli murder of his relative's family, including a 9-year-old child, sent me over to the Palestinian side. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that, but I'm being honest. I hope that this class will help get rid of this slight bias.

Am I writing too informally? Should I try and use great grammar and impressive vocab and whatnot? Because I can, I just find it much more enjoyable to write like this, almost in stream of consciousness. It comes out much more honest and realistic this way. Let me know, I guess.

Ok well I think I'm done. This will conclude my first-ever post to my first-ever blog! epic.

feedback is welcome and encouraged, people. =)

shukran and goodnight