Middle East: Beit Sahour, host families, Arabic studies

Feb. 2019

After three weeks of hotel-hopping (and bedouin camp-hopping), we’re glad to be somewhere we can really settle in: Beit Sahour. A Palestinian town in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Beit Sahour is south of Jerusalem and a short walk downhill from Bethlehem. Of its 15,000 people, 75% are Christians, and we’re all staying with Palestinian Christian host families for the three weeks we’re here.

Austin and I are loving our stay with Reema and Philippe, our host grandparents. Reema has told us that we are her grandchildren now, and she treats us with wonderful hospitality, patient help with our Arabic, and delicious food every breakfast and supper—I ate so many stuffed grape leaves, stuffed tomatoes, and stuffed zucchini on Thursday that I felt like a stuffed vegetable myself. We’ve had fun hanging out with Reema and Philippe’s grandchildren, who live nearby, in the evenings. Elianna, 18, is fluent in English, and tells Austin and me great stories about her life in college and travels to other countries. Ayman, 15, is our business-minded host brother who invited us to play bilyardo (pool) with him and his friends a few nights ago… we didn’t stand a chance. And Jeries, 7, entertained/exhausted us with hours of hide-and-seek, tag, and the floor is lava on our second night here. He and Elianna are helping us learn our Arabic numbers and colors through UNO (or should I say, wāḥad?).

About half of our days are spent at our home base, a classroom in Beit Sahour near the Old City. On those days, we have a 3-hour Arabic lesson in the morning. We’re split up into two groups and focus on learning practical, spoken language that we can put to use right away on the street and in our host families. After the lesson, we’re on our own for lunch with a 15-shekel stipend from Linford and Janet. Here our strategies vary, with some spending most of their money on a 12-shekel shawarma sandwich, while others go with the standard 4-shekel falafel sandwich and supplement with an apple, pomegranate, or piece of freshly-baked pita bread.

In the afternoon, we gather again for a lecture and discussion. We began by hearing about Palestinian literature and the beginnings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from two professors from Bethlehem University. On Friday, we watched The Wanted 18, a funny but impactful movie about Beit Sahour during the first intifada in 1993. It tells the story of how the citizens of the town (including some people we’ve met or will meet) resisted the Israeli occupation by buying cows to start a dairy farm, and later hiding them when the Israelis tried to shut it down.

When we’re not in the classroom, we’re out on field trips throughout the West Bank. Our first day was a tour of Beit Sahour and Bethlehem, including the Biblical sites of the Shepherds’ Field and the Church of the Nativity, which was built on top of the cave where Jesus may have been born. In multiple places, we saw the border wall that separates the West Bank from Israel and Israeli settlements. In building the wall, Israel inadvertently created a massive canvas for Palestinians to express their opposition to it. We could have spent a whole day along the wall in Bethlehem just looking at the graffiti, which ranges from serious (stencils of children playing with barbed wire) to humorous (“MAKE HUMMUS NOT WALLS”) to cartoons that mock Donald Trump and his intentions to build a similar wall on the US-Mexico border. My favorite graffiti is back in Beit Sahour, a picture of a “flower thrower” by the mysterious British street artist Banksy.

Another of our day trips took us north of Jerusalem, and along the way, we admired the landscape after a few days of rain: beautiful green hills, vineyards, and olive trees, in contrast to the tan desert scenery we’d gotten used to in Egypt and Jordan. We stopped at Taybeh, a town where Jesus went after raising Lazarus from the dead, and which also has a famous brewery. In Jifna, we saw the headquarters from which the Romans operated for an assault on Jerusalem around 70 CE, giving us another glimpse into the empire which has left traces everywhere we’ve visited so far. For lunch, we wandered in the rain through downtown Ramallah, the current political and economic capital of the West Bank, and the struggle between shawarma and falafel continued. Some of us couldn’t resist and opted for a bit of both. We ended by visiting the new Yasser Arafat museum to learn more about the Palestinian leader who tried to make peace with Israel.

While we continue to enjoy the manageable and rewarding challenges of learning some Arabic and living with host families, our conversations with the locals and experiences on our day trips remind us of the much larger, much more sobering issues in the places that surround us. The divide between Israelis and Palestinians seems impossible to bridge—one of our Palestinian lecturers told us that there is “no hope at all in our present situation.” It can certainly feel hopeless to learn about a conflict that began more than 100 years ago and realize that it’s still going on today, with very little progress made.

But in the spirit of making hummus, not walls, let’s end with some of my friends’ favorite Arabic words and phrases they’ve learned recently:

Natalie: yalla — “let’s go,” because it brings back memories of being in Egypt with our guide Samer.

Collin: fi lmišmeš — “when hell freezes over,” or literally, “in the apricot,” because it’s funny.

Jessie: ilbēt bētek — “feel at home,” or literally, “the house is your house,” because it’s really sweet.

Elliott: haġar, wara’a, ʿm’as — “rock, paper, scissors,” because our Jordanian guide Mahmoud’s son taught it to me.

Anisa: waqt — “time,” because it sounds cool.

Luke: yōm saʿīd — “have a good/happy day,” because my host dad smiles whenever I say it to him.

Allison: tšarrafna — “nice to meet you,” because when I get the chance to say it, it means I’ve met someone new.

Daniil: inšālla — “God willing,” because it often implies maybe, maybe not, I’m not in control.

Marianna: rummān — “pomegranate,” because I’ve indulged so much on this trip. Good memories.

Isaac Alderfer: šāy — “tea,” because it’s a part of every day and I need it to function.

Carly: ḥilu — “sweet,” because I’m eating too many kinder bars, the candy is awesome.

Silas: habībi — “friend, lover, or anything in between,” because it was my nickname in Elementary Arabic class.

Karissa: also habībi, because it’s fun to say and you hear it a lot here.

Nealon: hašīš — “grass,” because I like grass.

Rachael: šukran — “thank you,” because it’s the only word I can consistently remember when I try to speak Arabic on the streets.

Isaac Andreas: šwayy — “a little,” because I don’t always want lots.

Erin: mumtaz! — “awesome!” because we’ve seen so many awesome things, so I use it a lot.

-Ben Stutzman

Guatemala: Welcome

“I feel tall,” said Maya as we were talking about what we noticed in Guatemala after a week. I couldn’t help but laugh at her comment because I couldn’t relate and I thought it was comical. I actually feel like I am an average size here in a funny way. In the United States I am shorter [than most], but here I am not the shortest one. I have seen various people of different color, size, height, and languages.

The one difference that I admire and love about this country is the open society it is. Strangers just come up to talk to you and acknowledge your presence. People are so welcoming and friendly. I sometimes wonder if America could ever be that way. While walking around, I see and feel the liveliness this country has. The streets are filled with people, the kids are filling up the playground, the traffic is full of cars and buses filled with people, and there is not a place where people are not gathering.

Despite the corrupt government, tragic history and living conditions, the people in Guatemala open their arms and homes to newcomers. I have experienced that during my stay with my host family and CASAS. They welcomed us as well as encouraged us to learn and understand their country to deepen our connection with them. They also want us to try to learn the language, even if we mispronounce words or speak in Spanglish. I have learned so much about this country already, but there is more to know. I am eager to see what all I’ll learn and see in this beautiful, welcoming country as we continue our travel.

-Liz Huffman

Middle East: Jordan – desert hikes, refugees, and Biblical story

Greetings friends,

Since Graham left off at the Bedouin camp we have seen, heard, smelled and experienced many more new things.

After leaving the camp, we as a group rode on the bus to the small village of Dana where we were to begin our adventure on the Jordan trail.

The Jordan trail goes from Dana down into Petra, and we as a group were extremely fortunate to spend three days hiking on this trail. The first day of hiking was mostly down hill into Feynon, where we spent the night at a beautiful vegetarian eco-lodge which had a pasta dish that changed my life. Day two of hiking was mostly flat and took us through little Petra and to the Seven Wonders Bedouin camp, where we stayed for the night. Our third day of hiking took us through some of Petra itself allowing us to see Petra’s monastery, gorgeous ravines and many, many goats. Continue reading →

Guatemala: The Border

From our first week in Xela, Guatemala and Tapachula, Mexico where we learned about migration throughout Central America into Mexico.

Response to the Border

From the moment we all walked up the steps that over looked the border, I was rendered speechless. I saw sand and graffiti on the buildings and walls and my interest was piqued. As we walked along the wide path into the local community, I noticed people staring at our small group of diverse students. Some of the people in the local community blatantly walked up to members of our group and asked for things such as money or the technology that we had on us, and from that moment forward I had my guard up. As we walked further into the community, I kept noticing the locals checking us and I wondered what ran through their heads and what their impressions of us “Americans” were.

Another thing I noticed was our tour guide (journalist from Mexico who covers the border) checking his surroundings and checking on his camera and personal items. I wondered what it must be like for him, showing us foreigners around the border as people were crossing along the river. I noticed people within our own group getting antsy and wanting to leave. Being there at the border made me think about the hundreds of people that have crossed it or tried to cross it, and in that moment I felt sad for the people who have no choice but to leave their homes and country. I feel anger at the fact that people have to live like this and at the governments/countries at fault.

One of the last things I remember from the border is seeing a woman crossing the river that borders Mexico and Guatemala. It made me think of the stories my mother told me of her time growing up in South Sudan, walking miles along dirt roads with a bucket of water on her head. I thought how different my life could have been. As we parted ways with the journalist I thanked him for being vulnerable enough to show us the border and to be seen with us, regardless of what it might look like to the locals and what their thoughts of him were. His response to me was he feels like “it is his job to show people around the world what is going on in his country, in hope of spreading the word so that people who need it can get help.”

-Rebecca Yugga

Today we visited the border, near the city of Tapachula. Last night when we crossed into Mexico, it was dark, so we couldn’t actually see anything other than the official border crossing.

In the daylight, the stark contrast between the official, legal crossing and the unofficial crossing became much more apparent. At the official crossing, all our bags were checked twice, once for fruits and once for guns. We had to fill out cards with personal information, and we would be fined upon exit if we didn’t have a part of them (the cards). We had to wait in line for 30 minutes to get a stamp in our passports. At an unofficial crossing, it is possible to wade across the river in 15 minutes, or pay a raft 10 Quetzales for a trip across. Even more striking, however was the approximately equal police presence at the legal and the illegal police crossing. The police officer checking my bag for guns could have been strolling down the beach the next day, watching thousands of dollars of goods and hundreds of people cross the river.

It is certainly frustrating watching the governments’ indifference. We were searched twice waited more than an hour total, when we could have crossed the river on a raft like thousands of other people who don’t have the privilege of a powerful passport. To be clear, I’m not complaining about the small inconvenience my group experienced, but rather the arbitrariness of the border and how it is used to stratify people into those with enough money, power, or the right birthplace, and those who have none of those. And the authorities couldn’t care less?

I would cross the border on a raft to send a message. Not that the unofficial crossings should be shut down, but that the official border crossings should be shut down. They serve no purpose other than delegitimizing the economic necessity (of crossing the border daily) for thousands of people, Guatemalans and Mexicans alike.

-Andrew Nord

Middle East: On to Jordan

Since the end of the last blog post by my friend Silas, we’ve explored Egypt further. Since Anafora, we’ve spent a lot of time traveling out and about, flying from Cairo to Luxor and spending two days there with picturesque scenery along the Nile visible right from our hotel room windows and rooftop. Our guide, Samer, took us to explore several historical locations around Luxor – Karnak Temple, Luxor Temple, the Valley of Kings, and the local bazaar, to name a few.

After flying back to Cairo, we also had the opportunity to travel (once again, led by Samer) down to St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai, some several hours’ bus drive where we crossed the Suez Canal into the Sinai peninsula (and from Africa to Asia). Touring the museum there was a fascinating experience, as well – many Christian icons, fine artwork, and old books, all of which were several centuries old, a few well over a thousand years old, which highlights the deep and rich history of the monastery in addition to Christianity itself.

One of the highlights of this week (and the trip to date) was our climb up Mount Sinai on the 23rd; not quite just a walk in the park, with a trail about 2.5 miles long with 750 steps at the end to the peak. It covers a total elevation change of 2,200 feet (with the peak itself being roughly 2.2km, or 7,500 feet, above sea level), but the sunset view at the peak was well worth the hike, in addition to Linford going on at length with several excellent words on Exodus (our assigned Bible reading at the time) and our hiking experience.

The day after our climb up Mount Sinai was a much more relaxed day (in the morning at least) where we drove from St. Catherine to Taba, a small town on the Egyptian side of the Egypt-Israel border, to cross through the very southern tip of Israel over to Aqaba on the Jordanian side, where we stayed the night. Clearing border security in Israel was a very time-consuming affair, but eventually we got across to Jordan, where we ended up waiting some more for our guides and bus. Continue reading →

Guatemala: the highlands

On the road yet again. We’re in the highlands, the north. As we climb higher, the trees begin to look like home. Everything else is different, but the rolling hills, the mountains, and the pine trees echo home. There is not ten feet of straight road. The car wash signs on the side of the road are inexplicable in English. I see Mayan women in traditional dress walking with young children. There is graffiti on the cliff sides, worn away, but still present. We pass old school buses traveling up the mountains and they pass us back traveling down.

There is almost no piece of land that is not in use. Even the steep slopes are marked by the lines where corn and other foods meet. Groups of bikers brave the long climb punctuated at either end by cars or motorcycles for protection. From here the cities look like toy villages, the kind I used to play with as a child. Still there are signs and billboards that break my enchantment, gas prices and tire repairs, fast food and pain relievers, mattresses and resorts, reminds of everything human everything broken and beautiful, pass us by on the road to the border.

-Olivia Dalke

Guatemala: First Impressions

A successful day of travel from EMU was finished with fruit and sandwiches around 10 pm. The next morning we awoke to cool air and hot sunshine. Recorded below are our first, short impressions of Guatemala and CASAS from that first morning.

Akiel: beautiful scenery

Rebecca: I was like “wow”.

Ruth: This place is so beautiful and there’s so much to take in.

Skyy: The night was scary and dark, but the morning is beautiful.

Liz: I just can’t find the words.

Jamie: There are diverse plants here.

Olivia: I feel a closeness with the space that I can’t describe

Lori: I feel back to myself, a whimsical feeling in this open air. Also I love all the succulents.

Kellie: Guatemala is similar to Costa Rica in its life, animals, and people.

Austin: When we arrived last night I noticed how everyone here felt really relaxed, but all the buildings have barbed wire on them.

Theo: I LOVE it. This place is so obviously different and it makes me excited to be here.

Andrew: Its pretty. There’s lots of Spanish and I don’t understand it.

Maya: The courtyard is cared for, but also so free. At night the streets are quiet.

Middle East: Egypt

Has it really only been a week? That’s the question that comes to mind as I write these words in Anaphora, a compound about an hour’s drive from Cairo. It’s a beautifully serene place that offers us time and space to unwind and reflect.

Yes, only a week. Driving away from the farewell crowd at University Commons seems so long ago. After 20 hours of travel, half of which were spent in airports, we were greeted in the capital by our guide Samer (Sah-mair), who welcomed us with oranges, bananas, juice boxes, and flowers (for the ladies). Fortunately, it was nearly 9 PM Egypt time, so we were able to sleep soon after. Jet lag was hardly an issue.

Samer has since led us all over Cairo and Giza, holding his scepter topped with an ankh, the symbol for life, high in the air. In the morning, we saw the Great Pyramids, checking the only surviving Wonder of the Ancient World off of our list. These tombs held the global record for tallest man-made structure for nearly four thousand years, and the engineering plus sheer manpower it would have taken to achieve the stacking of rocks – each weighing multiple tons – is pretty flabbergasting. Our group took in their epochal presence, as well as that of the Sphinx, and moved on to visit a papyrus art gallery, a carpet making school, and a handful of other ruins that are rich in history, yet often overshadowed by the Pyramids.

Continue reading →

Reflections on the China Cross-Cultural

A Conversation Between Mary and Sam

Why China?

To be honest, I just needed to satisfy the cross-cultural requirement. I’m a transfer student, so I didn’t have a lot of options. I decided to sign up at the last minute when my advisor (Mark Sawin) told me it would be a great adventure, and I would come back a changed man.

Since you are a commuter student, what was it like to be thrown into such close encounters with our Cross-Cultural group for over three months?

Most of our CC group early into our trip at one of many temples we would visit

Even though I had been at EMU for a year, I didn’t have any EMU friends outside of class. I work a lot in my family business, and I’ve always lived at home. I didn’t know any of the other students in our group when we left for the airport. But I soon learned to know everyone. I gained some really good friends by coming on this trip.

What surprised you about living in China?

My host brother Robert and I at the top of a drum tower in the ancient city of Langzhong, Sichuan Province

I didn’t know anything about China before the trip. I expected things to be super difficult. I thought our housing and transportation would be more primitive. I didn’t know we would be traveling on modern high speed trains that could go over 300 kilometers per hour and living in brand new apartments that were nicer than my brother’s housing at JMU.

Tell me about the relationships you formed in China.

My friend M and I posing for a photo specifically for his WeChat “Moments” social media post

I thought going to my host family would be awkward, but they were really great. My host brother was eight and was fun to hang out with. He liked to play Mario Cart. I made a couple of good friends who were students at our university. I met “M” at an English major meeting. We played ping pong and basketball together, ate out, walked around and talked about stuff. Once our group was traveling far from Nanchong, and I couldn’t find anything to eat. I complained to M on We Chat (the Chinese instant messaging platform everyone uses) and he sent me an order of dumplings delivered to the hotel!

What will you take away from this experience?

I learned that American money goes a long way in China. I learned that the Chinese can be some of the kindest people on the planet—they were really helpful and good to me. I learned about China’s long history and current politics.

So are you coming back a different person?

I have a new appreciation for some things I’ve taken for granted, like the American school system (the Chinese system is very stressful and rigorous) and certain “luxuries” like clean drinking water and reliable electricity. I gained a new taste pallet for foods I never had before, like dry hot pot and pomelo (which is like an enormous grapefruit). I learned that even in a new culture that is so different than my own, there are still so many similarities: people are people.

—Samuel Snead IV

China: Expanding Identity

Dec. 9, 2018

I am 22 and am adopted from China – well, my mother has to remind me that I was adopted because “adopt” is a verb, not a constant state of being.

I chose to go to China for my EMU cross-cultural long before college, even though I had already visited there in 2012 with my family. My brother was studying in China, so my parents felt it was the best opportunity to visit the three girls’ orphanages where my sisters and I came from.

During my visit to China with my family, the experiences I had changed what I knew of myself before. I was constantly told that I had such good English. Or people spoke to me in Chinese, expecting me to understand. Once, I even had a woman say to me, in Chinese (which my brother could understand), how it was so amazing that someone so young (I was sixteen at the time) was taking foreigners around China.

From these multiple encounters, I felt like I was a “fake” Chinese person, particularly since I didn’t know the language. I explored the term “Chinese-American,” but what I found did not sound like my story. I felt more American-Chinese. Chinese-American families usually involved several generations, where the kids’ grandparents and parents teach them Chinese culture and language. Their other family members looked like them, and they knew exactly where they came from. I didn’t feel Chinese, even though I looked “Chinese.”

I hoped that going to China for a semester would help me find the missing cultural piece of myself. I took the Mandarin course last year in preparation for the cross-cultural. Little did I know what was coming…

Once again, I found myself immersed in a place where I could only say, “thank you” and “my name is….” Our EMU group took Chinese language classes, studied Chinese history and learned on the go. So much new learning about China hit me hard, and it made me feel very defeated.

Most people in China do not understand the concept of adoption. It was difficult to explain it to my host mom and for her to explain it to others, such as taxi drivers, dance moms/dads, store clerks, restaurant workers, family members and grandparents.

I was put into a host family, whose first response to me was “Oh, I think our girls (6 year-old twins) will be a bit disappointed when they meet you next weekend,” since I didn’t look like a foreigner. And in fact my host sisters kept forgetting that I was a foreigner/American so they would speak to me in Chinese. Even 6-year-old Chinese was far more advanced than anything I had learned in my one semester of Chinese at EMU. So, that did not help me come to peace with my lack of “Chinese-ness”. College students would also tell me that I “look” Chinese. I had to confront this all semester.

There were times when I did not want to go to my host family’s [home] or felt embarrassed and scared about even going to the grocery store because of the looks I would get when I came up to a clerk with my Google translator or my broken Chinese vocabulary. When I was with EMU classmates, salespeople or restaurant workers assumed that I could translate or order for the foreigners, but I didn’t have enough vocabulary to explain my situation in terms they would understand. In the end, as one way to cope with the constant bombardment of feeling inadequate as a “Chinese”, I would use only English so as not to confuse native speakers into thinking I knew any Chinese at all.

But from this semester I have learned quite a bit about myself. These lessons are not from just my experiences, but from observing people in my cross-cultural group. The support I have received through this semester has been such a light at the end of my own tunnel of singular thoughts about my own identity. Even though I did not learn as much Chinese or become as fully “Chinese” as I initially thought I would, I have started to change my mindset and idea of what it means for me to be Chinese. Through the great support of my family at home and my cross-cultural friends and leaders, I am beginning to take a different approach to how I see myself as Chinese. For me, it will be a nonlinear path of growth. This cross-cultural is only a small part in my journey of self-acceptance.

-Claire Waidelich

EMU Intercultural Learning