“This wall is not Trump’s wall. This is our wall. This is how we as a country choose to mark our border.” I know my words cannot do justice to the week we spent at the U.S./Mexico border, so I figured I might as well start with someone else’s. This was said by Mark Adams,....
Israel-Palestine: the Jesus Trail and alternate narratives in the West Bank
Walking the Jesus Trail – Lindsay Acker I loved the Jesus Trail. It was really hard physically and at times I wanted nothing more than to fall over and stay down. When we sat down for lunch or at ruins, it was so hard to stand up. It was more physically draining than anything I’ve ever....
ISRAEL-PALESTINE: Three Weeks in Bethlehem
Let’s talk about car horns In the US, a honking horn almost always expresses anger—get out of my way, you cut me off—that sort of thing. Don’t get me wrong, that happens in Bethlehem as well, but a honk can mean so much more here: Warning, I’m behind you on a small street I want....
ISRAEL-PALESTINE: Desert life and reflections
Why aren’t more people using THESE alternative energy sources? Throughout our time at Kibbutz K’tura the group has listened to several lectures and participated in a variety of Kibbutz activities. Perhaps the most memorable for me was the visit to K’tura’s “Off the Grid” village. As an initiative stemming from the strong emphasis on environmentalism....
ISRAEL-PALESTINE: Warm Desert Greetings
(“warm” = 100°+ degrees) Hu is He, He is She! Hello from the Negev Desert! It’s hot. Last week it was 100 degrees at 8:00pm and they told us “a heat wave is coming”. It got up to 114° two days later… a bit much for a Kansas girl. Bleary-eyed and exhausted from the first....
ISRAEL-PALESTINE: First Steps in Israel: Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Jisr Az Zarqa, Jericho
Sore Feet Saturday, September 2, 2017: Tel Aviv, Jaffa Shalom! Here we are in Tel Aviv, Israel. Our feet have carried us for 29 hours in this exotic city. My first impressions of this land: The sand is hot, the sun brilliant, the skin leather. I feel as if our foreign presence is obvious. We....
RADICAL EUROPE: The Journey Home
We arrived in Berlin on Sunday evening and began our city exploration the following morning. During our time in Berlin, we visited Wittenberg to see the home and church of Martin Luther. However, more important than the places we visited is the idea of the Cross Cultural program itself. On our final night in Berlin, we....
RADICAL EUROPE: Free Travel Explorations
Free travel has been the part of this cross cultural I have been so excited for since before we left! Three of my peers and I were originally going to go to Geneva, Switzerland, but there were a sudden change of plans. So, we decided to go to Lyon, France for our 3.5 days. We....
NAVAJO NATION: Homestays
Our cross-cultural (CC) group split into three smaller groups for five-night homestays with local Diné (Navajo) families on the reservation. All three homestays were in Leupp, which is a very small town near the reservation border. My group consisted of six guys who stayed in a modernized off-grid hogan. Hogans were a traditional round housing....
