Culture-shock

After spending less than two days in Jerusalem I can already say this has been quite a culture-shock... Especially for somewhone who has never been outside Europe! The world we entered yesterday cannot be compared to home in Holland. Everything is different; languages, alphabet, weather, food, houses, nature, social values, ... Jerusalem is quite an outstanding place to be, having all kinds of religion mixed in one city. We walked around in the old part of the city yesterday and today, taking in all these colours, sounds and smells. We enjoyed a good cup of Palestinian coffee (which is so strong that you won't be sleepy for the next four hours...) and a good nagila (waterpipe), and met some really interesting people. What kind of hit me was actually seeing the wall outside Jerusalem, dividing Palestine from the rest. An eight meter high concrete fence. Today we also did some serious rehearsing to get our music to a higher level and talked about how we expect the workshops to go, though that is (at least for those who weren't here last year) quite hard to imagine or plan. I've started to get to know this country but I already feel that we can really do some nice things for the kids we'll be visiting.

'till next weblog - Ryanne