Not even borders can prevent us from meeting!!!

Saturday

We had a good night sleep! We slept for as much as we wanted... Hour passed until all awoke. Then we found that it's raining outside. And we had in mind Bob Marly sang by Katerina 'the sun is shining and the weather is fine...'

We thought about adding a small dictionary the will explain in simple language our way of speech.

“You know“:
Is a Fraze that must be added in the beginning of a sentence, or at the end, or just in the middle... You got the idea...

“I'm so sure!“:
I believe it could be... Maybe.... Let's talk about it...

“HABIBI FALAFEL“:
§!“$=(!%;:_*

“Believe me“ follows by an emotional expression like I love him:
I'm just kidding

“It's going to be snowing tomorrow“
German didn't understand a singe thing of the Arabic language that was spoken around

“One Two Seven!“
One Two Three

So!

We also had a meeting in which we had brought some disagreements into a solution. At list for some time. We had talk about the way we present the situation in the middle east to a class, or in the future to other people, while we satisfy each others opinions.

Now...

Afterwords at the after noon we had a guest from Syria!! Amira's friend.
That was an exiting meeting because I couldn't have met him in Israel and neither can Amira, and the same goes for him. So we couldn't have met each other in our own countries.

This was happening while the others where doing some acrobatics. And afterwords in the evening at 6 o'clock the conference began with a dinner. The dinner was followed by a lecture by Mr. Valentin Vollmer from IDEM. He was speaking about the stage where humanity is standing in it's progress, and compared it with the different stages of individual growth (e.x. childhood, youth etc.).

As individuals grow, they at first shaped by outer influences (religion, social status, etc.). One can pomper this state with the state of childhood. At our time those outer influences are shading off, and humanity is at it's youth.

We always meet those outer influences throught other human beings. And they are gone away all that stairs is our own individuality, our own I.

He also spoke about the way we think of ideas. He mentioned how one can think of ideas as thoughts that are coming from the future. For example when the organisers of this conference thought of it for the first time it was two and a half years ago. So from this example we can see that the idea existed already in the future, or wanted be born in reality. He offered us o think of ideas in this way.

As you can see we where very impressed from the lecture and wrote about it in great details!!!

written by Gadi and the help of Charlotte and Amira

friday in Botrop

A friday in Botrop

I never thought that I will ever visit Botrop, but the reason to come to this town was good. Alia and her mother Hannan, her father...and her sisters Farah,...,...,...and her brothers:....and Jamil and Farah´s husband....are living there.
Alia´s parents where born in Lebanon and raised there and immigrated to Gremany 21 years ago. After the family Hamad visited us in my mothers home allready we where now hosted from them like kings. We had a big delicious palestinian meal and our guys where eating a lot as they where so happy to get arabic food like at home again.
We had a lot of conversations under each other and exchanged about, life in Germany Palestine, Israel and Lebanon.
So wonderful to be reseved by you my friends! Thank you so much!

8 hours in the car!!!!!

As it was the last day for us in the school, we cleaned everything and kept the place very tidy and clean. We had closing session where we shared our opinions at what we experienced so far and other many things. Then we danced our last dabka dancing in front of the main gate of the school and said goodbye to Fiona, Claudius and Rachel, as they didn't come with us to the other town, Paderborn. We had three cars; we put in them food, the bags and ourselves. You should see how we looked, FULL cars. We started our journey at 2 and we had 3 stops in the way because it was too much for us to handle, on the high way with hot weather. Finally we arrived at Schloss Hamborn, Paderborn at 10:30 P.M. of corse after this long tiring day we had our Arabic supper, Fried eggs with oil and Zatar, and then we went to sleep.
This picture was taken from the car tha I was in with Katharine and Majd. and these two cars are Jacob's and Annie's having a race on the high ways of Germany.....(Just kidding, it was just annie overtaking jacob)

BBQ but this time without raining!!!!!

Early in the morning the school where we were staying had the last day of school festival, the school was full of people and we were there in the festival. We got dressed and went to Hildegard Schumann house who prepared for us delicious food and drinks, Thank you Mme. We were invited at the end of the day and after swimming in the lake to Jacob's family to have BBQ, they set the fire circle with lots of food, drinking, singing and telling jokes. It was really funny and nice and this time it didn't rain. Thank God. Finally Claudius and Rafaela took us to a party, which is traditional to happen after schools finish for high school students in the middle of the forest with fire in the middle and loud Dj Music.

Went to South Africa and came back!!!

Early in the morning at 8 o'clock, Gadi, Firas, Jacob and I went to one class to talk to them,
it was a very special and interesting class because we were sitting three people presenting three different kinds of living and culture and religion from Israel and Palestine, Gadi as an Israeli Jewish, Firas as a Palestinian Muslim living in Israel, me as a Palestinian Christian who lives in Palestine and finally Jacob as a Germany. After all the tense that was in that class we had our breakfast and went to Fiona's house who took our cloth and washed them in her house, THANK YOU FIONA AND FAMILY. We had nice time there playing, eating, talking and learning more about the violin and the Chello and how Fiona's father makes them. At supper we were invited by South African people who were visiting that area, so we went by Viola's car, Fiona's dad car and Annie's car to a near area, but in the way to there viola's car wheel was not anymore good for use ( I don't know the word in English and not even any of the people here, but in means in Arabic BANSHAR the wheel hahahahahaha.....). Any way we put the spare wheel and we went to a station to get it fixed. However, we made it and arrived to a handicap institution where there was a circus performance for the handicap people. Later we went to have supper together with the South African group. At the end of this lovely day we gathered all the two groups in the big hall and we danced each one danced and taught his own way of dancing, we danced dabka, I danced belly dancing, the African group danced nice African dancing and some girls taught us Greek dancing.

Cultural Night wohoooo!!!!

It was a really very busy day, in the morning we had a lot of practicing on dancing dabka and singing and preparing the ingredients of the food as we had that night a cultural night which we invited a lot of people to it the days before. Gadi and I went to classrooms to talk to students about our experience and about what we are doing in Germany. We had lunch, immediately after it some of us went to a farm to work in and some of us stayed at the school stayed to prepare things for the cultural night that we had. At 6.30 we gathered to have an early supper so as we can prepare and get dressed to welcome the visitors. We started our night with a song called zoom gali, guitar by Samuel and durbakeh by Ahmad. It talks about love and peace and building bridges (the aim of our trip). Then Jacob had a little introduction and each one of us introduced himself in front of all the people, after that Jacob also had a presentation about Palestine and Israel with pictures on the power point. Claudius, Samuel, Firas, Majd, Bilal, Motasem and Ahmad performed dabka dancing, I bet that they all were very happy and glad to see the Palestinian folklore dancing and to see German people dancing it. Then we had a break for about 25 min where we served Arabic food such as Falafel, Freekeh, teheeneh and Arabic coffee. They loved it all so much even most of the people came back to have more food. Later I sang an Arabic famous song which talks about missing home after being long time away, this song originally was sang by Fayrooz, a Lebanese famous singer, and its called "nassam alayna il hawa". At the end Gadi and I went another time on stage and talked about personal experience as an Israeli and a Palestinian. Immediately after that Motasem played the bagpipe on the sound of durbakeh by Ahmad. At the end of this amazing night all of us with the people there danced dabka, we taught them that dabka and I bet you that they liked it so much. People were very impressed by our performances and they donated to us with some money and a lot of food, we thank everybody for everything and greetings to Hildegard Schumann, who donated a lot of food and invited us to have lunch on Wednesday in her house and also to Fiona ` s family who also invited us to have lunch in their lovely house.

a tour in the car