Browsing Category

Palestine

4 In Middle East/ Palestine/ Trip Guide

Visiting a Hammam in the West Bank, Palestine

I’m sitting half naked surrounded by a group of Palestinian women, many of whom would traditionally be covered with a hijab and jilbab. It feels very much like I’ve stepped into some hidden world. It’s 100 degrees (40 Celsius), and I’m sweating and drinking hibiscus tea in a hammam steam room in Ramallah, Palestine. The women are all singing and clapping. I can’t tell if this is the normal hammam experience or if they are celebrating an engagement or impending wedding. It’s an odd experience to be sitting with them like this. All of us sweating half naked as they celebrate and we attempt to speak and interact. My broken Arabic isn’t getting me far but we laugh and smile at each other through the steam anyways.

Continue Reading →

0 In Israel/ Middle East/ Palestine/ Trip Guide

Tel Aviv and Jaffa

Top 10 things to do/see in Tel Aviv*:

1. Rent a bicycle
2. Carmel Market
3. Old Jaffa/Jaffa Port
4. Florentine neighborhood
5. Nachlat Benyamin Arts and Crafts Fair
6. Rothschild Boulevard
7. Benedict’s: Breakfast 24/7
8. Neve Tzedek neighborhood
9. Any cafe’ in the city
10. Steal one of the adorable Tel Aviv dogs and head to the beach**

*I realize there are so many wonderful things to see/do/eat in Tel Aviv, these were just my top 10 favorite.
**No animals were (successfully) stolen in the writing of this blog post.

Continue Reading →

0 In Israel/ Jordan/ Middle East/ Palestine/ Stories and Reflections

Away we go: from Central Asia to the Middle East

A year ago I fell prey to one of those silly internet bucket lists. You know, the ones titled “10 Things Every 25 year-old Should Know” or “96238347 Places to Visit Before 30”. At first you feel inspired and then you just feel like a couch potato doing nothing while everyone else figures out all the bullet points to being a real adult. I hate those. Around the same time I read an article about how writing down goals makes you more likely to accomplish them. Feeling both inspired, agitated, and in a bit of a standstill with life I decided to write down 25 things I’d like to do while I’m 25. I’m stubborn, so as I wrote down numbers one, two and twenty-one I knew I’d do them even if friends thought it was a bit overly ambitious. Now folding 1000 paper cranes, I don’t know how I ever thought I could actually do that.

Continue Reading →