After our crazy time in Jerusalem we spent one night at the Tent of Nations. This piece of farm land is situated on a hilltop in Palestine, surrounded by Israeli settlements on other hilltops nearby. It belongs to a Palestinian Christian family who have legal papers for the land dating back to the Ottoman Empire. Israel wants to take the land for more settlements, but is unable to because of the legal papers. So they've resorted to cutting off this family from water, electricity and access to public roads. We had to pile out of our rickety old bus and scramble over two huge roadblocks to reach the driveway (all this while wearing our big backpacks of course).
We spent the afternoon helping out around the farm--putting up tents, clearing rocks from land...I found myself digging holes with a pickaxe thing and making a rock wall around some trees. But my work was soon interrupted by a cute little blond girl--Stella! Her family was from Holland and also helping out at the camp. Needless to say, I probably spent as much time playing and adventuring with her (and Sarah Iskander) as I did working that night. She did my make-up, bright pinks and purples...and then later at dinner Reyn asked me if someone had punched me in the eye.
After class debrief, campfire songs and stargazing, we went back to our tents for the night. It was freezing cold (even though it was March), and we each had one tiny scrap of material for a "blanket." To make it worse, the inside of the tent (where all 15 of us girls slept) collected condensation all night and rained down on us. Also Leah (God bless her) snored all night...so basically, I didn't sleep at all. Neither did anyone else. We would all kind of sit up every few hours and talk about how mad we were that we weren't sleeping and how freaking cold it was, etc. Bonding?
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