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Tomorrow, March 23rd, Addison and I make our way to Jerusalem to meet the rest of our delegation and truly “begin” our trip. Tonight we are in Ramallah once again. Actually, we are in Jifna which is a small village outside of Ramallah. We are staying at the home of Issa and Rawda Khouriya – and I have to say that this is the best night of our trip so far.
We arrived Saturday afternoon, March 19th, and picked up my luggage – Addison’s was still in New York. We provided the airlines with the phone number of our friends in Haifa, as we planned to travel to Haifa on Sunday afternoon. We caught a sherut to Jerusalem for the first leg of our trek to Ramallah, where we had a room arranged for the evening. A sherut is a shared taxi, basically a minibus that leaves when it is full. It is less expensive than a special taxi, or private taxi, but, also is the only transportation available on the Sabbath, which it was when we arrived.
We arrived at the Damascus gate in the old city and headed to the Arab bus station in order to catch our bus to Ramallah. What we didn’t know is that for some reason Saturday was special and things weren’t working the way we had been instructed they would. We were told the bus we wanted was not available and put on another bus. We took this bus and it stopped at what we now know to be the Qalandia crossing, but at the time we were pretty clueless. The bus stopped, everyone got off and started walking. We would’ve started walking as well, had we not been stopped by an enterprising special taxi driver. He offered to drive us through the gate into Ramallah to where we needed to go. He also asked for 150 shekels – which is a LOT of money for a taxi ride (about $50). We bargained away with me threatening to walk several times. We finally agreed on a price, and although it still may have been too much, I didn’t realize until today why he and others had been so concerned about my insistence on walking through the gate. Given the option to driving through the gate, we struck a good deal.
Even so, getting through Qalandia gate and into Ramallah was no picnic. Keep in mind that, for the most part, one is not checked when one is headed INTO the West Bank – therefore, one would think that it would be an easy crossing. However, something was happening Saturday afternoon and it took at least 2 hours to navigate through Qalandia gate, through the entrance roads into Ramallah, and to then find where we were headed. We finally found it, got some food and settled in for the evening.
Sunday, we were slated to attend services at Ramallah Friends Meetinghouse in the morning, and then to find our way to Haifa to meet with some friends there. We awoke 30 minutes before services began, and rushed to get ready. We took a taxi the several blocks to the meeting house, and then spent a good 15 – 20 minutes trying to find the meeting house. In Ramallah there are no street signs – and almost all the signs that do exist are in Arabic.
[Yes, this story isn't complete and you have been left hanging. More will be sent and posted soon. - ed.]
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