Happy New Year!

Yesterday I took a trip to Ramallah with two alums and a current sophomore. With us traveling from Jerusalem was a Palestinian student, and we met up with two more Palestinian students in Ramallah. We walked around, we saw the loud, crowded, bustling, jaywalking center of town, and we also had a quiet lunch. Walking back to the bus, we bumped into a massive rally, where thousands upon thousands of people were gathered. Soldiers marched down the street, armed and in full uniform behind a marching band, and bystanders lined the side of the road and climbed street lights. The rally, we found out later, was for the 50th anniversary of the Fatah party, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority. Walking through the rally definitely made me very tense, but meeting the wonderful Palestinian students and staff allowed the entire day to be an excellent journey and a great success.

In the middle of the twenty-five minute ride from Ramallah to Jerusalem, everyone has to get off the bus and go through the checkpoint, displaying the appropriate paperwork to the officials. Every other time I've been through checkpoints, I've been waved through. This time I had to wait in line, waiting for the little light to flash green, with everybody else.