And then it hits me in the face

The couple of weeks since I returned in April have felt much harder than my first few weeks back in January. With the school year here getting on, UP players have weirder schedules to accommodate their many exams. This means that UP practices change, cancel, and more.

In a couple difficult situations, I've switched up my communication and relation style from democratic to autocratic. One example is with the "coaches in training" in the West Bank, where the CIT program doesn't run like it does in Israel (the reasons for which I'll save for another post). But in my effort to have a meeting with West Bank CITs, I'm meeting resistance. After weeks of trying the more consensus-building style ("when can you meet?"), I decided that making things "mandatory" might change it a bit. We'll see next Saturday when the CITs are "required" to meet to talk about the year. 

I'm also getting odd messages about practices in the West Bank. Players have tests, people are busy with other sports, the fields are being renovated/unavailable. I recently went on a personal visit to one of the CITs workplaces to ask about this chaos. After feeling like I got nowhere with him, I walked out of the shop and into the sidewalk. Where I was immediately struck in the face by a flapping Palestinian flag. It very well could have been an Israeli flag, in that I feel like I'm getting hit with a real dose of the difficulty of working in the Middle East.

Selfie with Jerusalem in the background: