Snow day

Lots of weather goin round. You've got weather, your Facebook friends have weather, and the Jerusalem area has weather, too. I guess snow days are the same all around the world - at least when they happen to places that rarely get snow...

First of all, the 48 hours preceding the winter storm have only been people talking about the weather coming at the end of the week. When would they close the roads, when would the snow start, how long would it stay... that line of forecasting and guesstimating. Well everyone was right!

The snow started after a couple hours of rain, around midnight. It stuck to the ground overnight and we woke up to a few inches. I immediately took pictures and this video. Then talked to a couple nearby friends about when/where to meet up for the mandatory trouble-making, feet-numbing outdoors time.



While trouble-making, I found the village post office - its actually an outdoor post office box thing, like the kind you'd have in the middle of a large apartment complex. And it sits right in front of the village mosque. Also made some snow balls and threw them at basically everyone/everything.

This trouble-making reminded me of middle school when me and my friends were really into pegging moving cars with the grenade-sized buds from magnolia trees. Yikes. After trouble-making, friends and I retired to my tiny apartment for coffee (lots of it), tea, beer, cider, soup, olives, hummus, pasta, and sugar wafers.

And capped it off with two hours watching The Princess Bride.

What am I doing here?

There is plenty of fodder for pessimism here.

• My first day here someone said "I do not want to play at the camp because [when I'm there] I feel I am playing with my enemy"
• Today, someone said "Peace is not in my vocabulary." And this is someone at an organization that facilitates visitation to the region. They followed it up by insisting that the word peace is overused and therefore has lost meaning, not so much that peace is impossible. They prefer to talk about human rights rather than peace per se
• The news basically everywhere talks only of events that induce fear and further entrenchment on one side or the other

So what am I doing here? (exploring the streets of Jerusalem though obviously not shaving)

• Promoting ultimate and fun - many experts on human and social development note the importance of playing 
• A la Patch Adams, I twisted a couple balloon bears on the inter-city bus today and handed them to the ~six year old next to me. He was so dang polite and thankful!
• Visiting schools, gyms, and places where people play and play sports
• Today in one of the squares of old Jerusalem, a friend and I threw the frisbee with three different groups of guys - only a few minutes apart, groups of Arabs and Israelis were happily tossing with us
• Studying Arabic, both in books and in the cafes/markets/taxis/living rooms around me

Do we have good reason to be optimistic? Even if we don't have "reason" to be, might we be optimistic because of faith or deep-seeded hope?

What's actually been happening? Part 1

In the middle of September, my friend Matt and I went out on the Atlanta Beltline for some catching up. Our routine is to walk -or ride our bikes- up and back on the northeast section. So I mentioned to him being interested in international work, connecting it in part to what I did with the Carter Center last summer. In turn, Matt offers to introduce me to Rebecca, a friend of his who worked for NDI, another international elections observer group.

So Matt loops Rebecca and I together on email. Rebecca and I set up a phone conversation to get talking. And during our 30-minute talk on October 1st, she encourages me to seize the moment (meaning spring semester 2014 and maybe beyond) - why wait to get the kind of experience I'm saying interests me. Part of the argument is that organizations are looking for people to show their value before those people ask for a salary. And the other argument is that I'm not as old as I think I am (and that regretting not getting this experience at 23 isn't useful).

So once Rebecca and I are off the phone, I mull over what she said. Something clicks. A couple days later email David of Ultimate Peace about making this real. Side note: this was something David and I (along with Sarah VW) talked about back in 2011 - supporting the organization in developing the programs and doing it more like full-time.

By the following Sunday, David and I get on the phone together. Luckily, I had contacted him just ahead of Club Nationals, a tournament in Dallas that was coordinating with the Ultimate Hall of Fame induction ceremony (same city and weekend). David was going to be there -- to himself be inducted! This was the perfect opportunity to meet in the middle of the country and discuss, with Linda present, the opportunity ahead. So only two weeks after talking with Rebecca about seizing the moment, I met with Linda and David to make a real plan for making the move. And that folks is the start of what's been happening!

"Abdul Play"

I recently visited a cabin in north Georgia with Sara and friends from my graduate school program. The ten of us planned to meet at the house in the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

On the way up there Friday night, Sara and I hit some traffic and ended up stopping for groceries after the sun went down. With the week's stress behind us physically, I decided to sit right there in the Food Lion parking lot and meditate. Basically I wanted to rest, and start the weekend relaxed.

Within those couple of minutes, of course several cars drove by. One truck even parked directly in front of us, shining headlights on our probably-odd-looking practice of consciously resting inside the car. And as my thoughts wandered around my day and week, words and sensations started increasing their pace. I briefly felt my legs where they were. And then it happened: 

The words (that I can transliterate as) ABD-ALTAL3AB popped into my head. And before leaving them alone, I questioned where these came from. Why would I would think  those words? Taken together, this roughly means SLAVE OF PLAY... someone who is dedicated to playing. I immediately connected the thought to my ambition to volunteer more seriously with Ultimate Peace in 2014. 

What was really odd about the thought in that moment was that I had never heard this phrase before. Its actually improper Arabic - but the meaning gets across. The second part combines the verb TO PLAY with an article that only accompanies nouns. 

And even crazier that, here on my blog, my most recent post was from last summer at Ultimate Peace camp - and about fun!