End of the teaching week

Tomorrow I will be at Al-Mustaqbal again so today was the last teaching day of the week. I have three classes with just about enough time between them to make the journey's across the city. The first being in the old city, the second at Balata and the thrird in New Askhar. The day was the same as usual for a Wednesday. First class great, hardly any students showed up at Balata (3 this time) and the class at the end fantastic. One difference was that I had a volunteer that I hadn't met before. The guy teaches about Islam at An-Najah Univeristy and has just completed his masters degree in Islamic History. Like all students here his first degree took him 4 years (his masters degree also took 4 years!) It is normal that students spend longer to complete their degrees here than at home. This seems to be partly because on all courses the first year is a general overview of everything in a related field and then specialisation starts in the second year. Many students got to Jordan to complete degrees then return home to Nablus.

I had often wondered if the Al-Quds Open University here is the same format as the OU study I have completed at home and it is indeed the same. It was the first distance/ home study university in the arab world. I have met one person who has studied there but the majority attend An-Najah, the national university which is based in Nablus.

This weekend I will be going to Jerusalem on Thursday evening in preparation for attending a Breaking the Silence Tour on Friday morning. The tour is South of the city of Hebron and delivered by former IDF soldiers that have served in the area. I heard about this the last time I was here and everyone that has been on the tour has commented on how good it is and well worth the effort.

Next Saturday I will be assisting with a 3 hour social justice workshop that will be run from Project Hope. There will be around 30-40 children from the various camps attending, those that have had previous lessons on social justice delivered by the Project Hope co-ordinator for this subject. I was only asked to do this yesterday so I have been trying to think of ideas for the day. We have a projector and laptops so a short film is a possibility. Ideally I would like to show the Amnesty International animated UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) but so far I can't find an Arabic version. I've found it in Zulu and 10 langauges I'd never heard of but not Arabic!