My computer went into the shop, came back, and is now back into the shop. Keep your fingers crossed!

I have three more movies to post about, so this will have to be fast!

Tulpan

A young Kazakh man returns home after time in the Russian navy. He finds that stories of octopi and of his grades on basic training aren't enough to distract the only young woman in the area from his very large ears. He faces the realization that the great things he has done are of no use in finding a bride or learning to shepherd. Ultimately, he decides not to run away to the city but rather to stay on the steppe for whatever might come. The highlight was the multiple scenes of the protagonist and his best friend riding a tractor at about 5 mph down the steppe blaring Boney M's Rivers of Babylon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ovJo9WgEEg

57000 km Entre Nous

The teenage daughter has some kind of middle-aged borderline sex-slave. Creepily, he acts like a baby as she watches from her bedroom. This relationship comes to a head when this man comems to a dinner party at her parents' house, not knowing that she lived there. She corners him in the background, and ends up riding him out to crash the dinner party. Her other relationship is with a teenage boy with cancer. Never having met him, she looks online and finds that there are 57000 km between them (significantly more than the circumference of the Earth - a sign of just how far you can be from someone). Finally, one day they come up with the idea for her to take her webcam outside on her forehead so he can experience both her world and the world at all. Ultimately, he leads her to his hospital, where she sees him in a window, and tells him that there's nothing there, just a hospital, and some creepy man watching her through the window. 57000 km, n'est pas?

In French, but still interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwkwnarOnp8

Well, this has been a busy and tiring weekend! I get up very early for me, usually a little before seven. Naturally, I can't quite convince myself to go to bed on time to get enough sleep, so I've sort of just resigned myself to a sleep deficit all week. Luckily, on Friday mornings like today I get to sleep in.

I've been to a lot of movies lately! Here are some thoughts:

Sleep Dealer

This is a very interesting movie depicting Mexico and the USA about 50 years in the future. Some American company has a water monopoly over increasingly poor farmers in Oaxaca. The protagonist leaves home to become a 'node worker' in Tijuana - someone who works remotely in America via the internet. Along the way, he meets a 'writer'. In fact, she uploads her memories for sale on the internet, and we get to watch her deal with the guilt of publicizing the story of your love for profit. This leads to one of the worst scenes in the movie, where the two lovers have a stupid "Why didn't you tell me?" "I wanted to, I was going to" scene about her uploading. Spoiler alert: next paragraph.

The movie ends with some beautiful escapism as a guilt-ridden American latino, who piloted a flight to kill the protagonist's father as an assumed 'aquaterrorist', decides to join the other side, and blow up the dam that has such a stranglehold on the protagonist's home. Cute.

In summary, the movie had a nice conception, some beautiful moments, really neat environments like Oaxaca, the building sites, and the node bar in Tijuana. On the other hand, there was that dumb "why didn't you tell me?" scene and the ultimately unsatisfying ending. In deference to Michael, I will give a letter grade too. In respect for the movie's high goals, I'll give a B+.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804529/

Here's a long-ish clip on youtube, with lots of Spanish commentary:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=UE_4kNQ7poQ

The Ran Quadruplets

This was a pretty lame collection of episodes of what is supposed to become a TV series. It is a mockumentary of 4 quadruplets who are now in their 30's. It has too much sex, is never-ending cliche, and is boring. It's like watching the Big Chill except with too much sex and you don't care about the characters. One better point was the gay husband's relationship with his wife, his male lover, and the choices that he has to make. At points there, I actually cared about this character! Also, one sex scene in a bathroom is very funny. The playboy of the quadruplet is back to Israel from America and having sex in a bar's bathroom. The woman he's with tells him that she was the one girl in school that he never got together with, but then gets to the middle of the act to take revenge by walking out and telling him that they had been together, and he's just forgotten.

Here's a critical little blog post about the series:

http://southjerusalem.com/2008/07/sex-in-the-israeli-city-the-ran-quadruplets-couple-and-bore/

Here's a piece that is about as confused and inane as the movie / series:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/991997.html

Michael: C-, only if you can bother yourself to work up the right ironic mood, otherwise it's even worse.

I was reading in the New York Times about Obama and Israel and American Jews this morning, and talking about Zionist history with a friend Lisa from the hostel, and I started to wonder, "What is the actual range of opinion among American Jews on Israeli and broader Middle Eastern politics?" and then I find a few numbers at the same blog from above.

http://southjerusalem.com/2008/07/mr-obama-did-you-pack-these-bags-yourself/

A lot of this conversation, of course, is based on Obama's now-famous speech to AIPAC a little while ago. It's worth comparing what Obama says here to this group with what American Jews as a whole think? Does Obama really need to go after the most hawk-ish 20% of American Jews? He certainly doesn't do that with the most hawk-ish 20% of, say, Christians! I highly recommend watching it:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0cOJNC2EuJw

Until next time!

The Jerusalem Film Festival started Thursday, which has been a plain delight. The first film we went to was The King of Ping Pong, a coming of age movie involving an absentee alcoholic father set in northern Sweden. I absolutely recommend it, especially for the gorgeous nature shots during bits of the action.

More interesting was the second movie we got out to see: The Heart of Jenin. Ismael Khatib's son accidentally ran out in front of Israeli soldiers and was shot dead. Ismael, a former militant, decided to donate his sons organs, and some ended up in Jewish Israeli children, as well as one Bedouin Israeli child. The documentary had a few great moments. The father of the Bedouin child joking about how he works as an electrician but has no electricity at home. The funniest and most poignant was when Khatib and Levinson (Jerusalemite father of an organ recipient) met for the first time. Levinson asked what the situation was like in Jenin, and he got a unsurprisingly pessimistic answer. Speaking through his interpreter, he asked Khatib why if the situation is so bad in Jenin he doesn't just emigrate, like to Turkey or America? An astounding question, and Khatib responds to his interpreter, why doesn't he just leave? We had a long conversation about how faithfully we imagined the film-makers portrayed this scene. Levinson came out from that line looking much the worse, but we weren't there for the scene in real life, huh?

I'll post more soon about other movies!

This morning left three of the people I've been spending the most time with: the two American-Thais, Derek and John, and Mike the Angle. The first two are headed on to Egypt, while Mike is returning to England. It was really sad to see them go, though we've already had a number of new people show up, and I can only hope we'll have as good a time coming up as I've had recently.

A few food notes: maT3am al-3aayid right down the street from me, where I eat out most, has the most delicious 'almond juice' that they sell. It's something like almond milk, and, though not cheap, really good.

Last night Derek, John, Amy, and I went up to Ramallah to take it in a little bit and get some ice cream at Rukab. We met the nicest pair of people there, spent like an hour talking, and eventually traded contact info and all that - it's how everything in this country works!

I was walking down Ben Yehuda St (a big pedestrian mall in West Jerusalem frequented by Americans) the other day and heard a guy playing a song on something like a mandolin. It took me a minute to recognize, but then I realized it was none other than 'Besame Mucho' - an all-time favorite of mine, I was so happy to hear it, and a little surprised too!

The other night we went out to a coffee house with John's friend Brittney, who I'd never met before. Getting her home at the end of the night, I was talking to this Israeli and managed to have about 30 seconds of conversation about whether or not there was a bus at that hour, all in Hebrew! I'm making progress, people! Also, it's convenient that the staff at the fancy cafe across the street from the school is more than happy to talk Hebrew to us, so we all get practice when we go over for drinks during the morning break.

As always, I'm eager to hear any news from home. I hope everything is well for everyone reading this. :)

Well, I had three days of ulpan this week, and it was pretty great. The class is a mix of Palestinians, immigrants, and tourists, a journalist, and wherever I fall in that spectrum. As expected, the teacher is much more liberal than I think I would've gotten elsewhere, which is nice when inevitable class tensions come up. Though, what could have been tense with another teacher didn't even seem to register in this class:

Wednesday, she was leading us through simple talking about where we learn Hebrew. All of us said that we learn it in class, of course, and she asked us if don't also learn any in the grocery store, on the street, etc. When asking us, one Palestinian girl responded "ani lomedet 3ivrit ba-machsom" "I learn Hebrew at checkpoints" which I thought was a pretty funny response.

Yesterday, I went with Mike from my hostel, who has a rental car right now, down to Wadi Qelt, a gigantic wadi leading down to the Jordan Valley near Jericho. The drive down was on a dirt road that could probably make Bolivians nervous. Once we parked near the bottom we hiked in just to get an idea of what the wadi was like. The whole bottom has tons of small rounded stones from wetter times, and even in this season, there is still an impressive water flow. At points, it's entirely underground, though we also waded through several feet of water at points. Hiking up, we reached one area that was crowded with giant fallen boulders. One was about 40 feet wide and was resting on two corners on small rocks - I'd love to see once that thing falls someday!

Tonight I heard through Amy at the hostel that there was a concert of Middle Eastern classical music near here. She and some friends of hers led us to the house where the concert was happening for about 100 people in the garden outside. There were olive trees and pine trees and grape vines everywhere; it was truly beautiful.

The music was a mix of (from the place names I could pick out of the Hebrew) Bosnian, Spanish, Arab, Turkish, Azeri, and even Indian. It seemed like all the performers were Jews, though I could be wrong, and I think I caught from the intro involving the word 'mizrachi' over and over again that either the performers or the composers or both were mostly Mizrachim.

I had to hang my head a little bit when I commented to Derek next to me, "Good God that singer looks Azeri" and he asked what Azeri was. It turns out she was, so maybe these years of hanging out around the various Middle Eastern events on campus has left me with a little bit of knowledge about the area?

I've wanted to learn a long time about all the specific traditions around the Middle East, though my linguistic skills didn't allow me to pick anything up from the intro. Nevertheless, it was neat to at least hear a few more takes on the traditions, even if I couldn't be told about any of the 'ancient tunings' I was listening to (couldn't resist, Hannah).

There was a big long rambly intro in Hebrew that I of course couldn't benefit from, except for one choice citation: from 'The Venture of Islam'! That came in English and left me laughing, remembering it from somebody's bookshelf. :)

The second to last song was hilarious. It was a group of young Israelis playing Indian music. The song before they played something a little more, eh, familiar to me, with a very calm tabla and very slow moving sung parts over sitar drone, but in the next song they played a super-fast nonsense song. It was really adorable, and unlike anything I've ever heard out of India!

Ulpan in the morning!

The last few days I've spent a lot of my free time with a few people from around the hostel. Foremost among them are John and Derek, two Americans who have spent virtually their entire lives in Thailand as children of missionaries / NGO workers. They're on an epic middle eastern tour (and they were in Pakistan and Afghanistan before this!) that leaves them at my hostel for a week or so here. Next to them I've spent a lot of time with Mike, an English middle-aged man who might or might not be employed, and has worked in Israel in agriculture and who knows what else. He is a sort of leftie lifer, and as sharp as anyone to boot.

Last night, John, Derek, and I went to the City Center to watch the Euro Cup final. In between the outrageously expensive Israeli drinks we got to watch Germany's goalie flubbing his way through, losing this game as he attempted to lose against Turkey last week! We met some older (>20) birthrighters from America who were pretty interesting. One girl was a social worker, and another was a native of Bermuda. I guess someone lives there, right?

Ulpan starts tomorrow, and I am way, way too lazy to mess with pictures on this computer. Sorry!

I guess the major action of the past few (slow) days was going back to the same house last night for shabbat. This time I went with a grand total of 11 people from my hostel, all but one of whom had never been out for shabbat dinner before. This time the host Mordechai's house was full but not unbearably so, making getting around and serving the food much easier! The most interesting portion of the night was talking to a young woman leading us to the house named Brachi.

She was asking me about the circumstances that lead me to spend two consecutive summers in Israel and so, after a few seconds of difficult indecision, I thought, "Hey, what's the worst that can happen?" So I told her that I started off with Arabic language and spent last summer in Birzeit, and decided to spend this summer here on this side of the Green Line. Interestingly, she said that she had spent the entirety of last summer in Beit El, a large settlement very close to Ramallah. I thought that it's funny to be spending shabbat together, that I can't find a convincing reason to spend any time in a settlement, but that we're all fine so long as we're talking, right?

At the same time as we were breaking down barriers between people who otherwise wouldn't spend much time together (Israeli Zionist and foreign Palestinian-sympathizing Arabic student) I was disturbed by a seed of racism that came out as we talked. Either she or her friend told a story about seeing little kids running around together, and that led the other to comment that there is a common thread among Jewish neighborhoods: safety in letting kids run free anywhere in Jewish Israel; "of course, it's different in Arab areas." ?! I just can't begin to understand the idea, and I've never seen any data on unsupervised children's safety in Jewish vs. Arab areas. Oh well.

Yesterday I went in the afternoon to an Arab suburb of Jerusalem called Abu Ghosh. There they have a very nice 20th century church, Notre Dame, with the classic Middle Eastern pattern of being built on the site of previous churches. And so there are Byzantine mozaics surviving in pieces, mixed in with the new marble floor. In addition, this church has very interesting art about the relationship between the first and second covenants, as the town in the Bible had the Ark visit on its way to Jerusalem.

After that we visited the truly eerie Crusader church down in town, which now has a monastery attached. The place had the tiniest of windows set high in the walls, so it was dark as a cave inside. There was no artificial light at all. Paintings were literally falling off the walls, though we really could not tell much about the paintings at all, given the light. The church connects directly to a basement chapel, which, from the sound of it, connected to the Monastery itself. In addition, we could see clearly some kind of cistern yet further down under the basement chapel. How far that water went, none of us know. There were even steps going down, which makes me wonder if it might have been a very strangely-styled baptismal font.

Last night, I headed up to al-Snobar in Ramallah to watch Germany - Turkey with the young and beautiful of Palestine. It was the most packed I've ever seen the bar, with literally one path through the large patio to allow servers to reach every one. The patio is nice, as it is a raised platform set overlooking a valley outside of Ramallah. The wood floor is built around several large pines that come straight up through the patio. Lastly, they serve Taybeh, which is much better than Maccabee!

Sorry for no pictures, I still need to figure out how to make it work on this computer.

Shucks, I'm going to have to keep this to highlights, as I couldn't really cover it all.

The big event of Friday was shabbat-crashing. Friday evening you can head down to the Western Wall, put your name on a list, and get arranged with a family / group hosting dinner. It was an eerie experience for a few reasons. First, on the long walk up the old city and then north through East Jerusalem we were walking, being led by two girls who knew the family and their house. Walking on Friday night past all the Arab shopkeepers in the Old City and in East Jerusalem with obviously religious Jews makes me effectively Jewish in the Arab eyes. The utter silence between the Jews and Arabs here is something that I imagined before, but only just now experienced as a perceived member of one of the groups! The change from my normal life here, talking with anyone the street, to the tense shabbat silence was one of the least welcoming experiences of my life.

Saturday, I had heard that Taybeh beer was throwing a party at an outdoors bar in Ramallah, so I got in touch with Phillip, a friend of Anya's, who picked me up downtown and took me to the party. There I was pleasantly surprised to find Thomas, a student with me last summer. Chatted with different folks there to techno remixes of your favorite American and Arab pop songs, and came back early in the morning to Jerusalem.

It turns out that I can't start ulpan until next Tuesday (gah) at the ulpan I chose, which is Beit Ha-am. This leaves me with a little more time on my hands than I'd been expecting, but I'll find something to keep me occupied. Today, I've been working through some of Hundred Years in Spanish! It's slow-going, but I'm discovering that I have some kind of basic functionality in Spanish, a good realization.

I'm going to visit an apartment in a fancy neighborhood that was on craigslist for cheap. Hopefully, it will turn out nice enough, though I guess we'll have to see. It will be nice to move somewhere more civilized than my bunk at the hostel, though I will miss the comings and goings. I guess if you like the busy-ness of a hostel you're probably well suited to living in a giant co-op house, right?

Love to hear what anyone is up to, bye!