I found a book of poetry. Perhaps I am reading poetry just for pretentious reasons, thinking that it might impress someone someday. Or maybe I just needed a little distraction from academia for awhile. In either case, I have come across a few lines that I have enjoyed quite a bit.

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From breakfast on through all the day

At home among my friends I stay,

But every night I go abroad

Afar into the land of Nod

All by myself I have to go,

With no to tell me what to do–

All alone besides the streams

And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me,

Both things to eat and things to see,

And many frightening sights abroad

Till morning in the land of Nod

Try as I like to find the way,

I never can get back by day,

Nor can remember plain and clear

The curious music that I hear.

~Land of Nod

by Robert Louis Stevenson

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In recent months I have written so little on this blog. I often begin to write about my experiences over here, but I always get stuck before I am finished. Jerusalem and Bethlehem are my two homes here. They are separated by a mere five miles, but they are as different from each other as Mexico and Canada…and that is no hyperbole. In Jerusalem there are wide streets, traffic lights, clean sidewalks, big box malls, etc. When you drive out of Jerusalem and cross over into Bethlehem, traffic rules cease to exist, trash is tossed into the street, and seatbelts are unbuckled. If you wear your seatbelt in Bethlehem, it tells everyone that you are not familiar with the local culture and do not belong here. As crazy and different as these two places might be, they have become as familiar to me as the streets of Albany.

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I have made Arab, Jewish, Christian and Muslim friends. Many have welcomed me into their homes and lives as if I was a long lost relative. The strangeness of the Middle East has become normal, the conflict between peoples seems routine, ancient history is commonplace. When I walk down to the open air market to buy my vegetables for the week, there is little doubt that David guided his sheep across the slopes of these hills as a young boy. Modern day shepherds still do the same thing. As I have studied and lived in this land for a year and a half, I have forgotten what it was like to be a stranger to all of this. I recently helped a group of new students navigate from Jerusalem into the West Bank and then to the heart of the Old City of Bethlehem. With eyes wide open and questions unending, we walked past modern security barriers, open air markets, and 1,000 year-old churches and mosques. I had forgotten what it was like to still appreciate the awesomeness of it all. They helped me to remember a bit of it.

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When life is normal, why write home about it all? It’s kind of like that last line of the poem. The dreamer can never quite remember what his dream was like, and no matter how hard I try, it is hard to remember my first impressions before a year of study smothered everything. In addition to that, when I want to describe some of the things I’ve seen and experienced, I often don’t know how to be short enough. Some blogs I’ve never posted seem to be nearing book length by now. Reality is seen in the details, but the details can be overwhelming.

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I’ve had several phenomenal happenings over this last week. In my next post I will write about my epic with a broken car in Jerusalem.