Sunday 25th January

Well, here I am. Its a beautiful morning - sun is shining and the air is clear and it is warm - at last!!! Yesterday I have never been so cold despite layers of clothing my fingers were like icicles even indoors. Cold hands, warm heart as they say! and the hearts are really warm. I have had a wonderful welcome everywhere.

The first day, Friday, is a holiday. So after settling in at the guest house and a good breakfast of felafels and palestinian sessame bread and pottering around the flat Fatya and Naja arrived with lunch - upside down chicken and rice dish- everything cooked in one pot and then turned out onto a dish - very delicious. We went and visited relatives of Naja and in the evening Ahmed and Salah visited. I felt very welcome.

Then yesterday we started the day at Friendship House early at 9am with a meeting with a group from a unitarian peace organisation who monitor check-points and visit prisoners etc. They apparently do 3 months stints and there will be a change over next week so the new volunteers came with the ones who are about to depart. Apparently an Israeli peace group ( Women in Black) demonstrate in Jeruasalem every Friday and this group support them as they suffer a lot of abuse particular during this aggressive war with Gaza. Quite a lot of yesterday I helped women who will be going to UK for International Women's Week in March as part of the twinning network with applying for their visas. I also met the women's committee to discuss what activities we would be doing. Priority being the magazine but we also talked about developing the garden and also learning some tai chi. Then I met with the drama group that consist of young people who will be coming to Camden in June and performing a play. I will be giving them English classes teaching them language that will be useful for their visit. There are about 16 of them and only 8 will be able to go - my opinion will be part of the selection process. We will probably divide the group into 2 as it would be quite chaotic to teach such a big group particularly as their knowledge of English is quite diverse. So that was my first day!

When I got home Salah, a young computer expert and my neighbour, came over to install the internet connection. So I'm now connected to the world. I messed about with it last night and was surprised that I could not get connection to BBC radio programmes.

As I said today is bright and warm. So when I arrived at the centre I thought about the garden around the centre and how we should go about it. The children are having an extra week holiday so I think it will be a good project to measure the site and make a large scale model so we can discuss what kind of spaces people would like there (planniung for real a la Calthorpe). I have drawn a rough sketch and hopefully tomorrow we will have a good tape measure for measuring the site. There are some lovely olive trees, a good terrrace up to the house and a well, so there should be a plentiful supply of water for the plants. I will take some photos and post them on this site. I talked with a bunch of kids today and they are quite keen.

So that's all for the moment. I'd be glad of any comments you might have.