April 26, 2001

Roadblocks on the road to Jenin (and the Palestinian “bypass” paths).

Headed to Jenin today to run a few errands, get out of the village for a few hours, and check out the bootlegged software. The latter is as rampant here as the persistent Israeli roadblocks (neither, it turns out, complies with international law).

After school it was a chance to relax as the half-weekend begins. We went to the Latin Church's Youth Group meeting, where we understood little except that the topic of discussion was Purgatory. The one word we could pick out of the Arabic text they were reading was Calvin - apparently talking about his and Luther's rejection of the concept. Just a little reminder of the challenges that remain in ecumenical dialogue, perhaps.

Elizabeth explores with one of the ex-pat children.

This is the “settlement” gamepiece.

Afterwards we wandered over to visit the French volunteers, tuck their children into bed, and play Siedler into the wee hours of the morning - the German game's goals of settlement-planting, road-building, and resource-hoarding remain as ironic in this context as ever.