December 13, 2001

Today was the last day of school before the 'Eid al-Fitir break that marks the end of Ramadan. We'll have five days off in a row, but it's unlikely that we'll be going anywhere - the situation on the ground here is deteriorating more and more rapidly as Israel has now all but confined Arafat to house arrest and continued its destruction of all vestiges of his authority "in response to" yesterday's murder of Israeli settlers on the West Bank. Meanwhile, the political dance continues.

We also visited our student's grieving family today with all of the teachers. The practice is for women to visit in one place and men in another. Such visits usually go in one of two ways - utter silence, or talk of the political situation. Like the States, people here prefer to change the subject rather than talk about the pain.

Elizabeth waits for the chat window to load so she can connect with her Chicago faculty.

Today did bring good news, as Elizabeth successfully defended her Master's Thesis! This online defense was a first for Northeastern Illinois University's Geography and Environmental Studies' Program. When we left Chicago, Elizabeth had finished all of the requirements for the degree except the thesis, and was able to complete it here and on our short stay in Chicago last summer. It's been a long time coming.