May 31, 2003

Kids waving farewell on the last day of school.

The last day of school. After they finished their exams, students gathered in the playground to celebrate. As with most causes for celebration here, this involved drums and lots of singing. It's still hard to believe that it's all over. Perhaps it will sink in at graduation next week.

Students singing to celebrate the end of the school year.

In the afternoon, we went up to the university to take some footage for the short film about the municipality we've been making. While there, we stopped in at a superb art exhibition put on by one of the university ex-pats. Non-representational art is somewhat counter-cultural here, so it was interesting to see what people had written in the guest book.

Marthame captures some footage for the Zababdeh Municipality’s project.

An ex-pat’s art exhibition at the Arab-American University of Jenin.

The news is full of summits and meetings in Jordan and Egypt. It's an historic time, and there is new hope that things will come to a close. However, many question marks remain. We wait to see the results before we begin rejoicing. Having been here during the total collapse of Oslo, we remain skeptical that things will turn on the right track. St. Thomas had it right - at least when it came to politics.