Metaphors & Medicine

"If anyone needs to take a shower, there's hot water." You don't hear that every morning living in the states! Now if I was staying in a refugee camp, this would be so much worse, but thankfully I am not. The only difference here is water runs out a lot quicker than it does in the states. Jet lag finally got to me by 3 p.m. this afternoon and I was falling asleep on the couch I was sitting on. However, it is 2 a.m. and I'm still awake, determined to show you my adventures today! If you get bored of me talking about the BEAUTIFUL weather here, which you probably will, I apologize ahead of time. But it is SO BEAUTIFUL. I'm not going to lie, during the day it is dry and hot, but once it hits 6 ot 7 p.m., you can start to feel the evening breeze and it makes you feel bad for hating the heat in the first place. When I looked at the rainy and gloomy forecast back in my Wisconsin town and compared it to the endless sunshine forecast here, I was thankful I was ...

Hello wonderful readers! I haven't posted on here in a few months but I am making a comeback that I hope will make up for it! In case you couldn't tell by the title, I am going to tell you all about my trip to Palestine that is happening from now until the next two months! It's definitely an exciting time and there's so much I think people should learn about it! I probably won't be able to blog everyday or either every other day, but I will definitely do my best. So let's start the journey.... Yesterday our plane took off and let me tell you that it definitely did not hit me that I was going back even after I was off the ground! But the city lights were beautiful and the last sight of America that I saw before heading out was a good contrast to what I would see when I'd land. In order to get to Palestine, we need to stop in Jordan first (the country right next to Pali) so we can then cross the borders by bus. This is another tragic result of th...

And I don't mean by being the one to wear the over-the-top sparkly dress to a black and white event and standing out in a crowd. I mean by being the only one to wrap your hair in a scarf, the only Palestinian poet at a poetry event, the only Arab Muslim woman at an international dinner, and not realizing that until leaving. I've gotten to a point where I don't notice when I'm the only this or the only that. That's a good sign. If you spoke to me 3 years ago when I first moved back to the states, I would've told you that if someone glanced twice at me, I was sure that it was because I was Muslim. Why am I talking about this? It seems as though most of posts repeat the same things about being proud and confident and all that. But this is a bit different. Today, I wanted to tell you all to be comfortable. Yes, comfortable, like you saw the new leather recliner at the furniture store that you decided to try out and you.don't.want.to.leave. I know we should...

Three years ago on this day today, a young woman left this world behind her and for that moment, the world stopped moving. Stopped breathing. Stopped living. Three years ago today, the value of her laughter became much more important than it ever was before. The house she lived in lost the force she had in it, lost the warmth and happy memories she had created as she played cards with her younger cousins, watched comedy movies, and repeated The Beauty and the Beast 1500 times. Three years ago on this day, her family told us a girl had left this world. But I don't know if this girl was the same one I knew. The girl I knew had a laugh that echoed through the skies, loved Fayrooz, and drank Nescafe coffee like it was water. The girl I knew would've never wanted people to feel sorry for her. She would've never wanted to spend the last days of her life hooked up to machines as people looked on. The girl I knew would've wanted relief. She would've wanted to fall asl...

"They push me so far that I want to become the bully."  This is what Alex Libby, one of the stars of the documentary "The Bully Project" says. That isn't even one of the most heart-breaking things the then 12-year-old says in the film. The parents of another student, Alex Long, start out the movie talking about their son and his childhood, and then talk about the change in his behavior as he grew older. A few minutes into the movie, if you couldn't already tell from his father's somber and tired face, you found out that the boy had hung himself. The film also shines light on another student who cut herself and attempted suicide three times, another student who was an A student but was bullied to the point that she lost it and brought her mom's gun onto her bus, leaving her in a Juvenile Center, and other heart-wrenching stories. What is the cause of this pain and hurt? Bullying. I hate bullying almost more than I hate war because war starts for a...

I wish this post meant that I was home. I dream for the day when I can blog from my home in Palestine and tell you all about the beauty in it, tell you about how amazing it feels to breathe the fresh Arabian air, listen to the Arabic tongues speak their language wherever I turn my ears, and smell the scent of....I've been trying to find a word but all I can think of is the scent of Palestine. Here I am supposed to be working on a project for a class, which I've decided to do about Palestine. It's turned out to be a bad idea, or maybe not bad, but difficult. I pulled out old pictures, and then found myself playing old music, and that was all it took for me to crash. All of a sudden I can't imagine looking out my window and seeing the snow that lies on my front yard, and I can't stand the flatness of my street, or the fact that I can't see my aunt who was my best friend, or my uncle who was the older brother I never had, or the cousin who I was so close with tha...

" Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends. " -Maya Angelou I have a lot of places I could start with this. A lot. But I'm going to start by telling a little story about something that happened with me today. I was out eating lunch and when I stood up to toss my trash away, there stood a 12 or 13 year old girl next to me with her mother. As I waited in the line for the dispenser, the young girl just stared at me. People stare all the time, but usually when you look at them, telling them you notice them looking and they shouldn't, they turn away and leave you alone. But this girl kept staring even when I looked at her. And do you know what her mother did? Nothing. This reminds me of another story that happened with my mother's friend. A little boy once pointed at her and cried and his mother looked...

I don't know if every person in the world has this moment in their life where they finally feel like they're doing what they were meant to do, if there's that one moment where they finally feel like they've found themselves after those frustrating years of trying to desperately discover yourself, and failing miserably. Because if there is that moment, then I feel like I'm getting close to it. Earlier this week I made the decision to go to one of many open mics that happen locally, and it had been a while since I'd gone to one. By a while, I mean the last time I went to one was last summer. And let me tell you something. It's not easy to go up and read some of your work, not because it can be an intimidating experience to make the decision to go up and read (which is a reason), but more because it's hard to write something that you look at and say, THIS! THIS I AM READING IN FRONT OF A CROWD! I'm fine with reading in front of people. I feel lucky ...