Hi, it's Mya, Jessica and Holly (not Saffron) writing to you to tell you about a game we played today.

In the game we played, we all had to go to our imaginary sister's wedding in Nablus at 2:30 pm (actually, Holly and Mya have sisters. I don't, so my one was imaginary.) We started our journey in Hebron, and we had to make a pit-stop at Ramallah to pick up our sister's wedding cake. On the way, there were several checkpoints, so we had to change our leaving time to account for that. I left the earliest, at 6:00 am, Mya left at 8:00 am and Holly left the latest, at noon. During the game, Mya got sent home twice, I got stopped at a checkpoint for two hours, and Holly got stopped for three hours. Because of this, and lots of other stops, Holly was three hours late to the wedding. Mya and I were early to the wedding, but we forgot to calculate the actual time to takes to travel, so in the end Mya was about an hour late, and I was an hour early (YAY). Unfortunately, this meant that Holly was six hours late and her cake melted into a puddle of something.

We were shocked to find out that when you wanted to travel in Palestine, you had to plan far ahead, and leave very early to ensure you arrived on time. Here in the UK, we can go wherever we want whenever we want, and the only thing that really slows us down is traffic.

When I (Mya) was in France I had to wait to get into the country but only for a few minutes. The longest time I had to wait was when I was going back into the UK and there was problems with the trains and checking our passports this took around three hours and I got home late but this only happened once and was because of delays with the trains.

We have a few questions for you now :3
How long does it take more on average with the checkpoints to go to places?
Do you get sent home often on the checkpoints?
What do you do while you wait at the checkpoints?
Do you get sick of waiting at the checkpoints?

That's all, thanks, hope to hear from you soon.

Jessica, Mya, Saffron and Holly!

ID GAME

Yesterday, Holly, Jessica, Mya and Saffron change their identities for an hour during a game

Holly was Israeli settler in the West Bank
Jessica a Palestinian living in the West Bank with a green ID
Mya was a foreigner
And Saffron was a Palestinian living in Jerusalem with a blue ID.

We first speak about where could they live on the map of Israël-Palestine according to their identities.
Then they had to pick up cards and I asked them, according to their IDs, if they could do what was written on the card or not.

With her green ID (Palestinian living in the West Bank), Jessica couldn't do almost anything. She had the worst situation and a lot of things were forbidden for her. Not being able to go to Jerusalem was a big issue because she couldn't live with her husband who has a blue ID, couldn't go to take care of her mother who lives in Jerusalem and who is ill, couldn't go to pray at Al Haqsa mosque, couldn't find work in Jerusalem, couldn't travel with her fatally hill husband to the hospital in Jerusalem....
She was also shocked that she has to go throught checkpoints on her way to university (she picked a card saying that she lives in Hebron and go to university in Abu Dis). If I remember well, she said : "I can't do anything even in my own country".

We enjoy holidays!

When I ask the girls if they like holidays, the three of them (Holly, Jessica and Mya) answered : YES !

Fortunately for them, the Easter holidays have just started and will go on for two weeks….14 days of free time (but still some homework to do) without going to school! It’s a lot of time…what are they going to do?

Holly and Jessica will stay in England but Mya will go to France, to a city called “Dijon” because she has some family there. She visits them twice a year and so she knows Dijon well!

Holly will also visit her family in Essex (a region not far from London, at the north-east of the capital) but most of the time she will stay in London. Jessica will spend time with her cousin in London too.

During holidays, they like to chill at home…watching TV, playing card and electronic games and sleeping of course…it’s a good time to relax! They also do some outdoor activities in their own neighbourhood like roller-skating, going to the swimming pool and the park.

Sometimes, they are also a bit bored during holidays because they have a lot of free time and they don’t know what to do or can’t do what they would like to.

We hope they will enjoy their holidays. They will write about it on the blog when they are back in two weeks.

Do you also have spring break in Palestine? What do you do during your holidays? Do you enjoy it as well? We would like to know how your holidays are in Palestine….hope to hear from you soon!

A photo of the UNRWA School

Maria Fidelis girls say "Hi!"

Hi! We're Mya, Jessica and Holly and we're all 12 years old. We've been a part of this club since September 2013, the beginning of Year 8 for us. We listened to the song that you linked us and we really liked it! Mya and Holly said that they would enjoy it even more if they knew the lyrics. Can you translate the lyrics for us? A song that we all like listening to is called 'Let It Go' from the movie 'Frozen' by Disney.

Hope to keep in touch with you again soon! Bye.

We love One Direction too :)

The girls at UNWRA School are really excited to learn about life in London and at Maria Fidelis for girls the same age in England. We spent the first class getting to know each other where we chatted about where we live, our family, our favourite colours, and what music we like. A lot of the girls love One Direction and Little Mix!

 

The girls at UNWRA also love Mohammed Assaf who won the Arabic version of ‘Pop Idol'. Maybe the girls at Maria Fidelis would be able to listen to his winning performance and let us know what you think? And in return tell us one of your favourite songs that girls in Palestine might not have heard so we can listen too!

 

Save the UNRWA School!!

We hear there is a risk that the UNRWA School in Abu Dis may be shut. What a pity, what a beautiful building, what a lovely school - what a WASTE if it goes   :(

We hope that a solution can be found and that the school will stay open. This is important to the kids, family and community in Abu Dis. It is also important to the twinned schools in Camden and all the hundreds of volunteers and visitors (including teachers) who have visited the Abu Dis UNRWA school over the years and been so impressed.

SAVE THE UNRWA SCHOOL!!