Getting there..

I am a Sydney University Arts/Law student and for the next three months I will be studying at Birzeit University in the West Bank of the Palestinian Territories. I will be taking the Palestine and Arabic Studies program they offer for international students. I don't speak Arabic, half of my classes will be dedicated to rectifying this, and I'm neither of Palestinian origin or Jewish. Really I have very little that links me to this conflict over a piece of land that's called Holy. Except for the fact that you don't need to have links to the land of Palestine and Israel to be affected or concerned by the conflict there. One of the major issues that clouds the region is the lack of knowledge of the facts on the ground - the day to day of living for Palestinians and Israelis, but particularly Palestinians living under occupation. So on Monday I'm off to spend (I hope) six months in the area. For most of that time I plan to be in the West Bank, experiencing what it is like to be a university student living under an occupation. While my experiences will be incomparable to those of the people who have grown up there, I hope to at least gain enough insight on the day to day aspects of life there so as to shed some light on the conflict for people back home in Australia.

That's the plan. Takeoff's on Monday.