Mission in Action.
Before coming down to Honduras, I heard over and over again how noble, how selfless, how kind my heart was to sacrifice my summer and energy to come down here and serve. It really built me up, like in the…
Category Stories
Normalization of Suffering
“Normal” is a subjective word; one person’s normal may look different than another’s. In Palestine, “normal” looks a lot different than it does in the States. Normal often means suffering; to suffer is normal. I was inspired to write this post…
Stars
Last Wednesday, I celebrated my twenty-second birthday here in Honduras with the sweetest second family. Birthdays have always been moments of pause for me, where you think about everything that has happened in the last year, and you dream about…
Inshallah
The idea of writing this final post has been, in a word, overwhelming. I have certainly struggled throughout this experience with how to best articulate all of the complex experiences I’ve had into accessible and engaging posts for this blog,…
Patriarchy, The Perception of the “Foreign Woman,” and Catcalling
When you live anywhere in the world, there are great things about your country, but there are also some not-so-great things. I’ve found many things to love about Palestinian culture in my month here. Between the hospitality, the food, the…
God-sized Problems
I’ve had the pleasure to meet a lot of different types of people this summer, as groups traveled down to Honduras to serve with Mission Lazarus in a variety of fashions. Some were here for the first time, their first…
One month in, and I’m still a foreigner
In an effort to convey the reality of international travel, its ups and downs, and specifically the ups and downs of my experience in Bethlehem, I’m going to talk about the main difficulty I’ve had since moving to Bethlehem, and…
Worthy of Help
I had enough. It started my third week of being here, that stomach thing: sick by day with diarrhea, awake by night throwing up. Some days were better than others, but after three weeks, my condition worsened. I went back…
A Girl Named Jihad
This is the story of my dearest friend here in Rabat. She is 20 years old, the second of three daughters. She lives in a cozy apartment with her family about 10 minutes away from me. She is a passionate…
Festival, Food, and Hiking
I want to focus on three things that made this past week great. Festival: Bethlahem Live Street Festival (Yallah Makloobah) happened this past Thursday through Sunday. This festival occurs annually and features art, workshops, live music, and local vendors in…