Finally, a moment to sit and reflect on the importance of our work here in Nablus.
Life is grand here, in the purest sense of the word. There is no talk of resistance, frustration, or retaliation; only progress. The campus that has opened its doors wide to the Recrear team could actually be said to shadow the Universities we hail from. Al-Najah is a golden beacon of white stone and marble in Palestine, leading the region to a strong position of education, communication and collaboration within their community. With various public and private sponsorships; there are four campuses and over 20,000 students studying over 50 degree programs. While we have been too busy planning and implementing our first days of workshops to receive a full campus tour, we managed to sneak in a quick walk around the Engineering Faculty (or facility as we call it) and we saw an amazing panoramic view from one of the student amphitheaters on the New Campus. (pictures in the feed) Another highlight was the Media Center located across the amphitheater; still under construction was the production and filming rooms, but the 300,000 volume library was open(this is just one of the campus’ libraries) along with the multimillion dollar theater which, among other features, is able to translate four languages simultaneously into your own personal headphones during performances. I’d also like to point out the student:computer ratio at Al-Najah is 4:1!!!
But enough about things, lets look at the fact that the 200-300 students that are participating in Recrear-Apply! are here on their holiday! That’s right, two weeks with us and our powerpoints and various other presenters are working with the students on their time off of school. Talk about motivation. Based on the faces of the students and their feedback in sessions, I believe they can see how important the work we are doing is right now – and we are all loving the time spent together.
I want to take a quick moment to thank KM for working so hard over the past two days to launch this blog. I would like to formally invite all of our followers (especially Al-Najah students and faculty) to subscribe to this feed and also to comment as often as you would like. This blog is not only for us to share with you what we are seeing, but as a way for you to ask us questions and introduce topics you would like to explore with us. Want to know how we really feel about something????? ASK!!!
Don’t forget – we are on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and our website!!! Get inspired. Get connected. And lets CREATE!
-KP
