The rain in Spain

I'm leaving for Barcelona in a few hours. I hope to be able to check my e-mails and blog from some internet cafe daily. I have no idea where I'll be staying and that is exciting in itself and also terrifying! Tomorrow I plan to take a one-day tour before I head off to the conference to I-don't-know-where-but-at-least-it's-far-away-from-home. I'm excited. I just hope everyone at home remembers to walk the dog, water the plants and go food shopping. I would hate to come home to dead plants, a dead dog and malnourished kids.

I hope it wasn't such an ordeal for the Palestinians to get their Visas for this trip --it's a much more difficult procedure for them. They don't have passports - they get travel documents and the wait for any such documents is horrendous. People sometimes camp out for 3 days in order to get into the ministry of interior offices in East Jerusalem. With me, I breezed into the West Jerusalem office one afternoon, waited 1/2 an hour and got an extension to my passport.

I told the Palestinian working at my local grocer that I'll be away for a week, I'm going to Spain with 10 Christians, and 10 Moslems and 9 other Jews from here. He wished me a nice trip and then I felt guilty telling him about my trip because it's very difficult for them to travel even within their own areas - even to see their own relatives - because of roadblocks, checkpoints, etc. and here I am whizzing all over the place. But maybe in the future, as a result of many groups such as ours, all those barriers will come down and people will be able to travel freely wherever and whenever.