I am sitting in the back of a room with about 200 students; 48 hours have already flown away. Recrear-Apply! has started full speed and we are already in our 5^th session.

Nablus and al-Najah University have welcomed us in grand style. We are delivering our workshop in the Al-Najah new campus: an impressive structure in a city with a magic atmosphere. We are working with a team of very well organized staff and students. Yazan, our local coordinator, has done a great job in catalyzing resources to make this workshop run smoothly.

KP kicked off our workshop on Tuesday, January 4th with a Prezi presentation introducing Recrear and presenting our programs. It was quite intimidating to be in a room with so many students and at times it has been challenging to deal with so much attention (a posters with our photos was hang on the walls making us particularly happy. Yet, the students’ participation and enthusiasm is very energizing.

Our workshops ran for four hours a day, and they do require a lot of concentration. In particular, considering that out of the Recrear-Apply! Team, each of us has a number of strange sounding accents including New Orleanians’, Italian, British/Tanzanian and Canadian. Students are attentive and proactive and even if some people might be discouraged from asking questions because of the language barrier, we are receiving numerous questions and a ton of participation.

Tomorrow is Friday and we have a day off to recharge. For now, welcome to our blog- Looking for your comments and feedback on Recrear-Apply!

– GG