Letter from Austria 2

I am Reem from Palestine.

It is a wonderful chance which a very wonderful organization called The Parent Circle gave us to make our voice is heard.

We will tell you how we came here and what we are doing everyday.

If we – Palestinians- want to travel to any other country, we must go through Jericho bridge which is a border bridge between Palestine and Jordan, then through Jordan so that we can get a plane and travel although there is an airport in Tel-Aviv but we can’t travel through it because it’s not for us.

We decided to travel on Saturday july.7^th 2007 although our plane is on Monday because of two reasons:

1- There are many checkpoints, and many times you must wait for more than half an hour to pass one of them.

2- There are many people, who want to travel to Jordan or to any where else, and all of them will be on Sunday in Jericho Bridge waiting till they can go by buses from Jericho Bridge to Jordan Bridge and if you get there early, you can be able to pass first.

Because of this, we left our homes on Saturday at 5:30 pm. And fortunately there was only one check point which is called Al-Hamra checkpoint. We passed it and reached Jericho at 8:00 pm. We stayed there for one night then we went on Sunday at 3:30 am to Jericho Bridge. We were the first people there, so we were able to pass first. We changed a lot of buses to reach Jordan Bridge and finally we reached it at 10:00 am except one of us who stayed in Jericho Bridge because the Israeli soldiers didn’t let him pass it and they made him sit for 4 hours without any reason, and we waited till they made him go at 2:00 pm. We stayed a night in Jordan and on the next day we went to the airport and finally we reached Vienna. We were very happy when we reached the airport because the Austrian leader and some students were waiting for us. They are amazing and kind. They welcomed us in a very wonderful way and took us to a very big house in a village called Rechnitz where all the leaders and teenagers who are participating in this camp were. We got to know each other. We are from 4 countries which are Palestine, Hungary, Israel and Austria. Everything here is organized well. The house is always clean, the food is very good and the people are so kind.

We really feel that we are in our house thanks to all the leaders and participants who make us feel like this.

In the first 2 days we played a lot of games so that we can know each other more and more. Some of them were inside the house while the others were outdoor activities. They were very funny but we didn’t only think about fun. Every game made us feel and remember something about our country –Palestine- and each game had a goal behind it. For example, there was a game called the balance which made us feel of Palestine and Israel. If we try together to find a solution to our conflict and live equally, both of us will live happily.

There was other game which needs two people to play it in a circle. One of them have to make the other one go outside the circle by pushing each other with there backs, and also this game made us think about Palestine. The circle was like Palestine and Israeli people were pushing Palestinians from their land.

And in this moment we can’t say anything except thank God for every thing , and if there will be a person who read what I wrote, I want him/her to think about obstacles and problems we faced to reach Vienna to tell other people who we are and to know others.