Day 19. Bethlehem.

The weather has turned cold again and we are expecting more snow tomorrow. I don't think it will happen, but most people here seem convinced and are getting ready. The West Bank comes to a standstill when the snow hits as the infrastructure is not up to coping with it. Not unlike Britain in that respect really.

Steve and myself have had a good day working today and this afternoon we settled down to another game of chess.

Just to fill in the last few days.... obviously life mainly revolves around the farm, but this last week I took a day trip up to Nablus with a small group of people and had a look around. We saw some ancient ruins at a place called Sebastia, where Alexander the great (among others) made a citadel; we toured a soap factory (which was really interesting); we went to turkish baths which were 600 years old and finally we ate some local food. So far so good.

At about 5pm we left Nablus to go back to Jerusalem where I had decided to spend the night. The trip is about 45 minutes by road. However, vehicles are not allowed to leave Nablus by the south, which is the way we were going, so we had to queue at a checkpoint for over an hour to get through. All the Palestinians had to queue in order to leave the town. We could have been checked quickly as we hold foreign passports, however we decided that we shouldn't have rights over and above the people who live here, so we decided to queue in the cold. It was a pretty horrible experience but good to do and appreciated by some of the guys who we spoke to in the queue who have to put up with that everyday. It was then two checkpoints, two taxi rides and a bus trip later that I arrived in Jerusalem. Daily life under occupation is difficult and degrading.

So day to day life plods on really. I think that is all for now.

We spent the morning digging the ground to make a patio - a quiet sunday in the countryside. Then at the end of the day, some Israeli soldiers came to the end of our lane with jeeps and a bulldozer. This is more frightening than it sounds as people here live with the daily fear that their houses could be demolished without warning. The soldiers said that they wanted to pile more earth on the roadblock at the end of our lane (we are not allowed to bring cars along to the house, but have to park half a mile away as the road is blocked by a pile of rocks & earth). So they did that and then headed home. We went back to our undemolished house and our 'quiet' sunday.