The Weekend?

My first week in the West Bank is pretty much complete. I say pretty much since I have really no idea of what the weekend actually is. My classes run Monday to Thursday and the "sabbath" is basically Friday. The West Bank population is predominantly Muslim. I've heard estimates that have placed the percentage at 90-98% Muslim and 2-10% Christian. While many of the Christian Palestinians reside in areas of biblical importance; most notably the old city of Jerusalem and the town of Bethlehem, Birzeit is considered a Christian town because a higher than usual number of Christians live here and have historic roots in this particular area. Many own the innumerable "supermarkets" around town in which you can purchase all of your needs including liquor and beer.

The fact that its a Christian town doesn't mean that they are a mojority and our apartment building is just down form one of the two mosques in and around the town. The muezzin's call to prayer, broadcast 5 times daily and nightly from the loudspeakers affixed to the minarets testify to that Muslim majority. One of the things I can't really figure out though is the 3:30am call to prayer that I am slowly learning to sleep through. My Masters degree in Islamic Studies had failed to inform me of the apparent "middle of the night" prayer time.

The conservative social mores that we were warned about on arrival (having very little to do with Islam but with the society in general) seems to be a fairly fluid arrangement that we've bent here and there. Wearing pants instead of shorts is actually the hardest standard to maintain personally, when the temperature can climb into the high 30's. But having said that, most of the people in the program met up at an apartment building on the outskirts of town last night for a bit of a house party that could have easily been mistaken form one in North America.