9th January
Bethlehem.
It is nice to now be spending a few days at home. After my holiday I had gone straight to work on the rehearsals of our junior orchestra, and am now enjoying sleeping in my own bed again, as well as cooking at home.
The rehearsals were good fun, lots of work and very rewarding. The students made such an improvement in the few days they were together that they moved from playing like a group ofyoung beginners to a young orchestra. After the five days of rehearsals concerts are planned in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Jericho and Ramallah. Unfortunately, the Jerusalem concert is now in doubt.
Any students of the conservatory that don’t have residency permits for Jerusalem, which is most of them, are not permitted to travel across the checkpoints into Jerusalem without a one-off permit applied for in advance due to the increased security in relation to the visit of the American President. Normally, any students with or without such permits are allowed to travel if they are under sixteen years old. These permits were duly requested and were issued by Israel to let through the children to play in the concert. In the last day or two however, Israel has announced that all permits are cancelled and therefore unless this decision can be appealed by tomorrow afternoon then the concert might have to be cancelled.
Also in doubt is the presence of one of our violin teachers. Coming back from his holiday last week he was refused entry into Israel, and was sent home. Luckily they didn’t stamp Denied Entry on his passport so he is trying again today, but if he gets refused again and they stamp him, he might not be able to return for a while. The last time someone was refused entry it took seven months to get them back. He was due to land at four pm today and he hadn’t called by six, so at the least he was being given a good questioning. I hope the students of the relevant branch don’t go without lessons for too long if things don’t work out.
Today was my first day teaching of the new term. It was nice to get back and hear some of my students’ stories of what they got up to over the holidays, as well as to get back to working on individual details after a week of general coaching.
President Bush is visiting Jerusalem today and Bethlehem and Ramallah tomorrow, and so far I have not noticed any disruption at all. Hopefully this will continue. It is expected that he will visit the Church of the Nativity while he is here – I hope he doesn’t get any more messages from above while he’s here. The last time God told him to do something, it wasn’t necessarily for the best.
