My experience in Palestine: ” My name is Joanne, and I’m a British student studying Arabic at the Excellence Centre in Hebron. I have spent the last two weeks living with a host family, taking part in intensive lessons during the mornings and exploring the city and surrounding areas in the rest of the day. Hebron is a great city for a base; it’s fascinating to wander through the old city and experience the reality of the settlements and how they affect the southern side. It’s a regional centre, with shops, markets and restaurants of every kind imaginable.

It is very easy to explore the rest of the West Bank too; the public transport is cheap and usually friendly, and despite restrictions on Palestinian-vehicular travel by Israeli checkpoints, Hebron to Ramallah is just under two hours by servees. The Excellence Centre organise a ton of trips each week – either to local places like the last remaining keffiyeh factory or the Maskobiyeh church, or to areas further afield, like Jericho and the Dead Sea, or to Bethlehem. The staff are really lovely. 

The chief purpose of my stay in Hebron was to learn Arabic, so each morning I’ve had 3 hours of lessons with a wonderful tutor. Usually the classes are on a 1-2-1 basis, but my university friend and I have ours together – this is helpful because we can revise vocabulary and classwork together afterwards. We’ve covered a lot of material; basically we re-covered all of the basic grammar again and addressed a few topics such as human rights, future plans, marriage (!) and Palestinian cuisine. Both of us had been learning Modern Standard Arabic at university, but since no-one actually speaks MSA, we decided to focus on amiyya. Conversations with local shopkeepers, waiters and taxi-drivers has been getting much easier over the course of our stay – it is rewarding to be able to communicate in Arabic rather than switching back to English!

A number of friends from the UK were concerned about security issues and my personal safety when travelling around Palestine; I was also somewhat apprehensive about what the situation here might be. But the reality is that most of the time there is no overt difference between the lives of the locals here and those who live in other Arab countries – of course, the occupation means that there are restrictions for Palestinians, that many of them find themselves unable to travel to work or visit relatives in other areas of Palestine or even abroad because of new checkpoints, and it is impossible to drive anywhere without coming across settlements or Israeli military bases – but the lives still go on.

They still go to school, go shopping in the evenings on the Ein Sarah street, attend university, work in every kind of business and go on day trips to amusement parks or other villages and towns. It’s been a right privilege to have lived with a host family in the north of the city, close to the main university, and see the familiar pattern of school term-time played out in another culture! The family are very welcoming – as are most of the people were have met here.

I thoroughly recommend the Excellence Centre to anyone who wants to visit Palestine, learn Arabic, meet wonderful people and eat awesome food.”