Emilio left

Emilio left us one week ago .
We have been working together since April, Emilio is a very active person,  had done so many things and  worked with us for so long
I truly miss him now, We used to work together in the office every day.
 Before working at CADFA Emilio didn't know  about the Arab-Israeli conflict.
He gained knowledge and information's about the conflict, the culture, the food and the society also. He met Palestinians and he was a leader at the youth visit from Palestine and the women's visit.
He told me that he really enjoyed his time here at CADFA working in the schools and the universities


Nadeen

Ramadan in London

Ramadan in London with CADFA

The holy month came and we started fasting in London. As a volunteer in CADFA I work as usual ,I teach Arabic every Friday, I write blogs and organize events in order to spread CADFA out and to support CADFA.
Ramadan here is different in London and we don't live the Ramadan Atmosphere not like back home.
There is no Athan -when they called to pray at the mosque -so we break our fast here according to the clock. Also in London the sun never sets, we start fasting at 2:40 am and we break our fast at 9:25 pm It's new good experience to spend Ramadan outside the country .
So we don't really feel like its Ramadan here unless that if we break our fast together.Otherwise we wouldn't enjoy it if we break our fast alone.
The good thing is that I started learning how to cook alone.
 It is nice to spend Ramadan nights with the friends, sometimes  me and Dunja  break our fast together, we cook together and we have our Suhor together, We went to the mosque to pray Taraweh to enjoy Ramadan in London.
 We also went to Ramadan tent at SOAS. It was good, we broke our fast according to Athan and we prayed Maghrib together then we started eating.

It is really nice and amazing to practice Ramadan together with friends.
London is a beautiful amazing city so it doesn't matter where you are during any special occasion, it matters with whom you are and how to plan you your day.

Nadeen

Emilo is leaving us :(

Emilio our EVS volunteer from Spain will leave us soon. From October 21st we have been working together. We  have spent sunny, warm days and cold, dark days together. I am really happy for him, because he  has found a new job.  Yesterday I invited him and the others for Iftaar. We had a lovely evening together and Thursday Annika will invite us for Iftaar and finally on Saturday we will have a CADFA Iftaar for Emilio. Some of the youth group are planing a sponsored fast for this day to raise some money for CADFA. I am sure we will have some lovely nights. Definitely I will miss you Emilio!

Ramadan Kareem to everyone!

For me and the other volunteers it is quite a different Ramadan because we are away from home. But we decided to spend lots of time together and have Iftar together as well. Yesterday I went with Nadeen to the Central Mosque to pray Tarawih. Nadeeen told me it is very beautiful to pray Tarawih in Jerusalem in the Al Aqsa mosque. Hopefully I can be there one day. Luckily there are nice places to feel Ramadan in London like the Ramadan Tent next to SOAS.

Dunja loved the kids visit!

The CADFA youth visit just ended. To be honest, it was my favorite. I enjoyed it so much and I had so much fun with all the kids. 

Everything started with the residential in Sheringham. This place is so lovely. Not far from the youth hostel where we stayed in was the sea. And next to the sea you could see green hills. We all went on top of the hills and enjoyed the beautiful view. There we played games and discussed different issues. 

 English dinner

The second stop was Norchwich, were we did tourism and had an event. I cooked Magluba with Maysa and lot of other people, who helped us. Very late in the night we arrived in Cambridge. We had perfect hosts. THANK YOU AGAIN! In both places Norchwich and Cambridge we did a prisoners march. People actually really wanted to find out about us and read our leaflets.This really motivated us. Some of us had an competition about the amount of leaflets we gave out. 

In London my favorite moments were the sports day, the drama performance and our picnic in Greenwich.

On Friday ,the sports day, firstly we went to the Emirates Stadium. Because Palestinians love football, everyone took lots of pictures. A very special part was the changing room of the Arsenal Team. After this we went to the  Leisure Sobel Center in  Holloway. We did ice scaring and trampoline. It was so nice to see everyone having fun together. For the most of the Palestinians it was the first time doing ice scating. I was really happy to share this experience with them. 

The Islington event

Saturday afternoon we had the draw performance in Camden lock. I was surprised how much they prepared in such a short time. It was just lovely seeing them together dancing and acting. Thank you!

Greenwich was the last day with the Palestinians for me. Unfortunately I needed to say goodbye. But it was a good end. We had lots of time to hang out, chat and play games together. We also did some interviews for a CADFA film. 

Support palestine

We have a demonstration tomorrow 15/may/2015 between 5-6 pm at kintish town station join us fir Najba Day.

The day that the Palestinian lost their lands.

Momin Taha

The Drama session

We finally  had our first drama session on Monday. Nadine and I had met Tamsin and Jo (the two drama teachers) half an hour before we started. After a while the rest of the students arrived and the fun began. We were playing funny games to get to know each other and to get in to drama. We needed lots of creativity and imagination.  We put our names in a not-existing bucket and expressed different feelings with our body language.

After that we started to think about topics we wanted to include in our drama and show the Palestinian youth. At first the participants said things like music, hobbies and celebrities but at the end our long list included also serious topics like the education system and dangers in London. We had hot discussions.

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