Yuhki Ohngo

Being in Italy with Palestinian people always brings back all the memories of not only my time in Palestine but also my memories of being human being. Whenever I stay with Palestinian people no matter how little and much time I spend, I can experience happy, sad, angry times, which is all elements of human being. In my daily work time in Turkey I may be pretending to be happy all the time because of my position as a project manager. I’m not trying to show my angry or sad emotions. But when I am with Palestinians, all the obstacles disappear.

What Zajel Program of the PR Department at An-Najah taught us from this cultural exchange programme is to tell us individually to open our eyes wide open and widen our views, it tells us to do everything as a group, We learned not only how to manage and organise plan but also how to manage ourselves. Various competency skills have been improved thanks to Zajel Program.

Because Italy is an internationally well-known touristic place, it gave us a chance to have a feeling of being a global citizen. In Italy Italian people don’t care about nationality of tourists. They just looked at us as one of their tourists. On the other hand, in a daily life in Palestine, Palestinian identity stays with us all the time and sometimes we raise our voices to get our identity heard.

At Spanish Stairs people from various countries were just sitting there as if we were all friends. Being a global citizen means that being able to adopt ourselves to any new environment and being able to show respect and understanding for others when we are surrounded by strangers in a new environment.

The Trevi Fountain and Spanish Stairs were good attractions and we had a few occasions where we were engaged with local or other tourists. Museums and other indoor attractions were more like individual learning places where we were exposed to experiencing different culture. I now believe that any water attraction gives all Palestinian students psychologically positive effect.