Nazareth-Ramallah-Jerusalem

This morning I have met with the director of the Baptist School of Nazareth, Mr Ousama Moalem, to discuss with him about the possibility of an exchange project with the Atheneum in Antwerp, so that they would host the Antwerp adolescents during their schooltrip to Nazareth and that they would afterwards send some of their students for a schooltrip to Antwerp. He seems very interested indeed and we will discuss it further when I come back next month with the director of the Antwerp school. With a rented a car I then drove off to Ramallah. Instead of driving through the Westbank - which would be impossible because of all the checkpoints - I drove through Israel, via Afula, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to Ramallah. I could simply drive into Ramallah without passing a checkpoint at Qalandia, which was an new experience for me. Getting back out later in the afternoon, went with the usual checking though. © Pol De Winter - instrument workshop in Ramallah In Ramallah I had the chance to discuss our collaboration with Ramzi Abu-Radwan of the music school Al Kamandjati and explained him why Olivier Marie decided to take Nablus as his basis and not Ramallah, but that we consider Al Kamandjati as our partner in this training project and that they could also profit from it as such without paying for the service Olivier and his students could offer in terms of tuning and repairing pianos for the school. We hope that Al Kamandjati will be able to send a candidate student for this training programme to Nablus, so that we can train a young person who will later on be affiliated directly to Al Kamandjati for all the repair and tuning work on pianos of the school in Ramallah and its different extensions, such as its new school in Jenin. © Pol De Winter Before leaving Ramallah to spend some time in Jerusalem, we were all invited to a wonderful and delicious lunch at the home of Iyad Jarradat, who in 2006 followed a training period of 3 months at Pianomobil, the piano-workshop of Pol De Winter in Antwerp.