The Grendon weekend

It was my first time to attend the 'women in action' programme through CADFA and I must admit I was very nervous, I was not sure what to expect but I had nothing to worry about because when I first greeted the Palestinian women with Julia, they were all so pleasant and there was automatically a warm welcome feeling. The girls were extremely friendly and on the first day we got to know one another and had introduction speeches. I was lucky to have two Palestinian girls stay around my house for the evening (Dalia and Noor) who were both very nice, fun girls. We exchanged contact details and got to know one another more through talking about  our backgrounds, our family, education and future ambitions.
 
On Saturday all the UK and Palestinian women got together and we left for Grendon at 9am, we spent one day on the UK women topics and one day on the Palestinian women topics. The UK girls had not met up before but we ended up creating a really good presentation, our topics included women presentation in the media, gender inequality in sport and Suzanne gave an interesting talk about the child helpline she works at. 
 
The second day was the day I was looking most forward to as I wanted to know more about Palestine and the issues the women face. Interesting topics were discussed and I learnt so much for example about women giving birth on the check point and the problems Palestinian women face through their pregnancy by the misleading information Israel doctors supply. On Sunday evening there was a real buzz! The UK women had the opportunity to eat some Palestinian food that the women prepared for us and it tasted absolutely delicious! We all ate together and the day ended with dancing and singing. 
 
 On Monday it was our last day in Grendon and we travelled back to Northampton and were put into groups and had further discussions with different organisations in Northampton. Our group had the Sunflower Centre talk and Sue gave a talk on domestic violence. Even for me, living in Northampton, I learnt so many new facts and I was deeply shocked by the statistics. 
 
Overall I learnt so much more about Palestine, the background and how the women felt about the whole situation. It was deeply fascinating to hear about their accounts and I made some nice friends! I exchanged details with some Palestinian girls and some from London which was very nice and we all hope to keep in contact via social networking and email.