And how am I doing on that doing my best thing? Not the best.

It's hard, it turns out, to do your best all the time. Especially when you fall ill, have to go to the hospital til 5 am, work like a dog all week because your boss is gone, and lose internet at your apartment. That being said, I'm trying to eat more healthily (the delicious black pepper-encrusted, blue-cheese topped burger I ate last night and washed down with a beer by an outdoor fire nonwithstanding), and maybe that's one baby step in this big adult life. Not that I eat unhealthy. I eat really well. So, in sum, change is a doozy but I'm a-working on it.

So yes, the past week has been a bit insane. The reaction to my last post was incredible; this blog got over 300 unique hits in one day! Out of control!

Thus, I plan to temper any and all expectations of inspiration and thoughtfulness with the following incoherent collection of bullet points about my past week, including some photos.

• The hospital: so yes, I got sick (but am fine now, Mom and Dad!). And I went to the local doctor twice here in Ramallah, and it wasn't getting better. So my friend was a sweetheart and drove me into Jerusalem to go to Hadassah hospital, a private hospital that's one of the best in the world and only 45 minutes, two checkpoints and a world away! One of the best parts was having to walk through a checkpoint to get into the ER. Yes, when you're deathly ill the first thing you want to do is go through a metal detector, give your passport and answer questions about what you do in Israel. After getting through that fun time, it took forever, as all hospitals do, and at one point I was sort of snoozing across a few chairs with my head in my friend's lap when a bunch of Israeli soldiers walk in, guns slung all over them like killer pageant sashes. The couple of Palestinians hunched in fatigue around me straighted up. I immediately sat up and stared. I guess one of them got a concussion somehow. I don't have much to say on this scene besides how utterly mindbending it is to be in an ER and have 5 teenagers with guns slouched around you playing on their iPhones while the rest of the waiting room is visibly unnerved. It's a place of healing, people! Leave your guns outside! Beyond commentary, that's just basically my life here: some 18 year olds with guns, some ladies in headscarves, and me, the blonde girl without a team in the corner. Yup.

• I went to a place last night that is my new favorite place in the world. That's right, the entire world (note that Cape Cod is always actually first on this list, but it's like heaven...above everything else by default. That's why you can't see heaven from planes!) This place is called Sno(w)bar, and it is like an 8 year old and a 28 year old got together and created the venue of their collective dreams. It's an outdoor bar/restaurant, in a tree-filled, leafy enclave in Ramallah. You decend down wooden stairs from the parking lot and enter into what feels like the coolest tree house you've ever been in. Twinkling lights, and a fire pit, and giant leather couches and chairs, and tons of cushions for lounging, and a pool with chaise lounges, and did I mention a fire pit?? And a giant screen, and a sound system, and the best burger I have ever had outside of the US. Friends, if you plan on visiting, this is so worth your visit. But it's only open during the warm months, so come before October (when summer ends here). The photo below is the end of the Barca-Madrid game as seen over the fire pit and my toasty happy feet:

• For those of you who may be wondering 'what it's like here', here's a few photos of my daily walk to work, so you get a tiny visual, at least:

I walk by this corner every day. I sort of love it.

This is the very fancy, very expensive coffee shop below my office. It is next to the boutique that sells Gucci and Chanel. This place, Zamn, is where the vast majority of my disposable income goes to, for $10 salads and fancy chicken sandwiches and yogurt with fresh fruit and granola. There's some competition afoot with a new cafe Jasmine opening up down the street, so Zamn is now really upping it's game with this delivery push. Fast time in Boomtown, my friends.

• Osama Bin Laden was killed. Some who read this blog and think I'm some sort of Communist/Socialist/Islamist/Anti-American freakbag may be shocked to know this, but I was PSYCHED AS HELL WHEN I FOUND THIS OUT. September 11th blanketed my New York City college campus in its mournful snow, and one of my friends from elementary school's mom died on that awful day (wow, that grammar is shocking, ps). It was a tiny bit weird being here for that, as the mood was somewhat somber or at least dispassionate; man, would I have liked to celebrate in New York and kept refreshing the NYTimes homepage to see more and more shots of Americans celebrating. That being said, I did have some friends over to my rooftop for an epic celebration with lots of cheersing to America that involved guacamole, salsa, chips, corona, Jim Beam, country music and singalongs.

So that's it, folks. Them's the breaks. Fatah and Hamas are reconciled, Israeli fighter jets have taken to flying over Ramallah (one of the preferred psychological tricks of the IDF is to fly real low and then make sonic boom over Palestinian towns so bad the walls shake), I got a new summer bedsheet set and life goes trotting on.