Is it really the end of my second week here? But there's so much bureaucracy to cut through, so many politicians whose image we have to burnish, so much not fasting to do!

Which reminds me - I wonder where my pizza is?

The buzzer sounds. I get the door; it's the skinny kid with funny hair and a high voice. That's how I know I'm getting older - his hair looks funny to me. "Why were you not at the buffet tonight, sir?" he asks - we were in the dining room earlier when he told me about the Iftar banquet available. I grin and reply, "I'm tired."

He's a nice kid. Earlier in the week, I forget why, but we were all talking about how much we liked Palestine, and somehow he ended up laughing awkwardly and agreeing, "yes, we are all one family!" I wonder if people here make fun of him for being different.

"Hang on a sec." I run over to where my change is; I was going to give him the rest of my 1 shekel pieces, but imagining him suffering abuses at the hands of people who hate the other, imagining him afraid and in pain - well, I'm an American, and I do the only thing I seem to know how to do sometimes, I give him a slightly larger tip than I'd planned. "Shukran", I say, thank you in Arabic, one of the few things I've learned to say. "Thank you, sir," he says in that thin, high voice, with a smile, and then turns around and slouches down the hallway. I shut the door. There's a pizza that needs eating.