i really liked hearing you talking about the geography of the west bank. id love to hear more about what you love about palestine if you want to talk about it. if not i hope u have a good day! i’m sorry anons are being so weird to you and i hope this ask doesn’t cross any boundaries

i've talked about a lottt of different things i love about palestine, but i can talk a bit more about the old city in nablus if you'd like :)

the old city is where you go if you want to find anything and everything. there are hundreds of shops and vendors and you get to meet so many different people and experience so many different things, it's so cool. over the shops and buildings are decorations and long cloths and banners that are colored in so many different ways, and they provide shade on hot days and sometimes the colors reflect off of the buildings and the ground so everywhere you go you're engulfed in bright and beautiful colors as you walk through the streets.

you can find a lot of different shops there, and they usually have huge portions of their products on display so you can pick and choose personally and serve yourself on what you'd like to buy. people who sell spices or nuts have HUGE bags of them and you get to grab a plastic kilo bag and fill up as much as you'd like. people who sell candy and gummies do the same thing, so you get to choose however much you want to fill up your bag. my family almost never is able to eat gummies where we live because it's not halal, so whenever we're in palestine we fill up kilos upon kilos of gummies in bags so we can take them back home and eat them :)) my uncle says the gummies they sell in palestine aren't halal either but whatever man where is the whimsy 😔😔 let us have this. the last time my dad went, he came back with a kilo bag of gummies after i asked him to bring some when he returned, so for months i kept the bag of gummies and slowly ate them. i finished the bag a while ago but i loveeeee gummies and whenever i find ones i'm allowed to eat, i'm very excited about it. i cannot escape my inner child.

there are many refreshments that you can find too. in the summers lots of vendors sell ice cream and slushies (as most places do, i assume) and different juices, one of them is 'tamar hindi' which is a drink you'll often see around ramadan and eid. there are stores that sell different pickled vegetables in barrels, and they'll even let you take some out directly and eat them so you can taste and choose which ones you prefer. of course there are lots of food places, but ohhhh my god there was one shawarma place in nablus that i went to that had the BEST shawarma i've ever eaten in my life. like by FAR it was one of the most delicious things i've ever eaten in my entire life and i'm not exaggerating. i yearn for a shawarma as good as the one i had in nablus. wallahi it was genuinely mind blowing. yall don't understand how good it was. i cry and sob over it all the time.

you can also find lots of clothes!! from our traditional palestinian abayas to modern t-shirts, you can find tons. a lot of the stuff that is sold in palestinian territories is bootleg, because real brands are hard to find their way in through the occupation. because of that, some of the more "modern" stuff is really low quality. i bought a belt from the old city and only was able to wear it once before it literally crumbled in my hands. it CRUMBLED. for 50 shekel too 😭😭😭 absolute shame. that's why i think it's more reliable to buy the traditional stuff, like tatreez designs, because at least that stuff is actually real.

there are jewlery shops too!! they're full of gorgeous designs and you can often find evil eye jewelry in a lot of places. i absolutely love the evil eye design and i have a lotttt of evil eye jewelry. some muslims disapprove though, but whatever. i just think it looks nice. i like its meaning too. interesting stuff to me.

palestinians use different types of currencies too!! we often use the israeli shekel, but that's slowly becoming out of use 🤷‍♂️ but we also use the jordanian dinar, and we even use american dollars, usd, to buy stuff.

OH LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE KNAFEH SHOP !! nablus is famous for knafeh. we're like. THE knafeh city. there's a very VERY famous old white-bearded man who owns the famous knafeh shop of nablus and you can almost always find him every day making knafeh. his place always has a huge amount of people there, watching him as he makes the knafeh right in front of them and then serves it out to everyone. genuinely THE knafeh of all time. him and his knafeh are a very cherished part of our city.

i'm sure there are MANY more things i can go on about, but i hope this was interesting to you! thank you for asking :)

once again wrote some stuff down from when i went to see AM last night:

i started queueing around 3 pm and i got a pretty good view honestly, but the people who were first in the queue had started queueing at 6 am (😱) in case anyone is interested

there was a lot of pushing around on our side which was tough because we were already so squeezed in, and also because it was so. warm. in the venue. it was a lot. everyone was sweating and wiping themselves down and fanning themselves, including the bands

the start of the show is always pretty much the same; sculptures, brianstorm, snap, crying lightning (BUT: the new solo sounds AWESOME). then they played teddy picker, the view (they played it so fast???), 4/5 (with the new arrangement), big ideas (gorgeous!!!!!!!! and funny because alex was playing piano for the outro and from our side all you could see was his hair bouncing up and down from behind it lmao) and... cornerstone - which they swapped for star treatment (i love more humbug rep but... big 😔 @ star treatment being out). after that it was AM hours with diwk? arabella and high, but with pretty visitors somewhere inbetween.

the real highlight was the back end of the set. the band seemed in such good spirits, there was a lot of smiling, back and forths between all the boys, and alex was blowing kisses to the audience throughout the set and interacting with everyone who was dancing up in the stands (also he kept calling us "rockers" and said "oberhausen" every chance he got)

suck it and see made me cry, it was fantastic (my filming skills weren't because of all the pushing and sweating, but anyway):

fluorescent adolescent was SO FUN. i'm so happy that's back!!!! mirrorball was a really wonderful moment in the set. alex played some acoustic guitar and when the song was over the mirrorball dropped down from the ceiling!!!!!! which was also scary because it dropped in such a way that it looked like it was about to come down from its cables.......... 😅

it made 505 look gorgeous 🥺

they ended with body paint which... goes SO much harder than i thought???? the outro lasted a solid 3 minutes and it was clearly everyone just kinda freestyling and doing what fit the song and it was AMAZING. gorgeous gorgeous.

encore was i wanna be yours (it was so nice to hear it, and everyone was singing SO loud, but i do really miss the 2014 extended outro 😔), dancefloor and then r u mine? after which they lingered for a long time and i thought they miiiiiight do the extended outro, but they didn't. regardless it was of course so good and energetic, after all those years it's still the best way to be sent home after their set tbh.

my legs were numb afterwards lmao, it was a chore to walk out. i went to see the merch, a lot of t-shirts were already sold out; they had 300 copies of the limited edition poster, i got number 260/300 after the set had been over for a good 30 minutes!!! also in case anyone's interested, haha

i had such a good time!!!! this was the first time i saw AM in a venue after seeing them at a festival twice; both have their charm and it really helps that the band just... always sounds fantastic. they're so, so good live 😩 super excited to continue my mini AM tour in amsterdam tomorrow!!!

read the words 'mothman boxer briefs' for the first time. lifechanging.

Symphonia Thoughts Pt. 6

Under the cut like usual!👇🏾

Finally found out why Regal won't enter that city... damn Regal. And Presea too, she's lost everyone now :( I guess I shoulda seen that coming. I'm a little confused though? She was just his servant? The way he acted about her leading up to this had me thinking it was someone super personal to him like his child or love interest. Am I missing something? Uhhh, I do not trust this Mithos kid like AT ALL. His one skit was Genis was kinda sketch. Where he was talking about how humans killed his parents and how he hated them for it and he was like "You understand, right?" Like okay, are we trying to turn him into a half-elf supremacist too? Let's not put thoughts in the poor guy's head. And then in the other skit where the Kendama switched courses to avoid hitting Raine and Colette thought maybe her power did it his response to that was weird. Idk, I don't really like him so far and his friendship with Genis makes me uneasy. Genis please, I will be so sad if you betray it, it will hurt worse than Kratos. Speaking of Kratos, idk what to believe or who to trust. He seems to be trying to help us but now we have also partnered with Yuan. It seems like (judging by their past little confrontations and the fact that Yuan straight up tried to murder him once) that they're on opposing sides... so I'm really wondering if either of them are trustworthy since at the end of the day they both have Cruxis connections. We are back in Sylvarant now, which is inferior in every other way EXCEPT for the fact that I can buy eggs again now which means I can force Colette to eat obscene amounts of fried rice with bell peppers until she hates Lloyd. I plan to spend a few days doing nothing but grinding to get her affection down. The way I clapped my hands and cheered out loud when I finally found a place that sold them after looking everywhere. I originally wanna gonna try for Sheena for Lloyd's soulmate but she barely likes him rn lol😔 Zelos and Colette are already at a high ranking but she's the current highest so I guess I'll try to knock her out of the top spot and aim for Zelos since he's already there. I like Colette but so much of the story already revolves around her, I would rather someone who isn't her have the top spot so they can have more scenes. The Katz village is too cute, I want to live there.

This guy lol I don't have much to say about him but do I really need to?

Raine... I wonder why she was left at the gate thing (forget the name) and what exactly that means... Why am I so on edge feeling like everyone is about to betray us? Colette is keeping secrets again, Raine found out something troubling about her past, Mithos is feeding Genis weird ideas, we're probably gonna have to fight Regal when we find out he's the murderer, Sheena was angry that we didn't let her sacrifice herself to Kuchinawa, and then there is Zelos... I got a skit where he jokes about how he should deceive Lloyd and Raine tells him that if he does that then he's forfeiting his life (which like yes, let's go girl, protect your stupid found family son). He says he was just joking... "I think". WHAT DOES HE MEAN BY THIS!? I already thought he was up to something when he wandered off in the renegade base but now he can't even say with confidence that he won't betray what I assume to be a close friend of his? Sir... 😑 Plus judging by what I already know about the choice later, being told he'll have to forfeit his life if he deceives Lloyd is kind of ominous. I have no clue why he dies if he picks Kratos (only that it's seemingly intentional?) but if it's anything related to betrayal... hoo boy, I'm ready (not for him dying, I won't allow it... this time). I had an off feeling about Kuchinawa for a while, he was too nice (this game has taught me to never trust anyone who is kind or helps you out lol). For that matter I don't trust the other dude either tbh... Poor Sheena though, she just can't win. I was glad that everyone (except for Lloyd kinda) didn't push Presea to accept Altessa's apology. Even if he's remorseful it doesn't undo the pain he caused her nor the fact that she lost over a decade of her life because of him. And I have a feeling the death of her sister is related in some way too. I don't think she needs to forgive him. I don't even think she needs to forgive Regal if she doesn't want to. I just hope that she can find comfort and healing someday. It was nice to see her smile, even if it was only that once so far. And lastly, I adore Tabatha with all my heart. She's positively adorable and I love how she just gave us a whole bunch of random stuff for no reason, that was cute.