Life Update II

     Since I haven't written about my actual work in, well, a while to say the least, I figured I would summarize all of my happenings in the past few months into one blog post because procrastination is fun! Stephanie and I have finally established a stable schedule at Hilmi which includes 4 classes a day with some small groups mixed in. We try to play as many games as possible with them, some succeed, some don't, but slowly we're learning what works. Sometimes the teachers ask us to work with groups on the assigned chapters, but these lessons don't tend to go very well. It's hard to keep a young group of energetic students focused when you can't even yell at them in a language they understand. I have started giving extra material to the more advanced students in the form of short stories, but one of my students in the 7th grade took it upon herself to read Harry Potter and the Deadly Hollows all in English! I was very proud. I am also working on methods to bring up some of the weaker students that can't even understand me when I ask why they aren't working. The teacher is sympathetic to them but doesn't know how to help these few while simultaneously teaching a class. But I figure that's where I come in! I just have to figure out what to do now...

     We had a short bout with one of the high school teachers that turned out to be just another one of the absurd examples of miscommunication or rather complete lack of it. Maheera is apparently our "coordinator" in quotations because our original coordinator doesn't do her job so well, so she was the unofficially appointed boss. All of the scheduling that is posted is in Arabic, except the middle school classes (my classes) that are posted at all, and constantly change from hour to hour. How teachers plan lessons, that is a question I'm still working on... We had talked to all of our teachers one day and found out that we had no more classes, so we left, after many attempted calls to our "coordinator" to no avail I might add. After about 3 hours, we got a very angry call from Maheera saying we were not allowed to leave apparently and that she was very dissapointed in us. If you've never been screamed at by an Arabic mother, you just cannot understand the terror involved. Anyways, we worked it out in about one day and she was happy go lucky and smiley again the next time we saw her... Roie says the Arabic culture is just kind of loud. Humph, kind of.

    Right after our 8 day Hannukah break, the Arabic schools went on winter holiday. Meaning we had about a month and a half if not more of no school. And since we just love our students too much to let that happen, we worked out a small group of students that would come at the usual time for extra English practice during the break. One of our most excited and ambitious students, Saed, was even more helpful than the teachers in setting up the group  because of how badly he wanted it. He even made his family come back from visiting Haifa early in order to come to our sessions. Stephanie and I tried to plan about an hour's worth of activities, and I got really creative with murder mysteries and scavenger hunts. But the kids ended up staying for four hours every day and we filled the rest of the time playing board games and talking. I started mastering the art of Rummikub along with another very strange Israeli card game with queens and kings.

Scavenger Hunt list... They didn't do any of the really fun ones! 

"Make a mummy out of your partner" Challenge!

   At Manof, I attended a class field-trip to Mt. Meron where there was snow! We drove for about an hour and 15 min each way for about 45 minutes of play time, but it was worth it. The rest of the volunteers at Manof were having a hard time with the faculty and students (as in they had none), so Roie switched us to a new placement at a kindergarten (Gan)! I was really excited to play with little children, but I realized I couldn't leave the Manof kids. Unlike the others, I did meet a small number of kids, and I felt too guilty to leave them considering they want and need my English so badly. When I went back to Manof after a short break, I knew I made the right choice. Everybody missed me, and noticed my absence. I'm sure it would have felt awful for them if I left and never came back without any notice (not by lack of trying on our party but because again.... no communication in this country). The kids really want to know me and immediately everybody starts speaking English and encourage others to come talk too, which is really amazing. Normally, I have to remind the kids over and over to speak English and not their mother tongue, but at Manof they are so eager, which makes my job pretty easy :) (In case I forgot to write what Manof was about, it's a youth village for students with rough pasts... criminal records, drug problems, etc. It's a boarding school where the students are heavily supervised, but have a good amount of help from soldiers and trained professionals).

Manof kids in the snow on Mt. Meron.  Those boys can pick up 

shockingly large blocks of ice. A whole new meaning to snowball fight.

     On the other side of the country, my druze classes have semi-started! I've had two meetings with one class and one with the other. We did DNA models made of candy and strawberry DNA extraction. A group of donors came to visit on my extraction day and they were very impressed with my group and how smart they were on the subject and I was so proud! Unfortunately, they had also a long winter break in which I had no classes, and immediately after break for some reason none of the Americans can figure out, they began exams. So now I am at a standstill until the beginning of February. Oh well, what can you do? No druze for you!! (Compliments to Roie). The Druze lessons are by far my favorite so far though. The students are well behaved for the most part and are even more eager to learn than the Hilmi students if possible. AND I get to do fun science experiments, so really what could be better?! Even when the projects don't work so well, they are still fascinated! Basically, I've got a pretty good thing going... During the break, we still drove to the villages each day in case students would decide to show up. Of course, nobody did. But there were random students there from another class who were really excited to talk to me. One girl in particular has really weak English, but I can really appreciate how brave she is for trying to speak SO much after my occasional bumbling attempts at Hebrew. A prime example of the Druze generosity that we've seen everywhere so far, she has given me a bracelet, a large candy bar, two Arabic-English "dictionaries" and a drawing she made just for me!

   Side note: After Hanukah I went to Prague and Munich to meet my parents and brother! FYI - Turkish Air is amazing. Free Turkish delights and a meal and free alcohol on every flight? say what? It was an amazing trip and really gave me the travel bug. I'm currently planning my next trip to Italy with Gil over Pesach :)

Here are some random pictures:

 

Working at Manof also means working with the kids at the farm.
 Here we fed the sheep, both mamas and babies (from a bottle)!

My walk back from Manof in Akko

Homemade LB-Agar plates from gelatin and chicken stock (hence
 the green herbs...) for the Druze class

Looking through our new microscope at a variety of samples we found outside!

Just a fun view of my everyday walk back from school in Akko

Stephanie is all set up for our movie with her variety of
snacks! We watched Alice in Wonderland with Arabic subtitles

This is not what I expected from the Youth Center's after school art class in Mr'ar (Druze village)....

Maggie and I built an improvised Jesus cave for the Druze Christmas party!
Druze don't celebrate Christmas but Mr'ar is a mixed village with
Christian, Muslim, and Druze. Everybody was very impressed.... sort of.
 Improvisation is definitely a skill I will boast about on my resume once I finish
this program... And heaven help the interviewer who asks me to give an example of a
time I was asked to improvise. How long is this interview supposed to be?

The Charles Bridge in Prague :)

Israel-Palestine Conflict

Part of our weekly schedule is something called Hevruta which is a 4 hour block of time in which we sit with our Israeli peers and discuss relevant topics and try to get the Jewish Israeli perspective on all of these issues (so far we've talked about things like water issues in the middle east, the struggles of minority populations here  including Ethiopian, Haredim, and LGBT). I really love this group of people and tonight was one of the great examples why. We have such a diverse representation of ideals and morals just among the Americans, not to mention the Israelis. Some are more volatile, some are extreme pacifists, many are strongly moderate. And yet we are all able to talk openly and relatively calmly about very serious and emotional issues like tonight regarding the situation between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The best part was that it wasn't at all planned. We had a completely different lesson prepared for the evening, but when somebody mentioned the new articles regarding some recent violence in Gaza, the discussion started and there was no stopping it. Part of it is the lack of understanding among Americans of the real situation, so a large part of the conversation is us asking them clarification questions that may be really interesting and different from what we've heard in the media, but that complicate the issues more than I realized. We talked about what other methods could be used to avoid killing civilians, what the IDF does to prevent these injuries, would peaceful approaches work better than attacks, how to compromise between protecting yourself in the moment and finding a long term solution? Unfortunately it would be rather impossible for me to write about everything we talked about... but I will try to summarize the main points and the things I took away from it the most.

First, it is interesting to acknowledge the weighted media coverage that impacts the views of foreigners. When Israel is struck by rockets vs when Israel sends rockets. I feel that in the left wing/Democratic community it is almost becoming trendy to stand up for the underdog Palestinians, but they don't exactly understand what they are standing up for. The people in Hamas are not the same thing as the people, the civilians in Gaza. The people in the West Bank are a whole other issue, and the Arabs I work with every day are about as far removed from them as Jewish Israelis. I know that nobody is trying to speak up for Hamas, but Israel is doing more than anybody else in the world to help the citizens while protecting themselves from the enemy government. They are terrorists and they are the government. Israel tries to help, but they can barely get feet on the ground. The IDF sends water, gas, food, electricity at the same time they are fighting a war with the same territory. They warn the citizens of imminent attacks with specific locations using paper fliers, text messages, emails, etc. They don't want to listen and the solution to this problem can only begin when they are gone... The question is how to remove them from power. Hamas suppresses and tortures their people as much as Syria and many other countries in the region, but people around the world aren't quite aware of it. And when they criticize Israel I don't think it is fair because nobody but the people in this country can understand such a difficult situation. Imagine for a minute that a Hamas-like organization existed in New Jersey and sent even one explosive projectile towards New York. What would the American do? I don't even have to say it because the answer is so clear. Much less would they take hit upon hit and wait days or weeks before responding in a strategic and relatively soft  manner.

There was so much more discussed, but I know I only have so much of your attention span. But I am very excited that I am learning so much first-hand about this misunderstood issue and I hope that when I come home I can help compensate for the spotty media coverage. I think that more world-wide understanding of the issue can have a huge impact the way things are currently by sending in foreign support to Gaza. After this conversation I think the first step is to improve the living situation of the civilians here and then to begin working on relations with Israel. But that means international/neutral groups who are willing to help, and help a lot. They need schools that will not brainwash the children, they need a consistent water and electric supply, they need hospitals, they need general education. I also feel that as an American I have a slightly stronger influence when it comes to spreading such information since Israelis are considered too biased to give non-partisan reports. I am really happy that I can still have an important role even once my time here is over.

Lots more posts to come :)

Life Update

Wow, believe it or not, I'm back! My computer took a bath under my faulty air conditioner a while ago and ever since then it's problem and problem. Turned out to be an easy fix, but things aren't easy without a car! So it took a while... I believe I left off last time right before our field trip to the northern Galilee region. So to summarize, we hiked. Then the next day we hiked. Then I believe we hiked some more.

Don't be fooled by the flat, there was a large large hill to climb at the end.

We returned to home base each night at a hostel right on the Kineret, but this was not just a hostel. Boy was this place beautiful. The palm trees and bright full moon were breathtaking with the lake and mountains in the background. The weather was way cooler up in that area too which made everything 100 times better.

We got a tour of the Sapir Site, one of the most important water pumping systems in the country and one of the most secure areas too. We were also taken on a guided tour of Tzfat, the center of Kabbalistic Judaism. We hiked one mountain called Arbel that involves some very vertical ledges as well as the option of exploring an old crusader fortress!

Yes that is a castle and yes that is very high up

The stories say that an ancient Muslim leader fought a great battle against crusaders in the valley below the mountain. I spent the entire trip trying to avoid walking through the many streams that our trails criss-crossed, hopping from rock to rock, nearly dying on slick logs while most people had given up and just barreled straight on through. But the last day we actually hiked through a stream. Not across the stream, through the stream. We walked through shin-high water and waist-high water (freezing cold I might add) for about 30 minutes, following the stream. It was a little cold and a little dangerous, with many well-hidden rocks just waiting for a toe to stub, but it ended up being one of the most beautiful and interesting hikes on the trip.

After the trip we had about a week and a half vacation for Sukkot for which my boyfriend, Gil, came back from travelling abroad. I stayed with him and his family and spent lots of time sleeping, eating delicious food (only sometimes in a sukkah...), talking to his very large family, and playing with nieces and nephews.

Netanya, where Gil lives, has one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen

On the last day of vacation we went camping at Hof Dor, right on this beach with explorable islands, bath water, and PERFECT sand. 

Finally after the holidays. אחרי החגים אחרי החגים. That's all you ever hear Israeli's say that time of year, wait until after the holidays. Everything shuts down for basically a month and people procrastinate any work due anywhere near the time of the holidays to afterwards. Which really is unfortunate if your air condition breaks... Anyways, finally it's after the holidays and real work can finally start because I think all of us were sick of training. Our schedule's work like follows: Sunday is open to variety, Monday and Wednesday mornings from 8am - 1pm is teaching English in Israeli schools, Monday afternoon volunteering in various centers in the Akko community, Tuesday and Thursday mornings for Ulpan (Hebrew classes) and evenings for volunteering in the Druze villages. In between we have some meetings and study sessions. We work a lot...

My placements are in the Ort Hilmi School for Monday/Wednesday which is an Arabic school near the Old City. Unfortunately, I don't get a lot of Hebrew practice there, but the kids are so incredibly excited about learning English and make us feel like rock stars. One volunteer was even asked for her signature. Real Life. Our goal is to make learning more fun than their normally scheduled classes with games and songs and more. The teachers are all very happy to have us there and the past year's volunteers said they had a wonderful experience at this school, so we're hoping for a repeat! So far the kids are amazing. One 7th grader who spoke nearly perfect English was brave enough to demonstrate her outstanding voice in the middle of the hallway between classes with students running around everywhere. And of course she's beautiful... most of the girls are beautiful. She told me that she learned most of her English by listening to songs and watching movies, so I'm taking her advice and starting to accumulate more Hebrew songs and TV shows. I would love to pick up some Arabic while I'm spending so much time there, but without a base in the alphabet it is really hard to remember any of the many words they scream at us daily. We were all surprised to find out when we started learning about our placements that Arab and Jewish students are legally segregated into separate schools, with the Arabic schools clearly receiving much less state funding. It is oddly reminiscent of the US 1950's except that nobody seems to notice it and people here aren't making real strides to try to break this trend. While there are some mixed schools, they are purely optional and not at all common. Before starting here, I did not realize how important English is to these students. It is a required subject on their high school exit exams called Bagrut and without taking one of the higher levels in school (regardless of your exam score) the Arabic students are not allowed to continue their education in university. Jews who are not well-versed in English can still make a decent living and career through other routes including the military (a non-option for Arabic students), but for the lower performing students at Hilmi, this is the end of the road, so I feel like my time spent here is really meaningful which makes getting up so early worth it :)

I teach advanced middle school students (7th-10th grade) who study in the High School building above. 

High School Hallway. The buildings are really new and very well equipped!

The Druze village I will work in is called M'rar and is placed on a mountain with a perfect view of the Kineret.

The girls who work at the Youth Center had their moms and grandmas prepare this "small snack" for us on our first visit. But that wasn't enough, they packed up every crumb of leftovers for us which fed each 6 person apartment for at least two more days. The Druze are known for their hospitality and generous nature if you hadn't already figured that out. 

The Druze are a religion independent of Islam, Judaism, or Christianity and it's really pretty recent. But the unique thing about the Druze is that nobody is allowed to convert to their religion (you must be born to both Druze parents) and much of their belief system is kept secret. There are many non-religious Druze though just like any other religion, and those are mainly the population that I will be working with. There is even a population of Druze in the US! Another unique aspect of the community is that despite their origins, they are highly loyal to whichever country they live in. The ones in Israel are loyal to Israel to the point that they are required by law to serve in the army like every other Jewish citizen (whereas other Arab Israelis are forbidden from the army). While just across the border the Druze in Syria are loyal to the Assad Regime as required by law.

Religious Druze men follow a strict dresscode pictured above and aren't allowed to shave their mustaches!

The girls who volunteer in my youth center are so friendly and welcoming, and while we haven't started working yet, I know I am so lucky to have such a great village. My plan is to teach a science course, but I'm really working to make it as interesting and fun as possible. The course is provided free to the students (truly amazing considering the large supply list the village is buying for my class) which means they are free to come and go as they please. Therefore, it is my job to keep them inspired to continue coming back. Additionally, my job and my goal is not really to teach them science facts and theories, but to get them interested and give them a base for curiosity for their future. I have some fun experiments planned but I am really nervous because of the language barrier. We will have some Arabic-speaking volunteers to help us, but there that barrier is still very present and I can feel has definitely already affected things at Hilmi. 

Sidenote: I learned that  my apartment building has a readily accessible roof! So Cool! As if the sunset views couldn't get any better. 

Aerial-ish view of Akko from my roof!

Other random cool tidbit, Gil taught me how to make sushi, and I kind of rock at it. New hobby for the win! 

That's all I can remember for now from the last month or so, which I think is pretty impressive for one sitting considering my tendency to forget my thought in the middle of sentences...No worries, more to come! This time much sooner I hope. 

שנה טובה!!

Tonight is the beginning of Rosh Hashannah which means the Israel Service Fellows get a much needed break! Moving to another country is a lot of work it turns out... We had our first Ulpan session yesterday where we took more placement tests and had mini "interviews" with the instructors. Then we had a group meeting to go over roommate contract type issues as well as some Hevruta (small group study) about Rosh Hashannah and what it means and why we celebrate it. 

Tonight I'm going to have dinner with an Israeli family associated with my program and a few other ISFers and hopefully tomorrow I can find services somewhere. We were told the family speaks very little english so definitely getting in some hebrew pracice tonight :). Akko is not a very big place so there is at least one Moroccan schul very close by and an Ashkenazic one pretty far away and thats about it. 

Last night we did our "burnt new years offering" aka bonfire מדורה with the Israeli peers and made more friends! We also discovered that there is a mental institution right on the beach near our flats, fun times. But the beach is really beautiful and at night Haifa is all lit up and very visible! I went back this morning with some of my roomates to watch from the shade as other people get their daily UV dosage. Theres a nice little workout area with new machines right on the beach and we had the entire place to ourselves except for the occasional low flying bird! 

We are slowly learning all of the adorable quirks about the apartment. Our electricity does this nifty trick where it keeps randomly shutting off. Its not too much of a problem because you just hit a button and it is back to normal except that AC units leak when they are shut off suddenly. So my computer is sitting in a box of rice and may need life support. 

While I hope and pray for my computer, I am finding other ways to entertain myself, such as mixing my own henna from the giant bag of powder that the previous tennants left us! 

Shana tova and metuka! שנה טובה ומתוקה! I miss everybody at home so much and am thinking of you! 

Moving Day

 סוף סוף we have moved to Akko! Our apartment is in great condition and very comfortable with a killer view.

There are six of us in our apartment and two other apartments about a 3 minute walk away with ISFers. We had lots of cleaning and organizing to do between the three apartments (or flats as the Israelis like to call them). All of the apartments need to be kept kosher, so we had to kosher a lot of the kitchen utensils and plates etc and I labelled everything with בשרי וחלבי for dairy and meat. Speaking of which I labelled pretty much everythingggg that could be labelled: table, drawers, mirror, fridge, sink, etc. We don't start ulpan until after the haggim so I need to get a head start! The first day was full of running around to the bank where I openned my Israeli bank account and will get my visa card very soon and then a quick falafel break and over to the grocery store. I walked back and forth to the downtown area four times though which boy oh boy was a long way with a lot of sun. Good thing I packed buckets of sunscreen! Everything in Akko is walkable, but I will definitely be walking off my meals doing it. And so far we're eating pretty well! Peanut sauce stir fry a la Hannah for the first night and just tonight had more chicken and penne pasta. We are all shopping and cooking together, family style, which is working out really well so far!

The grocery store called ShuperSal שופרסל is just around the corner, I'm talkin' crazy close! But of course the way cheaper market called My Market is in the center of the city, about 20 minute's walk. More to come on what will prevail: my laziness or my cheapness.

I'm learning new things every day. Yesterday I learned that pigeons are not social creatures, they enjoy solitude from people and finding an empty apartment is like winning the pigeon lottery. So we have been procrastinating the cleaning of the laundry room where we still have friends visiting us every morning. I'm sure once we get desperate enough for clothes we will figure something out. For now, we have brand new sheets and towels courtesy of Ma'ase Olam (very stylish ones at that...).

Today we visited the Municipality building and got a special tour of the security center. And it really was special, we are some of the only people besides employees who have ever been allowed in that room! Akko has cameras on every single corner so they can see the ENTIRE city from a few TV monitors. Seriously, they can zoom all the way up to your window... so living on the fourth floor and I'll still have to close my blinds I guess. But they work with the police department משטרה as well as their own security guard-like people who patrol the area to keep everything safe. They even have an app where you can push a button on your phone and it sends an SOS to them and they call you and send somebody out to help right away, which is really nice to know!

We also visited the Young Adult Center מרכז הצעירים today for a Rosh Hashanah toast with the Israelis which is the place where we'll be doing all of our study sessions and ulpan. It also has computers for us to use and tons of other resources!

On the way back we got rides from the Israelis and Amit drove me around the neighborhoods in my area pointing out landmarks like Pizza Roma, the best pizza in Akko apparently (although I've heard Israelis don't quite understand the concept of pizza as well). Anyways, I got lots more exploring to do! 

Shabas (and our last day) in Givat Haviva

Yesterday? Two days ago? Time is very confusing especially when half of me is still in the United States. Anyways, since my last post we had this wonderful company called Our Nature הטבע שלנו come spend the afternoon leading us through some very creative and entertaining team building games and challenges. Some of them are too crazy/complicated to explain here, but examples where human minesweeper, a blind maze competition, etc that all taught us different lessons about how we do work together and how maybe we should work together. I reaffirmed for myself that I am a much more effective leader in small groups and learned that I really enjoyed activities more when I had more responsibility and with that knowledge I think will be encouraged to step into a suitable leadership role in the future.

Wow, I thought camp was over. My mistake, camp is never over haha. After the team building games we broke into groups to make our own outdoor dinner (not a small undertaking for 70ish hungry twentysomethings since we finally had the Israeli peers join us for a short time). Almost identically to camp, we made indian potatos (hollowed out potatos with broiled eggs an spices inside), pita pizza, homemade cheese, israeli salad, delicious tchina sauce, smores, and chocolate stuffed bananas! What a feast! It definitely made me miss all the friends at camp I made these with only 2 weeks ago. Can you believe its only been two weeks?? 

We were finally given a bit more information about what our normal weekly schedules will look like and with whom/where we will be living. We're going to be pretty busy in schools every other morning followed by volunteering in either Akko עכו or a Druze village until dinner time with Ulpan squeezed between non-school mornings. Sunday's are a part of the working week in Israel, but we will be doing a variety of different things each Sunday including field trips and training days with the Israel Teaching Fellows (ITFers) from Rehovot.

Shabat was a much needed resting day. We had some chill activities and I actually went to services since I probably won't go for the next 10  months, but most importantly I rested. And when I rest, I rest hard. It was so much fun banging on the tables again for birkat with the other girls who had been to jew camp.

Sorry for the late posting! They're keeping us so busy we don't have much time to ourselves much less for blogging :) also I don't fully understand the whole blogging thing yet soooo bear with me. Thanks! 

הגעתי! Ive arrived!

I made it relatively painlessly despite the ridiculously long journey! We're in Givat Haviva for a seminar until Sunday. Everybody has been so welcoming and friendly! We didnt do much today besides hanging out at the pool and hunting for wifi because ATT is making the sim card process so difficult. There's a long day of orientation ahead of me tomorrow, so I'll update again when there is more to tell!

Day 2 quick update: lots of getting to know each other activities and logistics. We toured the bomb shelter which is right next to our rooms, just in case, but nothing to worry about yet! We also
got some awesomeee drum lessons. Who knew banging on plastic buckets with drum sticks could be so fun?!