On Tuesday we celebrated Palestinian Cultural Heritage at school. At 10am all the students and staff filed out into the yard where music and food were already set up. The mock business competition club was selling Palestinian crafts including embroidered bookmarks, embroidered bags and tee-shirts. The kids from the Kindergarten had come over into the main yard for the occasion. Everyone quickly got in line to buy fresh falafel sandwiches, foul (beans), little candies and drinks. One of the teachers came around to the teachers and staff serving our daily steaming cups of Arabic coffee which seemed even more appropriate than usual, given the occasion.
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| Two of my kindergartners model their Palestinian dresses! |
Some students had dressed up in traditional Palestinian clothes for the occasion. The school choir sang some Palestinian songs and the entire school joined in singing, dancing and clapping. A few of the students rapped, beat-boxed and chanted slogans all of which were met with excitement by the students.
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| Al-Raja Dabke Troupe! |
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| Dabke! |
Amongst the performances, the highlight was certainly the dabke troupe's performance. Dabke is the traditional Palestinian folkdance and it is awesome. I absolutely LOVE our dabke troupe! They clearly really enjoy dancing making it really fun to watch them! Furthermore, they practice for six hours each week, so they are good at what they do.
The dance is fun to watch, the music is catchy and it is such a huge part of Palestinian pride and cultural heritage. If I think about it a lot while I'm watching, I get teary-eyed with pride for my kids, my school and all of Palestine.
The event lasted for two hours and the kids, staff and teachers alike had a great time celebrating Palestinian culture through food, music, dance, spoken word and crafts.
Today we had another exciting event at the school: the kindergartners had an Easter Egg Hunt in the playground! Beforehand the teachers laid eggs out throughout the yard and the day started by singing some Easter songs, one in Arabic and a couple in English centering on themes of bunnies and chocolate. :-)
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| The kiddos turning in their eggs! |
The kids were instructed to pick out one, and only one, egg bag from the yard and to put it into our collective basket. Since the egg hunt was at 9:30am and the egg bags contained one hard boiled and dyed egg and a couple chocolates, the teachers wisely decided to wait to give the kids the egg and chocolate until later in the day.
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| Adorable. |
The younger kids got first chance at the playground to find eggs and then the older kids got to try their hand at finding eggs. The kids had a great time picking eggs, although predictably many were inclined to find more than just his or her one bag.
All in all the event was a great success and a fun way to kick off our brief Easter break this coming week!
Happy Easter!
Hi Sara! Thanks for the latest sharings!!!! I love the dance pictures! My friend Sandra Stevens, that you spoke to before going, said to see if you had ever had a tour with something called Breaking Silence there. She really appreciated their perspectives on the conflict and recommended that you get in touch with them. I don't know anything more about them, but she seemed to think that they were very fair in their presentations.
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