Rupper pand

Right now, it is final exam time at the School of Hope, so I have been doing a lot of work to prepare exams. It is somewhat stressful work since the exams are so important and carry a lot of weight in the students' grades. Plus EVERYONE at the school is stressed out during exam period.

Today, I was alone in the office for a while, working on preparing next Monday's exams. A younger student, probably second grade, who I haven't met before came in and asked me for something in Arabic. Over the course of the year between working in a school every day and taking Arabic lessons, I have gotten pretty good at the standard school words in Arabic. If he had asked for a "mastera" (ruler), "alam aloah" (dry-erase marker) or "mahai" (eraser), we would have been set. Unfortunately, he was asking for something which hadn't yet come up in my vocabulary lessons. I tried to get around it by asking who it was for but it turned out to be one of the religion teachers, and that didn't clarify anything. I asked why she needed it and he pointed to his head, which only made it more mysterious. I asked if she was cold or had a headache. He said no and no.  Baffling.

We stared at each other for a few minutes, neither of us sure what to do about our predicament. Finally, he gave me the "wait one moment" hand signal (put your first two fingers together with your thumb to make a very soft fist and gently bob it up and down about three times) and ran off.

I found out afterwards that he ran down the hall and found the first teacher he could, the school administrative assistant, and asked her what the word he needed was in English. She told him and he ran back down the hallway to the office repeating the word over and over to himself.

Returning to my perspective, the boy ran back into the room, slightly out of breath and says, "rupper pand!" Unfortunately, this did not immediately clarify for me what he needed. After a moments consideration, I figured it out! Arabic speakers who are new to English sometimes have trouble deciphering between b's and p's since there is no p in Arabic. What he wanted was a rubber band. It turns out that one of the students needed to put her hair up. Ah, of course. Now if he had just said the word "shar" (hair) earlier, I might have understood... but really, who knows?

In any case, it was a good, humbling reminder that there is always more to learn.

Congratulations to the Class of 2012!

The Scottish Choir

Two weekends ago, was full of fun events! On Thursday, my choir had a joint concert with a visiting choir from Scotland. The Scottish choir is a political choir, so they sing all songs about justice, freedom and peace. The whole idea is that they sing these songs during marches, parades and other demonstrations instead of just chanting. One man explained to me that when you walk down the street in a large crowd, chanting, passersby feel attacked and defensive. However, if you walk down the street in a large group of people singing and possibly dancing, passersby get excited and want to join in. At the very least, they are interested in what you're singing about. I love it! I reminded once again of, Emma Goldman's words, "If there won't be dancing at the revolution, I'm not coming". The Scottish therefore sang about 8 peace and freedom themed songs. Some were songs they sing regularly in marches in Scotland, others were specially designed for their visit to Israel/Palestine.

Zaridash Choir: I'm second from the left.

My choir sang 8 songs that we have been preparing for the past few months. The best hit was Loch Lomond, the classic Scottish song for which we have a beautiful arrangement. (I'm sure you know it, it goes, "ye'll take the high road and I'll take the low road and I'll get to Scotland afore you"... ring a bell?). There are actually two main roads in Bethlehem which run parallel to each other, one high and one low. From the beginning of the year, whenever our group has taken one road or the other we have sung this song so I was ecstatic to get to sing that song for real. 

I felt so blessed to have many of my friends attend my concert. Folks drove up from the south, took the bus from Jerusalem and even bought me a beautiful bouquet of yellow and purple roses! I was so honored that so many of my dear friends here could attend. Thank you all so much for coming! It meant so much to me to have such friendly, familiar faces in the crowd.

School of Hope Class of 2012

Saturday night was graduation for the School of Hope class of 2012. I had the pleasure of attending along with pastors and company from the English speaking congregation in Jerusalem. Students were very dressed up! The girls wore ball gowns and four inch heels beneath their robes. They even had full make-up and hair done. They were even more dressed up than they were for Prom.

The concert hall was packed and it was with great excitement that the students filed in to the hall. They did not use "pomp and circumstance" but instead chose their own, very dramatic, music. There were speeches given by administrators and teachers, songs from the choir, student speeches in Arabic, English and German, a jazz clarinet performance (one of the graduating seniors is an awesome clarinet musician!) and a dabke performance. Families cheered with enthusiasm as their student received his or her diploma and there was no hope of quieting the families down.

It was great to have the opportunity to be part of my students graduation and the community's celebration. I am honored to have been included in these communities here.

Dabke

Me in show choir circa 2007.

Last Saturday was the annual Al-Raja Dance Troupe performance. Al-Raja is the Dabke dance troupe from the Hope School, many of whom are my students. As I have mentioned before, dabke is the beautiful, traditional Palestinian dance. The students wore traditional Palestinian outfits and performed about a dozen different dances to a mix of traditional and more modern folk-style music. The show reminded me SO MUCH of my show choir days in high school. There was dancing, some singing, lots of cheering in the audience and everyone had a great time. I LOVE IT!

I'm so proud of my students for putting on such an amazing show. Dabke is an excellent part of Palestinian heritage and culture, and I'm happy to see it alive and well.

Please enjoy some photos from the show.

The opening of the dance performance.

Dabke

Spinning!

We used this in show choir too.

Check out the guy jumping on the far right. Awesome.

English Bowl Final

This past Saturday, we had the extremely exciting final English bowl event! Students from each of the four schools in the district gathered in Beit Sahour for the final rounds of competition. At this stage, the best two students in each grade in Spelling Bee and Mini-talk would compete against the winner's at each of the other schools.

Competition began with the Mini-Talk. The 24 students (2 students from each of the grades 8th, 9th, and 10th from each of the four schools) gathered in a room on the third floor to receive the rules and instructions. Then, beginning with the 8th graders, students were called one by one to pick two prompts out of a basket. After considering each prompt, the students picked their favorite and were sent into the writing room where they were allowed 15 minutes to write their two minute speech and then transfer notes onto note cards. They were only allowed the note cards while on stage. Needless to say, most of the students were quite nervous! Not only was this a very short amount of time in which to prepare a speech, they would also be performing the speech in front of four judges they had never met and many of their peers from all over the school district.

The audience.

I have to say, that I was so proud of them! I only got to hear two of my students' speeches since I was in the preparation room facilitating the activity, but I was very happy with them and how they did! It is not small task to give a presentation in front of a large audience like this one. One of the major goals of the English Bowl was to equip our students with the skills and tools necessary to give impromptu speeches in English, a very powerful skill today. I think that even just the training we did at the individual school level was worthwhile for these students. To see them actually give their speeches successfully made me very proud indeed!

The 10th grade spellers.

After lunch, it was time for the Spelling Bee. Starting with the 8th graders, two students from each school gathered on stage with the judges to do their best at spelling words. They first few rounds were with words from lists the students had been given beforehand. Later rounds featured words the students had not seen on lists before. I was so impressed with the students ability to memorize and spell many difficult words in English! Having grown up with SpellCheck, I have to admit that my spelling skills are not perfect and there were several words that I am not sure I could have spelled correctly.

The Spelling Bee turned out to be a very competitive game with emotions racing. Not having competed in a spelling bee before, I don't know how competitive they normally are, but I was impressed by how seriously the schools took this competition.

All in all it was a very busy and fun day. I am so proud of my students and all the students for everything they have learned and accomplished, both this year and in this area in particular!

Bedouin Homestay

I recently had the awesome opportunity to stay with a Bedouin family in the Negev Desert. On a Friday evening I was picked up in Jerusalem by a friend of the host and traveled down south to the small village where the host family lives.

My host father and his home.

Wanna buy a goat?

At every meal I was served huge delicious meals of traditional Palestinian dishes of rice, meat and vegetables. Perhaps you are wondering what a Bedouin home looks like today? Well wonder no more! Although the Bedouin used to be a predominantly mobile group of people, today many live in permanent homes. My host family's home was a simple but permanent home with a beautiful garden, water tanks and solar panels. They are very self-sufficient people.

My kind host took on me on a tour of the livestock market on Saturday morning. Each week the Bedouin in the region gather here to buy and sell livestock, primarily goats and sheep. It was lots of fun to see so many sheep and goats just hanging out in cars or tethered to posts in the ground.

My host also took me on a tour of his tiny village which is essentially a dozen or so homes and the mosque they built and maintain for themselves. I also got to see some of the larger, recognized villages nearby.

One of the women demonstrate how the rugs are made.

The beautiful selection of rugs, pillows and bags!

One highlight of the trip was when my host took me to a women's cooperative weaving organization called Lakiya Negev Weaving.










This small, fair trade organization is run entirely by women and is partnered with Sunbula, a fair trade organization in the area. They make beautiful rugs, pillowcases and bags by hand from real wool which they dye and treat themselves. Amazing!

Visiting the Bedouin family and learning about their lives was quite the meaningful experience! I recently wrote a newsletter to my supporters about this experience, if you would like to read my newsletter, let me know!

Spring Break in Haifa

I apologize for my recent absence from the blog-o-sphere. The internet has been out at my flat for about two weeks and I've been quite busy!

Welcome to Spring Break 2012!

After Orthodox Easter, my school had three days off so a fellow YAGM and I had a mini-vacation visiting Haifa, a beautiful city on the coast in Israel.




Although Haifa is not known as a tourist beach destination, it has lovely beaches and we enjoyed soaking up some sun on the gorgeous beach.

One of the trees in the Baha'i Gardens

The Baha'i Gardens over Haifa

Gorgeous!

It was a perfect day!

We also paid a visit to the amazing Baha'i Gardens. This area is one of the holiest sites in Baha'i and they have built the most beautiful gardens I have ever seen here.

















































 I am so grateful for a restful and renewing mini-spring break!