Men in Nablus

I borrowed a Canon DSLR from my buddy Julia in order to snap some shots of Ibrahim for an article I'm working on. It was such a pleasure to have a decent camera, I felt like I could suddenly speak again! Don't leave home without one. On my way to the shoot I familiarized myself with the camera by grabbing some shots of friends along the way. Regarding the title, you'll notice 'Men' is right. The public realm in general and foreigners snoopin' around with cameras certainly don't play nice with Middle Eastern Women. But to all my women friends, I want a picture of you too!


Here's Ameed at work. He's always bugging me to stop and chat at his sewing shop, and is always mad cos' I'm always busy.


Two Husseins. The one on the left is a santa-clausy character that's always jokin' with me like I'm a local. I went with my friend to his stand once and my friend was like 'that guy insulted you like 100 times!' Whatever. I can't tell. The other Hussein is both a football coach and art teacher in Askar. He speaks arabic CRAZY fast and I'm really stoked when I can understand him.


This sweetie's named Baseem, he's a toothless guy who lurks in a picturesqely hidden coffee shop over the old city, rooms randomly filled with electronics. He knocked his teeth out on a scooter a couple years back so he talks with a funny lisp. Photos of his brother, Basim, pepper the old city, as he was a resistance fighter who was gunned down in his sleep by Israeli forces in 2007. I think I know most of this family and we talk all the time about politics, it's amazing that they'll treat me as a friend considering the US's justifiable rep around here.


Here's his son, Basim, named after his uncle. Baseem's an older fella who only wants 2 kids, which is super strange in Palestine. Cool guy.


After a photoshoot in the old city Ibrahim and I went to Balata, here he is with his brother.


Boy with Kite, Balata Camp

I was shooting Ibrahim for a bike article, but somehow horses got involved. Go figure.



The best shots (obviously!) are the ones I'm using for the article, but there are like 20 good ones, so maybe I'll throw them up here so ya'll can help me decide which ones to use. Good to be back in Nablus, good to have a good camera.
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Third Intifada?

Ususally I reserve my blogging for somewhat considered messages, but not today. There's a LOT going on or possibly not going on. F-16's constantly overhead, friends of mine swearing that there are 2 million people marching towards Gaza in solidarity for the third intifada, security clampdowns on temple mount. In moments of confusion like this some people shine. Apparently I remain confused. I feel alright about that, because apparently everyone else is confused too, including the protesters. People are gathering en-masse in Egypt, alright, but some for general Egyptian unity, some for Fatah-Hamas unity in Palestine, some to remember the Nakba, or catastrophe, of Palestine losing moving from one occupation to the other in 1948, and some for the famed march to Gaza to begin the 3rd intifada. It appears that there's a logistical push-pull and fractiousness between the organizers of the uprising, the government spokespeople and leaders, and the frustrated masses themselves.

Then there's this brilliant, simple video underlining all the things that suck about living under occupation and the situation between Israel and Palestine in general:


This is exactly the kind of video I was encouraging in my students, one that is incredibly simple to make but one that can undeniably make a huge impact on the viewer's understanding of the situation. I love how straightforward it is, how it doesn't overstate things, but goes from subject to subject with clarity, tying them all together. Similar, but lighter, is this humorous version of the same thing:


Sensing a pattern? Palestinians are fed up with the situation, and the developments in the larger political field are reaching a crescendo as well. I don't know about a peaceful intifada beginning as we speak, but something's happening. I'm proud to be here and do what I can to be a part of it.

Then, just to keep things completely off the wall, there's these Christian apocalyptic billboards that we've seen popping up around the West Bank. Apparently they're funded by an end-of-days group in Oakland. Right. Read More......

Nablus: End of Teaching with Project Hope

Leaving Project Hope today to parts unknown to the north. Well, I guess they're known, there's nothing particularly mystifying about a name like "Hadad Tourism Village," but still, I'm heading out on my bike with all my worldly possessions beneath me and I must say that sounds rather excellent! The day before I visited my friends in Jeet Village, biking there I felt tense for the first time about my situation as a foreigner on the roads here. I look 100x more like a settler than a Palestinian, and Jeet is surrounded by settlements. I definitely raise some suspicion when I roll up in a conservative village and start asking questions about the nearby geography. Also, more than a few of the settlers have a reputation of international-hassling ("Keep your nose out of my divinely inspired land grab business, you meddling foreigner!") But all turned out well.

Now, nearly 3 months after arriving in Palestine, I thought it time to talk about my teaching experience here. I was hesitant to give reports along the way, as my daily impressions were fluctuating wildly, one week I would be frazzled, ready to give up and the next I would be totally rewarded and invested and generally feeling hopeful for the planet. Looking back, It's hard to keep a handle on all the passed in that time, but like most good things it was incredibly harrowing, rewarding, validating, and made me grow incredibly.

The first month of classes was adjustment. I've mentioned before that as a generally busy person I've never been so busy as I was here, and I think that still holds true for the first half of my teaching position. It was a combination of having SO much to learn, having so many projects and ideas and potential ways to contribute, having a packed schedule, and working with an organization that has about 15 centers to juggle at once and as many volunteers with rotating schedules and varying levels of competence on all sides. Here's an excerpt from 1/21/11:
"Busy, so busy time compresses my head and a day of teaching is an adrenaline rush. Literally back to back meetings, classes, ad-hoc language lessons, sneaking in arabic study and lesson preparation, answering emails, all day, 6 am to 8 pm, go go go. I've never been so busy, which is saying quite a lot. The idea of traditional teaching, once a challenge in and of itself, now seems a cakewalk. How simple to communicate in your own language, in the same place, not everywhere in a city at once as I now am. In 10 minutes I teach a two hour long lesson to ESL college students, a demanding class, their english is good enough to get them in trouble. Then quickly across the entire city by foot and by taxi to Askar camp, where we teach with nothing, trying the wrangle some attention. Then video work, making a blog worth watching, building a critical mass of focus on the country. Justifying the work. Then a presentation, then, maybe, a chance to learn, reflect. Every minute's full."

Some challenges were a result of different priorities and understandings. Project Hope is first and foremost a language center, which is what Palestine needs most and what they're equipped to teach. I didn't want to teach english, but I quickly learned that unless I had some organizational clout behind me and a pretty solid amount of time with each group kids weren't terribly interested in learning about making films. The kids in the refugee camps are balancing a crazy schedule of preparing for exams, taking exams, and resting from exams. I know Islam is a religion of one god, but the fatalism with which people defer things because of rain and examinations makes me wonder if these two subjects don't command the weight and power of animist deities. Just kidding. But the fact of the matter is kids want to run around a be kids and play football and wrestle each other when they're not being subjected to a top-down education.

Things kept changing, changing, changing. My class in Askar started as an English class, an hour long. I shadowed the volunteer before me and witnessed the group of refugee kids devolve into a literally screaming mass before my eyes. The classroom setting was similar to this one:


The next month was spent building trust with them, getting them on board with the idea that if they wanted to learn something fun and creative they'd have to work together to keep the class focused and the disruptive kids in check. We worked on art, photography, and English, and they never screamed or jumped on the desks with me like that first day. Sometimes 13 kids would come, sometimes 4. Then, after a very successful field trip, just as we were starting into film, things fell apart. It took them 45 minutes to do something my other film group had down in 15. I didn't trust them with the cameras, so we took them away. Selma, my co-teacher, said they didn't seem to be getting anything out of the film classes, and we might as well switch to English, and I agreed. When I told the kids that our attempts to do something fun and different had failed, and we would learn English from now on, they didn't flinch for a second. A boisterous, obnoxious girl who suddenly appeared a few times ago simply said she wanted to do English anyway. I told her that I knew she wouldn't behave or pay attention, I'd seen her previous behavior, she shrugged and said she'd be better next time, which is what she always said. The next time we went there were only 2 students there, and we decided to call it off.

In the meantime I was teaching English classes at every level of competence and working on independent film tutoring and projects. I was losing faith in the idea that cameras could be used for anything more than visual aids in learning other subjects, but at the same time I'd hear or learn about other projects that sounded wildly professional and successful, Cinema Jenin or Tomorrow's Youth Organization. It was frustrating. Then I had the opportunity to teach a 6 class film course at the Happy Childhood Center in Balata. It wasn't ideal, as cramming as much material as possible into a 2 week course wouldn't give the students the autonomy and self-empowerment needed to keep their projects up after I left. But it was better than nothing, so I went into it full force. It turned out great. Of the group of 10-12 kids 3 boys and one girl were really keen on the film projects, and two of the boys have wanted to continue working together. We filmed around the camp in a number of fun exercises and made a few good first videos. Monsour and Nayef were the most motivated, they made the contact and scheduled this interview about a house that was demolished by Israeli soldiers:


Then they made this little piece on the day a prisoner was released and talked to him:


The girls took pictures and made a sildeshow of the difficulties children face in the camp, especially girls. We talked a lot about the challenges they had even finding girls to film because all of the spaces in the street are for boys:



The more involved I was in film, the less I sweated the details in the English classes, but they turned out pretty well as well, as I was getting more comfortable with my students, the material, and teaching in general. I tried to keep things focused on discussion and grammar, as the students here are generally quite advanced in terms of vocabulary but never speak or speak timidly, so we did a lot of confidence building stuff. Those classes got to the point that I was well liked and respected by my students and they even threw me a big party with the director of education and an amazing plaque at the Islamic school, which was more than a little absurd.






Toward the end of things I felt a really good balance between my film interest and my ability to be useful as an English first language speaker. There are some things that shouldn't be taught through translation, like editing, blogging, and computer skills. But at other times kids took the film stuff and ran with it, last week concluded another Balata 3 week course that went great in every respect, the kids doing photo scavenger hunts, writing scripts, and producing scenes even though we only had a short time together.


They got to see how to take their videos and put them on youtube and after I added them as my friend on facebook they got excited about the idea of showing me their future creations. Here's their first little scene, about neighbors who are so cramped they start to argue when one accidentally throws trash out his window at the others:


On the documentary front we made a little scene illustrating the inadequate spaces kids have to play. They got one of their friends who is a good as soccer to play in a narrow alley, and the narration talks about the challenges they face in the refugee camp. Then we decided to fool around and film some soccer commentary, which turned out pretty great:


Now that I'm done, part of me feels totally comfortable with this, with the fluctuating attendance, missed translations, and faulty equipment. Towards the end if I showed up to a class and my co-teacher couldn't come I'd just plow on through in crappy Arabic and teach the courses by myself, and they'd turn out great. But when I think about what I want to do next here, and people say, 'oh there's a job opportunity teaching English in X organization', I say, "Hell no!" Looking back on these three months I realize what an invaluable opportunity it's been to volunteer with Project Hope. It gave me a perspective into the way Palestine really works culturally, politically, and logistically, and did so in a way that is locally empowering and locally led, which is really important to consider if your contribution is to be useful.
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In the hands of strangers: Palestinian Hospitality

Some strange things have happened this week here that illustrate how different things are when seen as a whole or in the extreme. I'll write about them in due course. For now it's time to spill the beans on how easy it's been to be in this place, largely regarded as a tragic, intractable war zone. Right on the back of a most excellent weekend filled with good conversations, delicious food, meeting interesting people, and comfortable progression in the Arabic department. As anyone who's traveled in this area of the world knows, Middle Eastern hospitality has no bounds. For those who don't know, imagine that everyone you meet is a slightly autistic stalker, and then take away any connotations of fear, danger, or prurient interest. This description is immediately problematic, as it paints Palestinians in the unfavorable light of not knowing social bounds, or being so gormless as to latch onto any passerby. But as far as I can understand, society here is just that much more open. People know almost everyone they interact with on a daily basis in the markets, the streets, the neighborhoods, if you're a new face you stand out. The novelty of being a foreigner certainly heightens this, sometimes to a kind of celebrity status, but deep behind the cries of "Welcome to Nablus!" is a culture of respect that exists between people here. Simply put, almost anyone will go out of their way to welcome you and be your friend.

Now, a month in, I have a kind of routine, who I buy things from, who I stop by for a quick chat with, who my good friends are (though that last one's a toughie, as the organization I volunteer with keeps me improbably busy and I literally RUN from class to class, preparing and shooting video on my off days, more on that soon). I have my strawberry guys, who are young and insult each other. My half-yelled childlike introduction with them drew quite a crowd:


When I have time after walking home from class in the Islamic school I do a bit of language exchange with Arafi, who happens to have the excellent occupation of cake seller, which means sugar high at 10:30 am.

I literally think I have ruined my teeth forever here. Despite biking, running up stairs, and Thai Boxing, I've gained 5 pounds for the first time in my life. But we were talking about non-edible encounters.

Language is such an interesting factor in determining relationships. Depending on the fluency of the speaker concepts can either be basic or complex, and my personality fluctuates to suit. So with the vegetable sellers who speak no English I am always a comic, gregarious figure, who blunders through Arabic and mostly talks about where he's going and where he's been. With my co-teachers at project hope I approximate myself, but as a caricature, an ambassador of America which they attempt to match up with their notions about that place. It is only with a few people here that I feel I am myself, and unfortunately that's mostly a handful of the other international volunteers, who have a firmer concept, for the most part, of the variety of ways we have to be in the west. For whatever reason, to my fresh eyes, places like Palestine don't encourage strong cliques or subculture in the same way, say, San Francisco does. There are certainly artistic communities, and writers, and musicians, and other vocational preferences or lifestyle choices, but there seems to be a much stronger mainstream that bonds over similar cultural values here than in "the west."


Husam Abu Heyat (Husam, Father of Snakes!) Artist, Calligrapher, Graphic Designer, and Painter, Jenin.

But no matter who I talk to, in either a simplistic conversation in the market or a full-on discussion with my near-fluent student's family over dinner, there is a deep willingness to be understood and to share Arab culture, to share Islam. Friends and I have long conversations dissecting perceived and actual value differences between our cultures, people give me religious texts and even a English-Arabic Quaran, which I treasure and wonder how I'll be able to take it home. People use our broken language connection to grill me on what I know about the faith, and small children, after finding out I'm not Muslim, inform me in Arabic that Islam is the best. Why? Because it's the best, duh! The other day in Ramallah I sat down by a small tin-fire with some taxi drivers and one of them walked up, made a joke at me, which I responded to, then he said "Yalla let's go prey." It was Friday, the holy day, so everyone would be at the mosque. I said "sure" and he led me through the fruit markets of a city I'd never been to before, quickly cramming inside the mosque and lining up in perfect unison with 750 other men. They would grunt in assent with the Imam as he led them through their prayers, creating this breathy, huge vibration through the room, like a titan clearing his throat. Super cool. Moments later a casual stop in a bakery led to a half-hour long excellent tour spanning two buildings and rickety spiral stairs, seeing all the whirring, anachronistic machines and too-fast workers. The working class are often very young or very old here, I seem drawn to the construction and carpentry workers in the old city, who are usually chalky with plaster or sawdust.

There is a flip-side to all this generosity, however, which is of course the inevitable stress and claustrophobia that comes with too many social obligations. Everyone is grabbing at their phones every five minutes, and it seems perfectly acceptable for a co-teacher to stop translating the lesson mid-sentence and take a call. This coincides nicely with the fact that most phones appear have no ring-silence button and will continue to ring incessantly until the call is rejected or picked up. Indeed as I write this I have ignored 10 calls in the last 3 hours, half from unknown numbers, and half from a group of boys that have a habit of hanging out outside the door of our place here, heckling the other volunteers and yelling my name until I come shoot the breeze with them.


They speak freely with me but it usually takes quite some time until I'm not an awkward center of attention, holding up the conversation with translations and exchanging predictable platitudes about both cultures. That's probably the most tedious part of being a rudimentary speaker and an icon of westernism: the predictability of the course of conversation. Kids of a certain age ask you whether you support football teams FCB or Real Madrid (those two only strangely, like, jeeze Palestine, what's the big obsession with Spain?), or which WWE wrestler you like. They ask you if you know the wrestlers in real life, while in the back of my mind I'm thinking "wait, these programs still exist?" Older boys talk about either sex ("is it true you can sleep with whomever you want? how many girls have you slept with? Which are better, European or American girls?") or about the problems of Palestine. The sex question's getting pretty interesting, I'm just getting to the point where I can stumble through a fight for gender equality and point out that women are pretty involved in the whole consent process and generally are interesting people beyond their reproductive characteristics. Note as well the dearth of women in these pictures, largely because my life is in the public realm, where there are less interactions with women, and most women despise and detest being on camera. All my professional relationships with women are great, however, and probably deserve their own (upcoming!) blog post.

Adults talk about politics and Islam. Along these lines, everyone tries really hard to dispel the notions of Arabs as fundamentalist terrorists. But they needn't bother. It's clear, as a collective culture, that Palestinians just want to live freely and not be impoverished and humiliated. Their hearts are filled with love, empathy, and respect. I feel so much more gentleness and desire for peace here than I do in Israel. More than I do anywhere, for that matter. In respect to the occupation most people show an astonishing, life-long patience that floors me. The fact that this place isn't a gun-filled riotous shit-show all the time speaks legions to the Palestinian desire for peace. Everyone's stressed. Everyone knows someone who has died, who's house has been destroyed, who's in prison. Everyone's stretched thin financially, over-achieving but for what purpose? They're all motivated and intelligent, and daily life here is very close and satisfying, but there's the root listlessness, because they can't leave very easily, so there's an absurdity to excelling at anything. What's the point of being the best thai boxer or painter or mathematician if you can't get a job in it and there's little chance to leave Palestine to conferences or to start a business or whatever? And there's a breaking point. My friend Mamoon lives in Balata, one of the largest refugee camps. He's a thin-faced fellow with kind eyes, good natured and a good translator, waiting until he understands the beginning and end of an idea before accurately conveying the mood of it. His father died 10 years ago and Mamoon and his brothers support the family. He awakes at 6 to study English at the University until 2, when he volunteers for Project Hope for an hour or two. Then he grabs a bite to eat and works in a printing factory until 2 am, at which point he does it all over again, 6 days a week. And still he walks slow. And still he waits patiently for people to ask him favors. And still he commiserates with a silly foreigner who complains about his heavy workload of a handful of classes a day.

People shoulder the burdens of stress, lack of opportunity, inequality, violence, corruption and poverty with a grace and magnanimity that makes these things almost forgettable, and it's the power there that speaks to my heart amidst the sea of voices in this aged, blind, clumsy struggle. Forget what you heard. Palestine is a land of the best examples of human beings.
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Being in Nablus: Mountain of Fire

Report to the world abroad: I've been incredibly remiss. I have no idea how to fill in the blanks between a month ago and now. I fluctuate like an aperture, a sine wave. I've had the greatest, the worst, the busiest, and the most tedious experiences of my life all in sequence. Time seems to race by, or it seems a lifetime since I rolled into the West Bank on January 31st. I've been incredibly busy here. Two days ago I thought I was a failure. This week I feel competent, on a good path, useful. Before all that I felt elated, and before that lost. But it's fine. Sometimes it's good enough to move forward, ceaselessly, and let the days shape how your muscles and callouses grow. It's time to describe Nablus.



To get us started I'll re-wind my notebook to my first impressions, on January 31st.
"Nablus is fantastic. I knew before that it was couched in a valley, and that Israeli barriers had destroyed its economy until the militarization ceased in 2009. The city center features a masterpiece of a shopping drag that rises to the south, it's absolutely filled with pedestrians day and night, criss-crossing the domain of merciless taxis. Fashionable stores rub elbows with sooty, wobbly eggplant carts, and boys looking fresh from the club greet wrinkled old men wearing what appears to be conglomerated dirt. There's an incredible food selection in the markets, fresh fruit and veggies overflowing at every corner. Everyone must know how to cook. The main fruit and vegetable market is off the central square in a canopied corridor, typical bustle of people and cheap, delicious stuff. Nizar, a Project Hope employee showed me a few preserved treasures like a large scale functional soap factory, which appears to make one product only: 6 oz blocks of fragrant olive-oil soap, spread out on the floor and arranged into insectoid columns to store and cure in a beautiful old warehouse, the floor slick with the sheen.


The old city is a remarkable mix of living history and a profound record of the abuse this place has been through. Computer shops operating out of ancient arched-stone structures, smooth walls getting narrower and narrower. It's ancient, and picturesque, but suddenly here and there you'll discover bullet-riddled walls and officially-ensconced memorials to suicide martyrs, from as recently as the second intifada (2002). Nizar briefly said hi to a young good-natured guy who had a vague look about him, who flinched when Nizar playfully pinched his stomach. 'Is he blind?' I asked. 'Yeah, he was injured' 'During the intifada?' 'He was trying to pull apart an undetonated shell stuck in a wall. He wanted to throw the explosive from it, and sell the copper. It exploded in his face.'

The markets here are less crowded but more claustrophobic, filled with delicious sweets, spreads, olives, dates, cheese, and tons of amazing-smelling bread. I'm in heaven. And unlike in Israel I know the rudiments of how to ask for things. But only the rudiments. Palestinian Arabic is tough and my brain is like a lead balloon. I don't hear subtle distinctions and remember things even more infrequently. I think the learning curve's steep but even on day one can see a light at the end of the tunnel. In truth I'm exhilarated to be here. If I hack this one out I may have a pretty rad future. If I could speak Arabic well, I could see myself working in this region for a really long time. Nablus is fully alive, in a way that only a place strangled by a brutal fate really can be."


I feel pretty good about my initial description still, tempered by a few new realizations that I've come to over time. For one, winter in the mid-east mountains is a perpetual wet spring, with weeks clammy and misty and others in full sunny contrast, perfectly temperate, and possibly even more beautiful. It's a lot like San Francisco, in a way. I think I really fell for this kind of weather in my second week. It had been raining 4 days straight and the world was wrapped in one of those surreal mists that wets your face and helps sound travel. I was walking down a huge ancient set of steps that descend the mountianside beside our house. All chipped up and knobby. It was dusk, and through the fog the call-to prayer reverberated, creating unearthly echoes the likes of which I've never heard. otherwise it was deadly silent. I was alone, in the heart of far away. I live for moments like that. I was so struck by the evening call to prayer I made a little video featuring it later, in the rain. It fails to capture what I experienced, but it's a nice little moment:



Nablus is my home now, though I'm still a stranger in it. I always will be, no matter how good my Arabic gets. The call of "taal, taal ijnebi/come, come stranger!" follows me everywhere, and depending on the combination of my apparel, company, or mode of transport I'm conspicuous enough to singlehandedly draw substantial crowds. Because of this my relationship to my home is a strange one. The public sphere isn't a place I can be by myself, but I don't mind that. I take pleasure in making friends every few meters and try not to be inconvenienced by it. This level of conspicuousness effects me greatly and changes the way I behave. I rarely take pictures in public, any more, and my photos reflect that. I feel awkward and invasive all the time, pulling out a camera puts it over the top. Of course my photography suffers from this, we'll see if I improve in time and can start asking people for their photos again. Friday is a respite, as the streets are dead, and a bustling merchant district becomes abandoned.


Since I'm our narrator here what could a visit be without the view-from-a-bike report? It's fantastic. I swerve and weave like a self-possessed fakenger listening to 'a band of horses' and people LOVE IT. Everyone treats you like it's your birthday. I always have an audience here, but on the bike I'm in my element, obviously, and I ham it up, obviously. It's a party. This city's on a hill, so you bomb through the potholes and minarets and dodge taxis, and they roll down their windows and say funny stuff to you then you dodge some ladies jaywalking and cut to another lane of traffic to avoid the lettuce cart guy splitting lanes against you then you swerve around a military gooseneck, pass some autoshops and a landfill, and you're at the refugee camp, exhausted, having about 200 near misses along the way.

There's much more to say, and much more to show, but enough. Stay tuned next time for either the people, the navigation, or even more harrowing, the classes!





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Meet Salah: The first foray into the people of Nablus

I met Salah early in my time here in Nablus, and he immediately struck me as not only photogenic but a generally gregarious and well-spoken fellow. I quickly got along well with him and started to learn some pretty interesting facets of his personality. He seemed an ideal first ambassador to Nablus. See what you think of him!:



-Salah is a volunteer translator at Project Hope, a computer science student, a Thai Boxing instructor, National Champion of K-1 Kickboxing, a good Muslim, and a Palestinian. He really loves Nablus, and wants you to, too!

Salah's profile is the first of many features to come about Nablus, if you're here and want to hear about someone in particular let us know, or if you're from abroad and want questions about Nablus or Palestine in general addressed in film form drop us a line! Who should we profile next?-

This was a fun project to do and I'm keen to continue it. The intention is to profile a different person or aspect of Nablus every two weeks or so, depending on my schedule. Right now I'm splitting my time between a steady course load of english classes, projects like this, and intensive video workshops. I'd really like to thank Asra for lending me her camera to film with, and Project Hope of course for making my time here possible and allowing me to spend my time on alternative projects. Read More......

Calm before the storm? Art Therapy.

I haven't caught up yet, so this post is totally out of sequence and UTTERLY RUINS the rather nice cliffhanger I set you up with contrasting the rides in Israel and Palestine but, whatev. This post has cute kids in it. So all's forgiven, right? Teaching this class began with "hey Davey, you like spontaneity, don't you?" Like any full-blooded art hipster I was obliged to reply "Yes," to which the volunteer coordinator said "Oh good, you can teach this class in 15 minutes." Ah. Ok. This was shortly after I discovered that due to need I would be teaching a LOT of English classes and maybe 1 or 2 film classes. Argh. But I feel pretty good about it and my ability to sneak in my own designs, more on that soon. The result of that ad-hoc teaching position was this 27 second video:


Cute little buggers, ent they? These kids were extremely well mannered and met in a nicely stocked center while they were on winter break after exams (Children in Palestine seem to be perpetually studying for exams, taking exams, or having a break after exams, which usually excuses them from English class as well). Over the next couple days we did art with an English twist, including collages. Check them out below!









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