Ramla Week 3

Been so busy (which is great) and so drenched in rain (which is horrible....you'd think after Blacksburg I'd be used to ridiculous weather).

Sunday I had Ulpan in the morning then went to visit a community center on the other side of town (in the Arab area) where I think I'm going to be going a couple days a week after school to teach English or just hang out and play games with middle school to high school age girls who are typically only allowed to leave the house for school, but have gotten permission to attend this workshop hosted in their new community center.

Went to Tel Aviv Monday and ended up at the Dizengoff Center which is a very unique looking mall, that happened to have a Michal Negrin, which happened to have a promotion running....

Then back to Ramla to sit in on other kids volunteering at the 'Underground' (to get a sense of how things run and what kinds of lessons we'll need to plan) which is a program for adults ages 18-30 ish who want to learn English at night.

Tuesday was back to Ulpan for our last full day of Hebrew lessons (now we'll have lessons twice a week, maneuvering the schedule around our volunteer times) and then we were invited to go to Hertzelia to be extras in a movie called Youth. I know nothing about the movie or if I was even in it, but we were at a movie theater  for about 5 hours as they filmed scenes where normal people were either sitting in the theater pretending to watch movies, walking around, buying popcorn, etc etc. I spilled a huge thing of popcorn, and after that pretty much watched the last couple hours from the sidelines. They had a couple soldiers join us, though, so it was cool to talk to them and learn what they're up to and how they get involved in different, random community activities.

Wednesday and Thursday I had my first official days of volunteering finally! The differences between schools here and those at home are startling. Everything here is informal, slightly (being generous here) disorganized, and a VERY loud. The kids scream, the teachers scream, they all slam doors, stand on chairs/desks, just basically do whatever they want. I worked mainly with 4th-6th graders this week...4th grade was nice (and they think I'm super exotic...) but the 6th graders, especially the boys, are impossible. Most of the time we'd get to a class then the teacher would send me outside with 2-4 kids to work with, and their levels of English could range from fluent to 0. And their level of participation ranged from fully participating to screaming expletives and throwing stuff at windows. I really need to improve my Hebrew...

Ok, here are some of the most boring pictures: my apartment:

Bedroom

Other half of bedroom

Table

Living area

Kitchen