today was a good day. woke up for ulpan and called naama on the way to see if she would come with me to the library on the way to kadima so i could grab some photography books to show the kids. all part of my plan. she was in jerusalem, so i would have to go by myself. not quite part of my plan, but i was up for the challenge. ulpan today was very interesting. i actually felt like i was 8 years old again, distracted and wanting to do my work, but just doodling, and slouchin, and making bad jokes, and giggling all over the place. my teacher kept getting annoyed with me, but not in a serious way. because i was doing my work, but i was just acting really silly. i even felt silly. it all started last night. i told al on the walk to the library from ulpan that i felt a surge of excited creative energy last night and it carried over to today, with the apparent side-effect of silliness and immaturity of sorts. i really liked it actually. i spend too much time trying to be impressive and mature and adult-ish, when really i just want to have fun and be free and creative. i mean, i like nurturing my age and culturing my maturity. it's a skill. but fuck it felt good to just let it all go for a few hours. especially since i had to pretend i knew how to sort of teach/introduce/moderate to a bunch of kids that are distracted and restless that don't speak my language and vice versa. all part of the plan. al and i had a good talk today, discussing the undeniable influence of religion on the socio-cultural and ethical implications of pedophilia-ish acts in modern western times in comparison to ancient greece.
whew, right? good talk.
anyway, i got to the library and of course, no english anywhere. however, i am proud of myself, i finally found the photography section after being vaguely waved in a general direction. i looked through all the photo books and chose 5 that had a good range of work, both contemporary and not. portraits, photojournalistic, and landscapes. two time books. beautiful stuff. i checked them out with the promise that i'd bring them back by 7 this evening since the holiday is coming up. those fucker were heavy, too, but i schlepped them all the way to kadima.
i ate when i got there, then spoke to tal about my ideas for half the time being devoted to the books and questions while the rest would be for photos, i even mentioned the homework and journal, to which he replied, "we'll see about that". so i figure the homework might not work out. not part of my plan. i set up the cameras and we got started, about 8-9 kids in a circle of chairs. i told them (tal translated) to each pick one photo they liked and one they didn't, and say why they did/didn't like it, and what each made them think or feel. about half the kids participated, and gave me genuinely thoughtful and introspective answers and the rest just continued to look at the books. after this, tal suggested we let them take photos. i handed out the cameras, intstructed to take a photo of one thing in the room they liked and one they didn't. they were already pretty distracted, but there were a few that i could tell were very interested in taking it seriously or at the very least participating. at the moment, i was devastated that my plan wasn't working out and my vision of "dangerous minds" type life changing wasn't happening. but, it was ok and after the time was almost up, i packed up the cameras and thanked whichever kids were listening at this point for paying attention and taking part. it's funny, exactly 4-6 hours prior i was doing the exact same thing. but they're 15. i'm 23. go figure.
when i was about to leave, i thanked tal for helping translate, and assured him i'd do better next time. i felt kind of useless near the end, but he assured me that the fact that they sat still for that long was a good sign and that they'd just include the ones that wanted to be there next time. i thought that was cool. because of the holiday we won't meet on monday for a couple of weeks, although i might go with them on a field trip to jerusalem in a week. coooooool.
so walked back to the library with the heavy books to check them back in. asked to keep one that is actually in english until after the holiday (next sunday... remind me!). before i left though, i remembered that naama told me how she's listened to english songs with an english-hebrew dictionary in order to learn english. so i asked the librarian (was a little difficult, but luckily i had a hebrew-english dictionary to help!) for some poetry books. we found a couple. one man (bialik?) poet and one woman (rachael?) poet from israel. "they're dead", she assured me. as if that would increase the value of the words...
i happily took this much lighter load home, ate dinner, talked to my gammy, met one of jodi's hilarious new friend, and have been hanging tonight. dreamy. tomorrow, we go with naama to meet about the greenhouse project ("theraputic gardening for at-risk youth"?????????????). i'm pumped. the kids learn to grow their own orgranic garden and farm it. supercool. then al and i have the radio station. good yay. hopefully i don't get ambushed by mom-desperate-to-marry-her-son-off-to-an-american-girl. also, i started editing photos today. not nearly enough. i'm a wiener. sorry. i'm also reading scholarly articles about the israeli-palestinian conflict and other middle east issues because my buddy ernie sent them to me. very interesting stuff.
but i'm up early as shit tomorrow. laila tov.
b'ahava,
sally
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