Shana Tova! Happy New Year!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Children of all ages,

Hello there. Its been three weeks since we last spoke, but I am actually going to do two separate posts. Two weeks of the normal program in one, and then the week of break with my family for the other. 

After the week of the Chanukkah trip, and my weekend in Kfar Saba, we all returned to Karmiel for a normal week. On monday, I worked in a high school in the morning, where we are really getting to know the teachers and some students. We are enjoying it a lot. It's definitely a different experience being in a high school and being at the same level as the teachers. We do a lot of different things to help the English students, and lately, in addition to helping with their oral skills, we have been recording reading tests for a big test they will all take part in throughout the next few weeks. 

On Tuesday, we had a day trip to Jerusalem for a special day with SELA, the group of Russian New Immigrant Teens. We were their guests for the day as they traveled to Jerusalem to learn about the Israeli government, tour the Kenesset, and partake in a ceremony in which they received their Israeli identity cards. Here is a picture of them once they received their ID cards:

The next day, we had our usual Wednesday trip, and the focus was diversity in the Galilee. We started the day with a meeting with the director of a youth center in Dir Al Assad, a neighboring Arab village to the West. He is an incredible person, who despite disagreement with the town's officials, has made great strides toward interaction and friendship with kids in his village and Jewish kids from Karmiel and the rest of Israel. The amount of respect that he has from kids and other youth workers is amazing. We then moved on to the East side of Karmiel to a Bedouin High School. We participated in a dialogue on life, culture, Israel, and religion with some students at the school. While in the past, most Bedouin's have lived in Shanty-Town-like communities, most now live in villages in which they are advancing to catch up to the technology of modern day. It was really interesting to chat with them, and then we got to see some of their villages. We ended the day with a visit to a Bedouin mosque where we met with the Imam. It was cool to see how the mosque plays a part in the community and how youth is not really gathered on a religious level, as it is in the United States, but instead they form groups on purely social levels. 

Our educational Rabbi, Marc, giving us an intro to the day at an outlook over Karmiel

Galit, our program coordinator on the right with myself and some other Shnatties

Meeting with the Bedouins.

We did a speed dating like activity to get to know each other

The group of new friends

I began to get a bit sick, so the next few days were filled with lots of sleep, but we had a interesting hebrew class at the bus station. We were given the task of finding different information about buses in Hebrew. And so we got quite a bit of real life Hebrew practice which was good, despite the need to step way out of our comfort levels, especially since all staff at the station had been asked to refuse to respond to English.

The next week was another packed week. It was another normal week, but I started noticing that we are really getting to know the people at our volunteer locations. For those of us at Kef Li Aviv, it is really rewarding seeing how happy the children are to see us when we return each week to work and play with them for a few hours. Sunday night, we had a great program with older teens from Karmiel, some of which we had met on the trip to Eilat. We spent the evening completing group building tasks and games. I really enjoyed these, because they were similar to group building tasks that I have participated and coordinated at camp in the past, but some totally new ideas. I was taking notes as we went with hopes to reproduce some of the activities at camp in the future. We worked as one big group on some tasks and for others we split up and had some competitions. It was great to be with them again, we are becoming friends and as we get to know them more, its very fun to run into people all around town that we know. 

On Monday afternoon, we had our first meeting with some Druze youth from Bet G'uan. We all immediately hit it off, and had lots of fun talking about the two cultures, learning some Druze traditions, and even getting into some personal discussions and touchy topics, despite it being the first time we all had met. We are all anxiously awaiting our next meeting with them, which will hopefully include a chance to try some Druze food, which is supposed to be amazing. The following morning, we worked in schools in Magd el Krum and Dier al Assad, our two neighboring Arab villages. Those of us who worked at the elementary school, we definitely had an experience. We were given a chance to teach the kids lots of English, all focused around animals. They enjoyed all the fun activities we planned, but even so, they were crazy. At any point throughout the day, there were at least 10 kids running wild. It was quite stressful at times, but in the end, I think we all had lots of fun. 

Meeting with the Druze and talking about life.

For some cultural experiences, we taught the Druze some Israeli folk dances

Then they taught us the Druze traditional celebration dance

Presentation of Identity Posters

More

Wednesday consisted of a trip to Tziporri to learn a bit about the ruins found there and how the old city of Tziporri functioned. Then we moved on to Tzfat, where we were guided on a scavenger hunt through the town that allowed us to explore up and down every street. We then met with some Kabbalists who blew many of us away with the magic of Kabbalah. We ended the day with some tea, coffee, and Klezmer music. As we descended Tzfat to go back home, we had a beautiful view of sunset over the mountains. We had a great day, and many of us plan on returning to Tzfat for some more time in the artist's colony either over chofesh or further in the future.

Tzfat at sunset

Another post on the family visit over break will be soon to come!