Oops!

As you can probably tell, this blog has fallen by the wayside. A few months ago I switched to a new blog over at tumblr. If you want to catch up on anything you missed, visit me over at dreamthrop.tumblr.com!

November in Arad

This entry has been republished in the November OTZMA Newsletter

On November 2^nd the six members of OTZMA’s Israel Teacher Corps started the second phase of our program. While two of us – Sarah Adler (Baltimore) and Rachel Baum (Metro West) will be staying in Ashkelon for the duration of the year, Shauna Gamsey (Miami) and Lauren Hyman (Atlanta) as well as Jason Winkler (New York) and myself, Arielle Waite (Southern New Jersey) all packed up to move down to the Negev.

Shauna and Lauren will be spending the year in Yerucham, working in both a secular high school and a religious girls’ school. Jason and I are now living in Arad – a small working class town one hour outside of Be’er Sheva. Jason spends four days a week in the high school and one day at the Chalamish elementary school. I split my time between the Chalamish elementary school and the Ye’elim-Ofarim elementary school.

During our first week in town our Jewish Agency representative helped us to set up our home for the next 8 months. She took us on walking tours of the town so that we would be able to find our way around, showed us the best places to buy our groceries and produce, and even introduced us to a delegation of 11^th graders who will be heading to New Jersey at the beginning of December.

The next week began our placements in the schools. Jason is up in the high school working with the students so that they will be ready for their Oral Bagruit exam. The Bagruit is a national test a lot like the New York Regents. It is given to students at the end of their high school career, and since one of the sections is English, Jason has been enlisted full time to help the students get ready.

I found out that I will be working in Ye’elim-Ofarim 4 days a week with all of the 5^th and 6^th grade classes. While the teacher is working in the classroom with the students I take one or two out into the hallway to work on the lesson in a more personal manner. For some students this means speeding up the work so they will not be bored, for others it means teaching the material in a completely different way to accommodate different learning styles. I even have a few non-readers in my classes, so I break it down to the basics and help them learn how to read and write in English.

At Ye'elim-Ofarim the students who are advanced in English are lucky enough to have an extra period at the end of the day when they take an advanced course. The 6th graders in the advanced course are working on a computer presentation. This presentation is to be done completely in English, and when finished will be sent to their penpals in New Jersey. This has also become my special project because the English teacher does not feel comfortable with computers. Every Monday for an hour and a half after school I work with this class of 15 students, helping them do research, correct grammar mistakes, and fix small computer glitches.

On Thursdays I switch over to the Chalamish elementary school. Here I am working with students from the 3rd to 6th grades. While a lot of what I do is the same at Chalamish, such as starting off my day with a non-reader from the 4th grade class, there are some very big differences. Working with 3rd graders in their first year of English class is a very fun challenge. This is the only class of the week that I am in the classroom. The teacher is at the front of the class, teaching letters to the students, while I am in the back of the room working with the last 2 rows on the same lesson. Both of us weave through the rows helping the students write their letters and running activities to reinforce what we just taught them.

Chalamish does not have an afterschool option for the advanced students in their English classes. The students that are ahead of the class are given a more advanced book, and expected to work in it during the same class period that their peers are working in the regular book. The English teacher has turned the advanced students from both the 5th and 6th grade classes over to me. I take the group into a different classroom and teach them from their books, effectively running my own classroom of roughly 6-7 students during their normal English periods.

In the afternoons Jason and I have volunteering opportunities. Jason works with the Arad baseball team two times a week. He is a supplemental player and coach for the kids, and they love having him there! I spend 1 day a week at the Jewish Agency. For the month of November all of my time has been devoted to getting the 11^th grade delegation we met with the first day ready to go to the states. They are working on speeches and presentations that they will give at a few different high schools in New Jersey during their weeklong visit. In the coming weeks Jason and I will start volunteering at 3 more places around the town.

Right now we are in the middle of the last week before the Hannukah break. The kids are very excited for a week off, and keeping them focused in school is proving a little challenging. We have parties and sing-alongs, eat Hannukah treats and have a lot of fun. As much as the kids are looking forward to the break, so are Jason and I. The rest of the Israel Teaching Corps will be staying with us here in Arad for a training session during the break, and we will even be celebrating a birthday for one of our own! If this first month is anything to go by, the next 7 months in Arad will be both challenging and fun, and will go by entirely too quickly.

Rosh Hashana Sept 8-11

This week Jason and I went down to Arad to spend Rosh Hashana with our host families. We started out together on the bus from Ashkelon to Be'er Sheva, but when we made the transfer to the Be'er Sheva -Arad bus, the driver closed to door between Jason and I, causing us to take two different buses down. When I arrived I was picked up by my host mom Ofra and her three kids, Noam, Ayala and Amitai. Noam is 10.5, her sister Ayala is 8 and Amitai is a wonderful 3 year old little boy.

We immediately went shopping for some last minute things for the holiday dinner and to grab some cereal for my house. We then headed back to her house, which is across the street from the house I will be living in from November until June. Ofra gave me a tour of my house and left me to get my stuff settled in while she headed over to her own house.

The rest of the evening set the sequence of events for the whole holiday. I went over to the house and played with the kids for a few hours. This was everything from arts and crafts with the girls to a rousing game of “Afo Tomas?” (translated, “where is Thomas?”) with Amitai. “Afo Tomas” happens just about every 30 minutes when he comes over to you, asks where is Thomas and then we start the hunt for his favorite of the Thomas the Tank Engine characters. Every once in awhile though thegame becomes “Afo Percy” and we begin the search all over again. The main reason that these toys kept getting lost is they are the pull back style – you pull the car back to wind up the “engine” and let it go to skitter across the room. Eventually I convinced him that playing on the track would be just as good and we no longer had to look very far to find Thomas, Percy or even Emily. (And yes, I can name all the characters now – and sing the 'Roll Call' song.)

After spending time with the kids I helped Ofra with dinner a little bit (grating veggies for the salad) and attempted to pick up the hebrew words for the vegetables I was using. Then I headed back to my house to change for dinner, and the whole family walked down the road to Savta and Saba's house. (Grandma and Grandpa). The grandparents know a little bit of English (they started out telling me they knew none, but kept coming up with phrases when I got completely stuck with my very limited hebrew vocalubary) but mainly we talked through Ofra or her sister who would translate back and forth.

My first day in Arad (Wednesday) repeated again on Thursday and very closely followed on Friday as well. The only difference being that on Thursday night Jason and I met up with Abir to go out to the local pub and figure out the town a little better. Ofra knew Abir because she helped him interview for a position that is taking him to New Jersey for the next year to teach Hebrew (sound familiar?). Since he is leaving on Monday meeting up with him was wonderful, we told him what we could about the area he would be in while he introduced us to some of his friends and the town.

On one of the days the girls took me on a walk down to the overlook. (The same overlook that Otzma visited on our first week.) Noam packed up a bag for us with water, cups and the Hebrew/English dictionary, while I brought along a camera.

Ayala and Noam

Amitai

The whole trip to Arad was a lot of fun and I feel like I really get along with my host family. Saba even asked if I could move in with them and help out his wife around the house instead of living down the street! I am definitely looking forward to moving down to Arad now.

September 7th

Today we were invited by the Mercaz Klitah to a Rosh Hashana party being thrown by the kids. We all gathered downstairs in the patio area of building 1, and were immediately seized upon by the kids-just like always!

 Eventually though things calmed down a bit and we sat down for a bit of a Rosh Hashana explanation- first in Hebrew and then in English.

 We passed around apples, honey and honey cakes and sang together. Then they kids came around with Rosh Hashana cards that they had made for us. We also retreived some crayons and paper and created cards for the kids and had fun passing those out too.
No party is complete without dancing though, so we started up the music and spent about half an hour just dancing and playing with the kids.

Slichot Seminar September 6

We got information about our Slichot seminar a few days ago, and found out that we would be leaving Ashkelon at 1:30am to head out to Jerusalem. While most people thought about taking naps before we left, it didn't really happen for most of us. We all headed out to the bus in the dark and proceeded to sleep the whole way into the city. Once we got there we met up with our lecturer/guide Jared.
Jared led us into the city and we all sat down to read about Rosh Hashana from some parsha portions and writings. There were some really great discussions about why we do Slichot prayers, and the differences between how they are done by Ashkenazi and Sephardic jews.
For anyone that doesn't know what Slichot is, allow me to explain. Slichot is a time period in which you are supposed to pray for forgiveness from God and work on repenting for the bad things that you have done during the last year. In the states we tend to be taught that this is all done during the 10 day period between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, but in reality it is different depending on your sect. The Ashkenazi start the Slichot prayers on the Shabbat prior to Rosh Hashana, while the Sephardic actually perform slichot prayers for the entirety of the (Jewish) month prior to Rosh Hashana up until Yom Kippur - 40 days. The slichot prayers are supposed to be performed during the night, and usually as close to the start of the morning prayer as possible, this means that the prayers are started somewhere between 3:30-4:00am.

The reason that we were in the city at 3am was so we could sit on an overlook over the Kotel (Wall) and hear the Slichot prayers while we discussed the impact this holiday season has on us.
During our seminar we were asked to break into pairs and discuss our past year, and anything we may have regretted. I sat with Lauren and we talked about our last year and found that we had quite a bit in common.
After visiting the wall we regathered again and headed through the city, we climbed up to the top of the city and settled in to watch the sunrise. From where we were sitting we could watch as the sun came up from behind the hills and rose into the sky.

Sept 2nd

Sorry for the hiatus, I went on a trip to Egypt (and yes I will write about it!) and got out of the habit of updating.
This will be the last of the one per day posts, from now on updates will be about just the big events/holidays/fun things that happen.

Today was fairly uneventful, though we did have a meeting with a lady from Masa Israel. Masa is a program dedicated to helping bring people to Israel for long-term programs (5-10 months). Otzma is a Masa program, so the representative came to see how we were doing and see if we had any input on how our program is going so far.
After the meeting with our representative we headed over to the Ulpan building for testing. None of us knew what exactly this would entail, we were nervous since we did not want to get placed into the wrong Hebrew class! For my test I walked in and sat down with a woman in one of the classrooms. She asked me if I knew any Hebrew and I truthfully told her that I do not know very much, just what I learned through Rosetta stone. She then proceeded to ask me about my Alef Bet (which I do know) and then if I could spell out words if they are said to me. I told her that I could and she thanked me for my time.
After I walked out of the test I was told by my fellow Otzmanikim that they were having some trouble since they had so many more people in Kitah Alef than Bet (Alef is the 1st level, Bet is 2nd) and I started to worry that they were searching for a reason to place me in it. Gosh I hope not!

September 1st

Today we had a group volunteer day. So at 8am we all loaded up onto the bus with our packed lunches and headed out. We were going to a student village near באר שבע(Be'er Sheva) called Ayalim. This is one village in a series that had been started a few years back in order to relocate young and idealistic people into the Negev and Galilee. These two areas combined cover 80% of the country, but only have 8% of the population located within them. Israel has a feeling of use it or lose it when it comes to this problem, but does not seem to be able to get people to move into these areas very easily, despite trying to move factories and industry into the area.
As I said, this is a student village and all the inhabitant are students. These students live in the volunteer village (and in fact build them!) while being full time students on scholarships at the University located near their village. We spent some time watching a recruitment video on the program and having questions answered by one of the higher ups in the organization before (figuratively) rolling up our sleeves and getting to work.

We were split up into about 5 groups, the first was working on pruning flowering plants etc. on a walkway between some of the houses. The second group (the one I was in) was pulling out the plants that had grown out into to the paths around the building in the background of the above picture. The third group was working on laying out a gravel terrace area, while group 4 was transporting all the gravel from the gravel pit. Group 5 was our two lovely water girls who made sure we all stayed hydrated throughout the day.

I started out working with David, Shauna, Max and Tracy on pulling out plants and sweeping down the sidewalks when I came to a Rosemary bush that had grown out over half of the path. Unfortunately Rosemary grows from one central trunk, so you cannot just pull out the offending parts, you need to take a saw to the plant to prune it. For the next 2.5 hours I worked on this bush with an old hand saw, and eventually the path was clear.

The upper part of this path was blocked by a Rosymary bush. The black hose is an irrigation hose, it will be placed better in the future to allow plants to grow despite the desert conditions.

The upper gravel terrace - this area was just sand before the group laid out tarp, irrigation hoses and gravel.

On my way back from dumping some of the clippings from my Rosemary bush (it took 4 wheelbarrow loads to get it all moved!) I noticed a part of the entrance sign we could not see from the bus.

I thought it was a beautiful sign and a perfect sentiment for the type of work that is being done with this village.

At the end of the day we were all hot, sweaty and tired. But knew we had made a difference. As a group that came to Israel specifically to volunteer, we were all itching to get our hands dirty and do some actual work. Today was perfect.