An account of my survival (or not) during a whirl-wind summer adventure and a two year International MBA Program!
Monday, July 19, 2010
Volunteering in Ashdod
Part of the reason I chose Oranim's "Beach, Hebrew, Volunteer" program was, well, for the volunteering. I wanted to do more in Israel than just sit on the beach and get fat on Israeli breakfasts. I also thought it would just generally be more fun to be doing something more than just bar hopping, and I knew I'd lose my mind without some sort of schedule. I didn't actually know what kind of volunteering I'd be getting myself into, just that it would be twice a week, and have something to do with kids. Not ideal, but, my options were limited.
It turned out that the volunteering was teaching high school kids English. More specifically, though, we were "helping" to prepare these kids for their "Bogrut" exams in English. So, for the most part, these kids had a working knowledge of Hebrew, but needed each skill (listening, reading, speaking) perfected. While the teacher gave us some guidelines, including some reading comp exercises and general speaking questions, most of it was up to us. I was going to be teaching incoming seniors, twice a week, for 3 hours a day. I had 4 kids (that eventually dwindled down to 3): Nofar, Chen, Raz, and Matanel (he stopped coming).
Pictured here are Raz & Chen (she was ALWAYS tired and "sick". I'm really not sure why she ever came):
The first class was challenging. I had NO idea what to do with them. I had 3 hours, and the agenda for the day was "Speaking". I had a list of 25 or so questions to ask them, subjects for them to practice speaking on, but for the most part they gave me two sentence answers. It was also fairly obvious that the level was very unequal in the class. Nofar was basically fluent, while Raz could barely put a sentence together.
The next class, I tried to be a little creative. I printed out the lyrics (with blanks) to Tupac - Baby Don't Cry, and wanted to do an exercise with them where they fill in the blanks and then we talk about the words they don't know and talk about what the song is about. Something I discovered from this exercise is that Israelis are RACIST! When I first introduced Tupac, they fully said, "oh, the nigger". I then had to explain that you CANNOT use that word in America unless, of course, you yourself are one. A day when another class joined ours, and there was a black kid in that class, they kept saying "oh, make him do it, he's the black one, he's the slave". All in all, most of the activities I came up with \ only really kept their attention for about 30 minutes, and then they had no qualms about telling me it was boring.
That's another striking things about these kids. Manners and discipline, apparently, are NOT taught. If they get a phone call in the middle of class, they will take it, and they wont even leave the room or anything. There's no respect for authority, and there's no concept of the teacher being in charge, and there's definitely no respect show to elders. I realize that a teacher can lose that over time, and I've watched enough Dangerous Minds-like movies to know that kids from tougher neighborhoods don't have these things, either. But these are good kids, and they don't think they're doing anything wrong!
In future classes, we sang Lady Gaga and talked about religion, racism, and finding me an Israeli boyfriend. We combined classes with some of the other volunteers and played poker. Raz's answers to most of my questions/prompts were "Drugs!" and "You want drugs?" and "We do it with drugs!".
One day, it was just me and Nofar, and we spoke at length about what she was going to do with her life. She is interested in architecture and art and fashion, but doesn't want to go to university and is in the process of getting her manicurist license. I tried to instill in her a sense of wanting to pursue bigger and better things, because she is a really smart girl and could go really far, but something about her upbringing has taken ambition out of her. When I talked to her about religion and the fact that we're teaching at a somewhat "religious" school, she told me her "family isn't really religious, but they want her to have the personality of a religious girl...you know, not just go sleep with anyone".
All the kids were shocked when I told them I didn't keep kosher, that I'd eaten pork and shrimp and that both were religious! Chen then tried to convince me that "just because my family wasn't religious doesn't mean I couldn't' start practicing now!" You have to admire her for trying! That day I felt kind of scared though - if some volunteer came to my brother's school and said something that would then make him turn to God and want to be all ultra-orthodox, I'm pretty sure my parents would be pretty pissed, even if they didn't go ahead and DO anything about. I left that day being scared that somethign I said might make these kids question their obligation to follow the path that their parents had instilled in them since birth. While in my opinion, its an ENLIGHTENING thing, and not a negative one, I'm sure orthodox religious parents would not agree.
The last day was probably the best, when the kids begged me to come back the next day instead of the other volunteer, Viki, who also happens to be my roommate. They told me I was fun, and she was boring - OK, not behavior I would encourage and not a nice thing to say, but still, it made me feel good :)
Sheirut
Israel has this concept in public transportation known as a sheirut, or a "shared taxi" service. They follow the same route as the bus with which they share the number, but they only seat 10 people and they stop anywhere on the bus route.
I find these things really interesting. I don't QUITE see the point of them. I mean, yes, they come more frequently then buses and I suppose overall they probably make fewer stops. But is saving those few minutes really worth a whole other line of public transportation? They are very popular and going throughout the city, at least in Tel Aviv, the sheirut is always full.
The most curious thing about the sheirut, though, is something you would never find in the US. They cost the same as the bus, but you don't pay until you've sat down. Then everyone just passes up the money to the bus driver through the people sitting ahead of them. Its like this understood trust. The van driver trusts that once you sit down and open your wallet, you will pay. He doesn't bother to keep track, there's just an understanding that you will. No one has any qualms about passing up their money through the hands of 10 other people, because its just understood that everyone will honestly pass your money up and your change back down to you. As a tourist, its one way to almost intimately interact with the locals, all the hand to hand contact you make, people talking to you and they have no idea that you don't speak the language because you're part of this understanding, this trust between sheirut riders, and all they're really asking is for you to pass the fare. And, if you stumble upon a particularly polite Israeli, they might even say Toda!
I find these things really interesting. I don't QUITE see the point of them. I mean, yes, they come more frequently then buses and I suppose overall they probably make fewer stops. But is saving those few minutes really worth a whole other line of public transportation? They are very popular and going throughout the city, at least in Tel Aviv, the sheirut is always full.
The most curious thing about the sheirut, though, is something you would never find in the US. They cost the same as the bus, but you don't pay until you've sat down. Then everyone just passes up the money to the bus driver through the people sitting ahead of them. Its like this understood trust. The van driver trusts that once you sit down and open your wallet, you will pay. He doesn't bother to keep track, there's just an understanding that you will. No one has any qualms about passing up their money through the hands of 10 other people, because its just understood that everyone will honestly pass your money up and your change back down to you. As a tourist, its one way to almost intimately interact with the locals, all the hand to hand contact you make, people talking to you and they have no idea that you don't speak the language because you're part of this understanding, this trust between sheirut riders, and all they're really asking is for you to pass the fare. And, if you stumble upon a particularly polite Israeli, they might even say Toda!
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