I wanted to tell few stories about my first few days of classes, but first I have to do a little introduction of someone who’s very important to my life right now (and I know she reads the blog so she’ll love this.) Aline Lerner is my roommate and another instructor for meet. More importantly, after graduating from MIT in 2004 she worked as a chef for 2 years. Yes, a chef, so she can cook pretty much anything. And as I sat at the dinner table yesterday eating homemade chicken fried rice, I thought to myself, “this girl needs a shoutout!” Aline makes my world a better place.
Anyway, to the stories.
Several Palestinian girls wear a hejab about their heads. This is basically a thin scarf that covers their hair. This is not to be confused with a burka, which covers most of a womans face and all of their bodies. No one at MEET wears a burka. Anyways, a female instructor said in the bathroom a girl took off her hejab and had absolutely gorgeous hair that fell down to below her waste. It kind of makes sense since they never use any abrasive hair products and their hair is away from the sun all the time. I think it’s crazy that the girls have like beautiful hair, and I will just never see it. But I guess to show it is probably like a girl walking around topless in the US (which I still don’t understand why women aren’t ok with.)
Along those lines, I found the scene of 2 girls wearing a hejab listening to “smack that ass girl” (or whatever that song is called) on their phone to be pretty funny and kind of odd. This of course is a little ignorant of me to think that because something where’s something on their head they’ll act a certain way, but I’d like to remind everyone that I’m a white American male in my twenties, so I’m pretty sure there’s a law that allows me to be culturally close-minded.
For the first two weeks of the program we are working at a vocational school called ORT. The period bells which run for both the beginning and end of periods are atrociously loud synthesized music playing children’s songs like London bridge, happy birthday, and things like that. Generally they’ll play 2 and a half of these songs for each bell, lasting a half a minute or more. It’s really awful. When I made a comment to a student about how bad the bell is, he said, “I don’t know, this is pretty much the same bell we have in my school.” Wow.
As we were introducing ourselves in our recitation (small group of 10) I asked the students for what they want to get out of the MEET program, a talent that you have, and for their favorite ice cream.
1 student said he came to MEET because he wants to go to MIT, he heard this was taught by MIT students, and so thought it would be a good thing to put on his college application. I should mention that he’s 15. Wow, he’s gonna fit in great in America. At least he’s honest.
A girl said for a talent she was very good at French. She placed first second in her school in a French exam, and won a trip to Paris. She instead chose to do MEET. Some of these kids are dedicated.
Another student said that he had been to America and that his favorite ice cream was fried ice cream that he had had in America. None of the other students knew what that was, including the TA. I explained that it was ice cream that was breaded and then fried for short time. Everyone agreed, including the TA, that this sounded disgusting and they wanted no part of it.
This is my first ever july 4th away from America, and it’s pretty weird having to just go to work and act like it’s normal day. Obviously I’m not heartbroken that I can’t celebrate my beautiful nation’s independence in style, but still, I have gone to a fireworks show on this day for as long as I can remember. I didn’t mention it all day, but as the children we’re leaving I made an announcement. “On this day in 1776, America rid itself of the evil british. Happy independence day everyone.” That will be my celebration this year.
At lunch we all started discussing the iphone, which some had heard of and some hadn’t. One student was really interested in it, and thought it sounded cool when I talked about the features but basically said, “the 1 cell phone carrier in Palestine doesn’t have internet, so we couldn’t use that, and it doesn’t have voicemail, so we couldn’t use the voicemail feature either. It sounds cool but I don’t think there’s any reason for me to get it.”
Another student when we were playing basketball said that his father had what sounded like a very successful factory building industrial stone cutters. After the second intifada (1999), the factory shut down and he didn’t have work for 7 years. He finally left for yemen to start a factory there, leaving behind his wife and child.
As I’ve said before, I don’t think people in the US know the type of lives and the lack of infrastructure that the Palestinians have.
And I just thought of this point that I’d really like to make. Some people might say, “well if they stopped doing so much violence then Israel wouldn’t have to cripple them the way that they do.” There are areas all over the US with crime and violence. For instance if there is a bad neighborhood in the Bronx with lots of violence, I think the last thing people would say to do is clear out the area and do things that will hurt the already floundering economy in the area. Not only is it counterproductive, but it’s also not fair because the vast majority of people are not doing crimes and violence. I don’t know why people don’t think the same about this area (or they just don’t know the extent to which it’s being done.) I know the violence has been much worse than anything that would happen in a US city, but so has the response. The vast majority of Palestinians are not blowing themselves up or throwing rockets into Israel, but they are all paying the price.
Free lunch at MEET yesterday and today. (free meal count: 9.5)
After tomorrow I will be going to tel aviv for the weekend (the weekend is friday saturday) and I will not be writing. Not only will I most likely not have internet, but I'll be in no condition to for sentence. (or at least my version of sentences which I put on this blog.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
You should talk to Wissam about the politics here; he's very objective and interesting to talk to. I learned quite a bit and found myself agreeing a lot.
I am enjoying reading your blog, but I think you could do with a quick re-read to brush up the grammar. If you were in my class, I'd give you a S for Satisfactory, and I teach 2nd grade.
hmmmmm, I'm not sure who you are, because my sister teaches a second grade, but I'm pretty sure her name is jackie. Unfortunately my work days seem to be getting longer and longer in this program, and even getting anything out about the day's (s') events is getting harder and harder, so grammar and spelling may have to take a hit. It's pretty much just gonna have to stay a "stream of conciousness" blog.
On a side not, I always got a satisfactory when I was young for my handwriting. It was the one thing keep me from every getting straight A's (or E's, in elemetary school, which I would have counted as straight A's)
Post a Comment