Power Hungry

This morning, each additional hour of power is a gift! Ramallah is engulfed in a storm which alternates rain, sleet, hail, downy snow, and a fog so dense and luminous it gives the impression we have already died and ascended to the pearly gates.

I feel rather desperate about the likely loss of power. All my electronics are plugged in, and I am prepared to turn screen brightness down to the minimum setting to conserve battery power once the fateful hour arrives. 

Storefronts downtown are shuttered. The air is, for the first time since my arrival in August, completely clear of the sounds of traffic. A candle wavers on the coffee table. 

I’m amazed by my own fear of the loss of power. It will be cold. I won’t have internet. I won’t be able to keep my Skype date with my sister. The refrigerator will die. Water will run weak and cold. How will I survive? 

Last night I visited my neighbour Elizabeth, Friend in Residence at RFS. We discussed the storm and the psychological state it has thrown us into. She pointed out that the refugee families down at Kalandia, and the Bedouin families in neighbouring villages, woke up without any hope of power or internet today. Can I adopt their attitude? Can I muster some perspective, and recognise that I will be ok through this storm? 

School starts on Monday, and part of my mind is preparing for the unpredictable storms this quarter will surely bring. I might have blustery classes, blustery interactions with students or parents, stormy results on a quiz I thought the class was prepared for… I will be ok. 

Storms in our faith journeys (and teaching is my faith journey right now) are like storms in nature in that they are beautiful in their destructive energy. Sometimes there is the clatter of lightning in the classroom, but I see with better clarity when the clouds clear. Even when I feel shipwrecked by the storms, God washes me up on a new shore and I realise I do have the tools I need to be ok. 

Each hour is a gift, even if we do lose power. Each hour is a gift because it’s a reminder that we have what we need, and that no matter what storms rage, we’ll be ok. 

IOChristmas

Yesterday I finished my exams with my eleventh graders. This was their first official assessment for the International Baccalaureate Diploma which they will get at the end of next year. Here's how it works:

They come into the room, and are given a poem or an extract from a piece of literature that we have read this semester. For us, that meant either a Langston Hughes poem or an extract from Shakespeare's Macbeth. They have 20 minutes to annotate the piece and decide what the most important elements of language and style are, and what message the author/poet conveys with those elements.

Then they give an 8-minute oral commentary, which is followed by a two-minute discussion of the piece (I ask them questions).

They all arrived on time, they all had prepared, they all made it through the commentary without breaking down. No small feat considering that English is their second language! I'm very proud.

So my head is full of literary elements. For example, Kelly Clarkson uses anaphora in the song drifting through my headphones right now. (Repetition of a word at the beginning of consecutive lines)

The Cafe where I'm sitting now.

This Christmas I'm gonna risk it all
This Christmas I'm not afraid to fall

There is also situational irony in Ramallah: A 96% Muslim city has a massive green and red Christmas tree downtown. I offered to take a picture of a Muslim family in front of it the other day.

I also can't read anything without annotating it. Even the menu on a restaurant, I want to mark up with notes on imagery, effective descriptive language and hyperbole (exaggeration).

Friend in Residence Elizabeth Dodd gave me some straw ornaments to decorate our advent wreath with. This afternoon will be a Christmas Cookie making festival at the Swift House! Good thing I can get Philadelphia cream cheese here, for the tender dough of my favourite cookie.

Season's joys to you!

God speaks through podcasts

Twice now I've received divine counselling through podcasts of This American Life.

1. Two weeks ago I had a disastrous class with the tenth grade section I teach. There was singing. There were airplanes. There was no learning happening (actually that's false. I learned quite a bit). By the end of the class I was desperate for the students to leave so I could deflate and collapse into a chair. Having expected to have such classes, such experiences as a rookie teacher, doesn't make them much easier to digest.

That afternoon, a beautiful Ramallah autumn afternoon, I went for a walk around the track at the Boys School, one of the most beautiful sports facilities in the city. As I started out I wheeled through the TAL episodes loaded onto my iPod, looking for something that would distract me from my thoughts of the rough day.

There was an episode called "Fiasco!" complete with exclamation mark. Perfect, I thought. And so it was.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/61/fiasco

This alternately uproariously funny and thought-provoking episode chronicles situations that, like my class, disintegrate into fiascos. The episode explores what exactly constitutes a fiasco, and as I walked around listening to Ira and friends identify "a breakdown of social conventions" I nodded vigorously, imagining my class which didn't resemble a class by the time the bell rang. And indeed, a fiasco is achieved when the production underway no longer follows its own conventions-- when it is unrecognisable as what it ought to be. Since that day, I have set the bar low: "Was today's class a fiasco?" If I can answer no, it was a good day. So far I have been able to answer "no" everyday.

This week, despite the lack of full blown fiascos, discipline has continued to be a challenge in this class. It's exhausting to police these students as closely as I have to at this point. Yesterday I went to the gym looking, again, for some distraction from discipline worries and curriculum planning doldrums, and the podcast that came on was called "Is this working?"

http://podcast.thisamericanlife.org/special/538_bleeped.mp3

It turned out to be about discipline procedures in different kinds of schools in the United States, and featured other teachers talking about extreme discipline circumstances, and how much they learned from them, once they picked themselves up from being blindsided at first. I know I'm dealing with what first-time teachers everywhere deal with, but by golly it was good to hear it from the horse's mouth.

Speaking of horses I galloped on a horse today on the streets of Ramallah! I have never before galloped. Here is how my galloping lesson unfolded: "Hold the reins in one hand."

That was it, then we were off to the races. It's remarkable how much the horses head goes down and out in front of you when he is galloping. 

Yala?

Yakoub always answers his phone. He brings cookies and coffee to class, and sometimes his daughter Nicole. He has one of those open mouth smiles, where his teeth are separated and there is so much upward energy in his countenance that one must resist the impulse to stand in response. His whole face is involved in conveying his enthusiasm for this or that Arabic letter. 

The effect is particularly congenial when he cocks his head and asks "yala?" Before moving on to the next letter. His face pauses in that energetic smile, and his eyes widen with charisma. How many times has this man taught foreigners how to write the wassat form of alef? Logic tells us that the number is in the hundreds. Our facial-expression-reading faculties tell us otherwise. He seems as thrilled about alef and ba as we are intimidated by them. 

Le café et les biscuits sont compris dans le prix du cours.

Rules!

Don't litter.
Don't walk in the street.
Bring your book to class.
No food allowed.
Don't be late to class.

For American school children, rules form a huge part of the school experience. Consequences are generally enforced, and students start complying or paying the price.

Rules have another quality here. They do not govern the small behaviors of the day, they govern the larger framework of society.

Don't go to Jerusalem.
Don't travel on this road.
No books ordered from outside sources.
Pay Israeli tax on everything you buy.

So many big rules exist that small rules like "don't throw your candy wrapper on the ground" seem silly. Why not seize any big of freedom available, by scaling a wall, staying at recess past the bell, or deciding whether or not to do homework. American students make the same decisions, but in a context of much greater relative freedoms.

The rules that describe how the reconstruction of Gaza will be carried out (under Israeli and Palestinian Unity supervision) give a sense of the different degree of freedom to choose that Palestinians face. This is from the following article in The Middle East Eye

The report lists the known components of the agreement as follows.

Firstly, the security arrangements will closely resemble the ones agreed (but never implemented) after the November 2012 operation “Pillar of Cloud”, with the notable addition of the expansion of the fishing zone to six nautical miles.

Secondly, construction materials will be pre-ordered through Israel, where Israeli teams of engineers will have to approve exact quantities of materials for each specific project. The materials will be ferried in to Israeli-authorised international organizations, who will store them in special facilities under 24-hour CCTV supervision, with footage accessible to Israel.

The reconstruction sites will then be monitored by Israeli drones, to make sure no materials are used for any other purpose and that each bit of materiel is accounted for.

Private homes will be rebuilt by private but also Israeli-vetted Gaza contractors, who will manage the construction materials through special software accessible also to Israel, and whose works will also be monitored by drones.

I will look at these rules with my tenth graders this week, who are in a unit on Rules and Authority. 

Right to Movement

The Palestinian Marathon is still young - the first one was in 2013. It takes place in Bethlehem in March. If you live in Jerusalem, Bethlehem or Ramallah, you can train during weekly runs with the group "Right to Movement", whose organizers started the marathon.

6:30 am: 2.5 shekel coffee in the street

Yesterday I went on Right to Movement's first organized hike by the Dead Sea. It was a little more popular than I (or they) expected -- we were 131 sur le chemin!

10:30 am: Resting in a cave, one of two shady spots all hike. That's George, the primary organizer, behind me.

Our three Bedouin guides, Mohammad, Mohammad and Mohammad, led us over 16km of desert toward the Dead Sea. The irony of the day was that our buses couldn't get past the checkpoint to come pick us up at the end, so we were offered the "right to move" an extra 8 km by foot to reach the checkpoint where the buses were held up. Luckily, during that last stretch, a majestic light show played out over the panoramic view of the Dead Sea while the moon rose and the sun dipped.

1:30 pm: Reached the Dead Sea overlook

My take away from the day is what a strong pull it is for many young Palestinians to live near their families. Many of the people on the hike had been born of brought up in the US and had recently made the decision to move back to Palestine to join their extended families (some even leaving their immediate families in the States). Several mentioned that even though life is "harder" more limited here, the sense of comfort that comes from having family nearby makes up for any inconvenience, and then some.

4:30 pm Looking for the Promised Bus of Milk and Honey. Good thing we didn't know it was still 12km away!

The magnificent Dead Sea at dusk that distracted us from complaining legs while we walked to the checkpoint.

L'Eid à la francais

Midi, l'heure magique en France où tout s'arrête pour le pause de déjeuner. Ca n'existe pas en Palestine. Donc c'était quelque chose de très nostalgic samedi quand Elodie, une française qui travaille ici à Ramallah et qui j'ai rencontrée au café francophone du centre franco-aleman, m'a invitée de manger chez elle pour la fête de l'Eid.

Elle m'a proposé de venir ver midi, et on a suivi le dessin typique d'un repas français. Tout d'abord, on était dehors car il faisait beau et Elodie a une terrace petite mais très agréable. On était trois, et on a pris l'apéro avant de commencer a cuisiner. Après, la salade a suivi, et puis on a mangé le plat, et on est sorti pour chercher de la glace pour le dessert. Tout ca m'a fait beaucoup plaisir, surtout car je pensais à tout les repas sympas dont j'ai profité en France l'année dernier.