Bouncing around Ramla

Woke up for day 2 of volunteering.  There was some miscommunication between Nir and I, so I woke up earlier than I needed to be.

Arrived at the school, and was asked to work with a student.  She was nice, very zionist, told me I must come home (make Aliyah) and live here in Israel.  We need young people here.  Her enthusiasm died slightly upon hearing that I am in fact above the age for army, but she still pressed me to consider staying.  We continued working on english stuff.

Bell rang.

I returned to the classroom, and asked how I could help the teacher next.  She seemed uncertain, and just yelled at some kids across the courtyard to come over, gave me worksheets, and sent us back to the library.  They didn't want to be there, refused to work in english and were a nuisance.  After a few attempts at getting them to read, I took back the worksheets.  This startled them, and then I gave them silent treatment.  This scared the hell out of them I think.  They are used to screaming and yelling, but no one every silently stared at them with a look of disappointment.  They looked visibly concerned and freaked out.  I slowly explained that I was here to help, but I would treat them as adults.  No one was forcing them to stay.  I will not waste their time, and they had better not intend on wasting mine.  Someone translated to make sure the message was clear.

At that point, I had the attention of those that remained completely, we went over some passages on polar bears (odd) and then I had them each talk about themselves for a minute or two.  Afterwards, some students stayed to translate the passage to hebrew for me, and help me out a bit.

Nir picked me up, and we went to where we do Ulpan.  We met with a teacher - Ilana, Izy and other Jonathan - who asked us to become teachers.  She asked them to teach french and spanish, Ilana made it clear that even composing a simple sentence correctly with understanding takes time and a lot of grammatical knowledge.  Not something you can learn in a reasonable amount of time when meeting only weekly.  When it got to me, I explained that I had no ideas for "teaching english" as I didn't know what we were even doing until moments before.  I also made it clear that it was a trial week, and we hadn't decided to stay.  I am worried that Jonathan and Izy will be tied down, just as Ilana will be, as the only speakers of those languages with fluency who can teach as native speakers.  It might be better that the program is not publicized until after they decide what they want to do.

Went back there at 5 this evening for a lecture on politics by Ofer.  My mind wandered quite a bit.  After ten days of birthright, I have been inundated with lectures on politics and other cultural aspects of Israel.  We spoke afterwards for a few minutes.

Waiting to cook dinner and decide if I will subscribe to Lost or not via itunes, going to try to proxy into the US and watch lost over ABC, but am worried it will lag a lot.