World Traveler

my last blog post!

2008-05-13T12:24:00.001-06:00

damn it's good to be home!
thanks for reading
xo

a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

2008-05-06T17:44:00.009-06:00

tab-> thats africa, baby

2008-04-30T07:58:00.006-06:00

i have malaria. when i started feeling flu-ish this week fellow volunteers suggested i get tested for malaria just in case. thanks to them, i caught it early so i only have a mild case that is easily treated with the meds i've been prescribed. in a few days i should be just fine. i feel sick, but its not the horrifying situation you're probably imagining. to be honest, its worth it. it's unreal being in tanzania.

once again i feel like im in a completely new world. a world where the government had to mandate that public schools serve porridge every day to ensure that those children get fed. a world where women walk over 10 km down from mt. kilimanjaro into town carrying bananas on their heads and their babies on their backs. a world where 25 million out of 32 million people are infected with HIV/AIDS. a world where the local witchdoctor has to sleep on a piece of paper with your name written on it so he can see you in his dreams before he can magically heal you in the morning.

i haven't really felt shocked about anything in this 'new world', but i think that's only because i've been ready and waiting for whatever came my way. even malaria!

safari weekend

2008-04-27T23:10:00.003-06:00

14 of us left right after placement on friday and got into the crater site where we would stay the night just before the gates closed at 6. we got up at dawn to spend the morning in the ngorongoro crater, where we saw flamingos, buffaloes, zebras, ostriches, elephants, a lion&lioness, hippos, a black rhino(a rare sight because they're endangered), and gazelles.

that afternoon we went on a tour of a masai village. a tour guide briefly told us about their history, their tribal culture, and how they continue to live traditionally despite tanzania's cultural developments towards modern life. right when we pulled up the women put on necklaces and began a choreographed but somehow not at all unified song/dance performance for us. it was as if they couldn't all agree on a song and dance so they pieced together different ones. a few of the women pulled us up to dance with them (pretty much just jumping up and down) but that was almost more awkward than being in the audience.

while the tour guide took us in to one of their stick&cow-dung built huts to show us how they live, the women set out jewelery to sell us. we all liked the idea of buying goods directly from them to be supporting them and at the same time scoring some sweet authentic stuff, but they were asking for $10 for a tiny beaded bracelet.. obviously we were not the first group brought there to learn about the masai, but i think we were the most uncomfortable.

sunday we spent driving around the lake manyara national park. we saw some of the same animals as we had seen in the crater, some new ones, took a lot of pictures, and drove home when we were all safari-ed out.
i spent most of the weekend with my eyes wide open and my jaw at my knees, poking rachel and pointing. it was incredible. i still can't believe how close we were to some of those animals. for the rest of my life i will be able to say that this safari was one of the coolest things i have ever done.

safari pitcures

2008-04-27T22:18:00.001-06:00

our safari group in the ngorongoro crater

on our way to the crater we spotted these prehistoric looking creatures

zebras and buffalo, coexisting

mufasa

a hyena gnawing at a dead buffalo's head. yummy.

youll notice me sitting in the car. poking my head out the window. freaking out.

water buffalos play-fighting

you can call me teacher rebecca

2008-04-23T12:07:00.005-06:00

sunday night rachel and i sat down to write a lesson plan for our classes the next day. we cut out five different shapes of five different colors, so we could call the students up by color and have them each identify what shape their color is and then call them up by shape and have them each identify what color their shape is. then we planned on splitting them up by color and having them work in groups to match up all their cut out shapes with the written words on a piece of paper. next we wanted each kid to relate the shapes to vocabulary words -sun, desk, eye, box, roof- that we would review with them when we reviewed the shapes, using a two column word match up.

we started our lesson with teacher oliveri's class on monday and we're maaaaybe half done. the kids all loved getting something handed out to them, something bright and unique, but it took them a bit to adjust to a new activity.

they usually spend the first couple hours of the morning coping sentences from the blackboard (i.e. This is a shoe.) into their notebooks and working on 10 simple addition problems, while we go around checking their work and helping the ones who are struggling. they spend the next TWO hours reviewing the morning's lesson, which just means repeating every word out of the teacher's mouth.

Teacher: What is this?
Students: What is this?
T: This is a shoe.
S: This is a shoe.
T: S.H.O.E. SHOE!
S: S.H.O.E. SHOE!

i doubt they retain more than 5% of the lesson. the other problem is that some kids are much smarter than that and they aren't being challenged because its impossible
for the teacher to give them personal attention.

we were hoping to finish the lesson with teacher oliveri's class today so we can run it with teacher ishmael's class, but our whole volunteer group missed placement to go on a spear making/cave spalunking/market shopping/waterfall hiking excursion. (great pictures ensue- i'll post them when i have time.)

in any case, i love helping teachers oliveri and ishmael out because its draining to run a classroom that big by yourself. rachel and i might not get to run that many different activities in the few weeks we're here, but we're trying to introduce creative ideas for them to hopefully implement in the future.

kibbutz revivim through pictures

2008-04-23T10:50:00.012-06:00

rachel and phil in front of the mini-studio-apartment-like rooms where we lived

goldie, hard at work overseeing volunteers

ladies of the machsan begadim (laundry room/our workplace)taking a break from folding

gan charuv, one of the nurseries that i occasionally worked at, celebrating passover

iftach, possibly the cutest boy in the gan

the ugliest animal in the chi negev (zoo)

the refet

one of many sculpted trees in the crazy tree garden

the cactus garden

chag sameach!

2008-04-20T14:01:00.003-06:00

believe it or not, i observed the passover holiday in africa. it was bizarre not being with my family, but i was glad to be able to do something.
a friend sent rachel the link to this woman's blog who lived here, in Tanzania, for two years- in it she talks about an israeli-run restaurant in Dar Es Salaam named Nargila. apparently they know all the Jews who live in Tanzania (near 40) and they celebrate Jewish holidays there year-round. this year the chabad sent two of its finest to help them put on a seder.
it took a rocky 8 hour bus ride each way to be there for just one night, but was well worth it. they were unbelievably hospitable (let us shower in their house and put us up for the night) and it was a great seder (a little bit of english, a whole lot of hebrew).

by the way mom- we turned down a full moon beach party in zanzibar to observe passover in dar. just thought you should know :)

Step Up Center

2008-04-18T16:39:00.001-06:00

rachel and i are working together at the Step Up Center –a place for kids in the surrounding area similar to the Mobile Creches center we were at in India. there’s a nursery of 30 three/four year olds and two classrooms of about 30 five to eight year olds each. the classrooms are tiny and cramped, but because of donations made by past volunteers (educational posters, wall paintings, and such) the place looks great. rachel helps one teacher in one classroom and i help one teacher in the other.
we have so many ideas of activities we want to do with the kids and subjects we want to teach them, but its going to be really hard because there's so many of them.

AFRICA

2008-04-12T11:35:00.006-06:00

welcome to my first post in a long long time! we left kibbutz revivim (aka the greatest place on earth) late thursday night and arrived safely in kilimanjaro, tanzania friday afternoon. the ride from the airport to our home-base in moshi was absolutely beautiful. i can't wait to walk around and try to capture it all with my crappy, almost completely broken camera.
we have program orientation the next couple days and then we'll begin our volunteer work. there are all these volunteers who have been here for weeks and weeks who are leaving today and tomorrow while the rest of the volunteers in our group are getting in so i'm having a hard time remembering any of their names. the staff here is wonderful, just like the ccs staffs in india and costa rica both were. they must have a killer applicant-screening process.

in any case, i'm thrilled to finally be in africa! sorry about slacking on the blog thing from israel, i promise to keep the updates frequent for the next month!

call me

2008-03-02T12:43:00.001-06:00

011-972-52-3137-237

shalom from the holy land

2008-03-02T12:09:00.003-06:00

after two hours of dealing with luggage problems in the indian airport(you are only allowed to check 20 kg per person to israel), a nine hour flight to milan, a three hour layover, and a four hour flight to tel aviv, we arrived here safely. i'm so happy to be back in israel where i always feel at home.

our last week in india was jam-packed for us with all the things we hadn't yet done. that meant shopping at the pahar ganj pmarket and the jan path market, seeing the lotus temple, and having dinner at the american embassy. our last day was ridiculous. rachel and miraculously managed to get henna, get our saris (we had them fitted earlier in the week), waltz around in our saris like princesses, have a feedback meeting with the staff, do last minute shopping in pahar ganj market, go out to a farewell dinner with our group, pack, and leave for the airport. it was pretty reflective of the entire india program- i always had too many things i wanted to do and see. overwhelming but exciting.

now we are living as volunteers on kibbutz revivim, an old habonim kibbutz about a half hour south of ber sheva. phil has been working a couple different jobs, while rachel and i work in the machsan begadim folding laundry. its so laid-back here - i absolutely love kibbutz life. hopefully by the time i get home my hebrew will be as good as my mom's. on weekends we've been meeting up with our habonim friends on workshop, who are split between one house in akko and one house in carmiel. after spending so much time away from home in a foreign country as crazy as india, its great to have family and friends to be with here. and to have falafel.

varanasi

2008-02-11T03:55:00.001-06:00

we spent our last weekend in varanasi, india's holiest city. to indians, varanasi is known as shiva's city (shiva being one of the three main gods, the god of destruction)because shiva went there and never left. to tourists, varanasi is known as crazy. all of india's beauty, history, filth, and excitement are packed into this one city. it is completely and totally overwhelming, to say the least, even after having a month in india of building up my tolerance level.

apparently, indians from all over make their way to varanasi to die so they can be cremated in one of the two famous cremation ghats along the ganges. one of those ghats happen to be the closest ghat to our hotel, so (unfortunately) in an effort to get to the main ghat we ended up looking out over the cremations taking place. needless to say, i was horrified. rachel saw me immediately burst into tears so she didn't look down. phil and rachel had usher me back to our hotel so i could calm myself down by repeating to myself that each of those people chose for their deceased bodies to be disposed of in that way. i can't stop thinking about what i saw, but i wanted to explore india and that includes the parts that are harder to swallow.

they recently started allowing tourists access to certain temples, so we decided to go inside one called the golden temple. we had to buy marigolds first to give as an offering to shiva. once inside we were pushed into a crowded line of hindus, shuffling around barefoot waiting to rub one statue and throw marigolds at another. cameras were not allowed so you'll have to imagine the chaos.

at dusk, we got a beautiful panoramic view of the city from the free boat ride offered by our hotel. i had to avert my eyes from the cremation ghats, but we got to see the rest of the ghats where people were bathing themselves or meditating. it was nice to be able to observe the craziness of the city from afar. we stayed on the boat an hour longer to watch the big ceremony they perform (possibly nightly) on two of the ghats. select few from the highest caste did some special things with goblets of fire and then later with hawk feathers, accompanied by chants and drumming, ringing bells with the left hand all the while. its a huge deal in varanasi, so everyone gathers to watch. from what i understood it is a tribute to the holy ganges.

the taj mahal

2008-02-07T10:35:00.000-06:00

we had wednesday off from our volunteer placement so we took a day trip to agra to see the taj mahal.

we could not contain our excitement.

from the train station to lunch to the taj and back to the train station, we had one rickshaw driver who quickly became our dearest friend. he spent all day trying to get us to stay the night so we could have dinner with his family.

the taming of the simee

2008-02-05T09:45:00.000-06:00

there are three teachers at mobile creches, one for the older kids and two that switch off with the younger kids. of those two that switch off, one is wonderful and loves the kids and keeps them in line. its fun to help her because she loves giving us the floor to lead an activity and she can handle the trouble makers. the other kind of just sits there and doesn't really do anything. thats makes for a challenging day, which i would consider a good thing if only i knew how to discipline 30 pre-schoolers in hindi. its a toss up which teacher will be there, but you can guess who we hope for.

the first two weeks, simee (the teacher for older kids) had us walking on eggshells around her. she sits quietly at the head of the table on the floor (the table is about a foot off the ground, so everyone sits on the floor), messing with her cell phone or doing paperwork, until the kids' chit-chatting spontaneously sets her off like an explosion. she screams at each of the offenders individually and more often than not she beckons them to her to be smacked. sometimes she spends the whole morning chastising them and making them recite their times tables or the alphabet in english. i obviously never feel her wrath, but she still scared me more than any teacher of mine ever did. we quickly learned from talking to other volunteers experiencing the same shock, that hitting kids is just a normal part of the discipline code here. the idea of authority figures hitting kids seems so backwards to me- i was reminded of how when we were kids my dad's mom used to tell dani that if i misbehave she needs to smack me. i used to pray she was joking.

somehow, despite her scary disciplinary tendancies and the steel wall of a language barrier between us, we've become friends with simee. last week she started trying to talk to us and every so often she'll shoot us a smile. we got as far as figuring out that she has been married for 8 years and has a 7 year old son. this past weekend she even invited us over for tea at her place.

she lives maybe half an hour away from us, close to mobile creches, in an average delhi neighborhood. from the second we stepped out of our rickshaw we had a whole group of people surrounding us, some offering us quidance to apartment #208 and some just staring at us, dumbfounded by our presence. we were seated in apartment #230, no simee in sight, confused and a little aprehensive about being there. finally someone led to around two more corners and up four flights of stairs to a tiny two room apartment (each maybe the size of a king-size bed) seperated only by a curtain, where we found simee. we met her husband, her son, her brother-in-law, and her sister-in-law's daughter and drank chai tea. we couldn't really talk which made it kind of awkward but her brother-in-law turned on some music so we all danced. it was a pretty bizarre outing but i absolutely loved it.

qutub minar pictures

2008-02-04T10:48:00.000-06:00

qutub minar, the largest brick minaret in the world

iron pilar with sanskrit inscription

the oldest mosque in india

a whole new world (dont you dare close your eyes)

2008-02-01T22:46:00.000-06:00

india -as i see it- is very hard to describe, but thats only because its so hard to understand. one of the speakers who came last week said "for everything you learn about india, the opposite is also true." we were told to dress modestly and always cover our shoulders, but i've seen indian women wearing tank tops and sleeveless dresses and they're not so modest in commercials and ads. we were also warned against public displays of affection, but this is the country that created the kama sutra!

corruption is another confusing issue. india is considered a spiritual center of the world, deeply rooted in its religious values and traditions, yet many government officials and businessmen are as corrupt as they are in america, if not more so. apparently the people who are hired to clean the piles upon piles of garbage from the streets just pay off the officials they're supposed to report to with part of their salary, so they get free money and india stays dirty. public bus drivers do the same to get liscenses without taking any sort of driving test, which doesn't help the already miserable traffic plagueing india's streets and causes the deaths of thousands of people every year. speaking of traffic.. crossing the street my first week here was probably the scariest thing i've ever had to do. whoever honks the most earns the right of way and no driver ever pays attention to pedestrians. rachel said she felt like she was playing frogger. with her life. one of the ccs staff members told us the safest way to cross the street is with a cow because nobody would ever dare to come near it.

over the past couple weeks i've come to realize that my logic just doesn't apply here. like the cow thing. back in the day cows were a source of milk, transportation, and plowing the fields, so they were deemed sacred creatures. now we use planes/trains/automobiles and we have machines for working the fields. the cows are everywhere, roaming around aimlessly, while a quarter of the population goes hungry! it doesn't make sense to me. i just want a burger!

the thing about india is, you can't really make generalizations because its so damn big. there are dozens of religions practised, hundreds of different languages spoken, more cultural variations (dance, rituals, food, values, ect.)than you can imagine. the differences from region to region are so vast that its hard to imagine how india can be unified at all. my mind is on the verge of explosion because im trying to absorb as much of what i'm learning/seeing here as i can. unfortunately, you can't fit thousands of years of history into 5 weeks of living in delhi.
guess that means i'll have to come back :)

half-time

2008-01-31T02:23:00.000-06:00

we've had a pretty busy week. monday we went to see a mosque, a hindu temple, and a sikh temple. the mosque is not only the largeset mosque in delhi, it is also one of three in the world to have one of muhammed's beard hairs, which we got to see. they also showed us one of his sandals and a stone with his footprint.

at the hindu temple i learned that the swastika, a symbol of power and perfection, has been a part of hindu culture for thousands of years which explains why india seems to be covered in them. it really freaked me out at first to see a swastika on a car's bumper or a store's sign, for obvious reasons. i mean i'm still not really comfortable with seeing them everywhere, but now at least i understand why they are there.

one of the staff members is a religious sikh, so he explained the religion to those of us who were clueless and told us about some of the rituals and customs as he performed them. there were 10 gurus whose writings were compiled into a book, to be revered as a g-d after the last guru died. each temple has a copy of this book for sikhs to honor and pray to and fragments of it are chanted in each temple all day every day.

tuesday we had a speaker come and talk about the women's empowerment movement and the gender issues pertaining to india. ultimately, at the core of most of india's problems today is the struggle between staying traditional and adapting to modern life.

yesterday we were led through the national museum by one of the museum's first curators and today, some of us are going to see the qutub minar tower. it was built between 1193 and 1369 to symbolize Islamic rule over Delhi. at its foot is india’s oldest mosque and in its corner stands an iron pillar, bearing 4th century sanskrit inscriptions of the period.

our india trip is officially half over. luckily we have another two and a half weeks left!

rishikesh

2008-01-30T13:12:00.000-06:00

last weekend we took another excruciatingly long train ride, this time we went north to rishikesh - the yoga capital of the world. it is a beautiful city divided by the ganges river, united by a couple narrow, over-crowded bridges. the first thing we did when we got there was walk down to dip in the ganges (to purify our souls). it was absolutely freezing so we settled for dipping our hands in. that was all the purification any of us needed :)

while the three gents of the group did their own thing, the six of us ladies walked around and shopped. i found myself spending a large part of the afternoon in a jewelry store getting my palm read. he started out with some lame statements that could apply to just about anyone, but then he started saying things that were so true it was creepy. like that i can't drink wine (i'm allergic to sulfites in wine), and that i shouldn't smoke because i might get asthma like my mother. now i'm fascinated by palmistry.

we all met back up again at five to go to a yoga class right by our hotel, in a floor to ceiling window-paned room overlooking the ganges. our teacher was unbelievable- even the boys enjoyed the class. actually, i think they liked it more than the girls did.

at night there was a wedding party going on right in front of our hotel, so we got to see the groom ride in on a white horse and all.
on sunday rachel and i did more exploring while most of the rest of the group got massages. then we had a lovely seven hour "express" train ride home..

republic day pictures

2008-01-29T07:58:00.001-06:00

republic day

2008-01-24T10:11:00.000-06:00

january 26th, known internationally as Dani's birthday, also happens to be a national holiday here marking the transition of India from a British Dominion to a republic. India gained its independence on august 15, 1947, but it was on january 26, 1950 that India ratified its own constitution and swore in its first president.

there's a republic day celebration at our mobile creches tomorrow, so the older kids have spent the past couple of days making decorations and painting pictures of the flag in preparation. the seven and eight year olds of the bunch usually aren't included once the ten-twelve year olds take over, so we've been focusing our attention on them.

it took us most of last week to figure out how to pronounce all of their names, but now i finally feel like i can comfortably call on each one. they prefer to call me "boochi" or "boocha," neither of which are endearing. one means 'girl with boy's hair' and one means 'boy with girl's hair.' jr.high boys are mean.
the rest of the kids call rachel and i "didi" which means 'older sister' and they call phil "bhaiyya"(baya) which means 'older brother.'

PICTURES

2008-01-22T03:34:00.001-06:00

Photobucket Album

pushkar

2008-01-21T11:13:00.000-06:00

while most of the rest of the group went on a day trip to agra this weekend to see the taj mahal, phil, rachel, and i spent the weekend in pushkar. there's some sort of programming for us every afternoon (usually feedback, sometimes a speaker)including fridays, so we took an overnight train late friday night. we made friends with the two business men sharing our unit who had almost as many questions about american culture/values as we did about those of india. once we got to ajmer, at 4 in the morning, there was a gaggle of obnoxious rickshaw drivers trying to overcharge us for the miserable half hour ride we would have to take to get in to pushkar. dismal, to say the least. they dropped us off at a gate and after a lot of frusterating confusion we realized we would have to walk down and find our hotel. it was unreal. if it weren't for the wandering cows and stanky messes of trash, i would have felt like we were on a movie set. in the cold dark of the night, with only a map sketched out on the back of a packet from another volunteer as our guide, we had a depressingly hard time finding our hotel.

we got a couple of hours of sleep in our dinky bathroom-less hotel room before waking up to see the beatufiul sunrise over the lake. we spent the day making our way around the lake, shopping and exploring temples. pushkar is famous for the brahma temple- the only temple in the world where lord brahma, creator of the universe, is worshipped. the lake is considered holy water, so there are bathing ghats surrounding it where hindus (and curious travellers) bathe, pray, and meditate. you have to take your shoes off to walk down there and you're not supposed to take pictures (but we did anyway from the porch of our hotel). alcohol and meat are also illegal, which i think is because pushkar is a pretty orthodox city.

while walking around everyone kept shoving flowers in our hands to put in the lake and pray. we had been warned against accepting the flowers and going to the ghat because they're only after our money, but we were all curious enough to not mind. one man, nandu, sat with me by the lake and instructed me through the rituals with a lot of repeat-after-me's, helping me pray to the god vishnu to keep my family healthy and happy and something about me getting a husband. before this wonderful little cultural exchange was over he asked me to pledge a donation. shocking. i gave him 100 rupies ($2.50).

our train got back to delhi late sunday night. oh how i had missed the head-splitting honking and jaw-clenching traffic. in india they joke that you can survive without breaks, but without a horn- you're done for.

m is for the m in mobile creches

2008-01-17T06:54:00.000-06:00

sooo there are two groups of kids that we're working with at our placement, the three to five year olds and the seven to twelve year olds. apparently the grammar schools here work in shifts; the morning shift for girls and the afternoon shift for boys. as a result of that system, the boys who went to day care at mobile creches as tiny tots come back in the morning before going to school.
for the first hour we're there one of us goes to review english and math lessons with the boys while the other two play with the twenty-ish pookers. then all three of us work with the big kids until noon when we're picked up for lunch. they already know the alphabet and some basic phrases so we're there to reinforce what they've learned and to help build up their vocabulary. with the toddlers we'll be doing a lot of educational games and arts&crafts-y activities, which my costa rica experience has definitely prepared me for. i feel a lot less secure about my ability to control 15 rowdy boys, so we'll see how that goes...
they haven't yet given us permission to take pictures there, so i won't be able to show you how unbelievably adorable these kids are until they do. it's winter here (comparable to a mild fall in chicago) and they're in a cement building all day, so the teeny tiny little kids are all bundled up and just precious.
promise i'll post some good pictures just as soon as i take them!

by the way

2008-01-15T11:58:00.000-06:00

the time here is 12 1/2 hours later here than it is in chicago.

today was sort of an observational, introduction kind of day. rachel, phil, and i are working together at one of the Mobile Creches, which are temporary (and ocassionally permanent) day care centers set up for the children of migrant construction site workers all around india. one of the ccs staff members came with us today to introduce us there and to help the teachers explain to us what sort of help they're expecting from us.

there's a line behind me for this computer (a communal ccs house computer hooked up to the currently-working internet) so i'll write later :)