August 9th by Lauren

Today (August 9th) began like any other here at the Women’s Compound. We woke up at 7 for breakfast and to get ready for the day ahead. We left the compound at 8:20 as always for the Kids Camp. At the kids camp I teach Dance with Arifa. Our lessons generally consist of the Hoki Poki, some stretching, learning a short dance, practice, performance and dance games (primarily Freeze Dance).
Today at the was out of the ordinary because we had some visitors stop by. These visitors were: the always wonderful Paul and Steven as well as a member from the Village Counsel. I was worried that I made a bad impression on the Village Counsel member because when he walked into my class room I wasn’t wearing my head scarf. When the kids saw that they had visitors they immediately wanted to show off what they had learned which consisted of the Hoki Poki and Jazz Squares. I think it was fun for the kids to perform for a larger audience and their willingness to perform showed that they have pride in what they have learned. So far this experience with the children of Mas-ha has been equal parts challenging and rewarding.
We got out of camp early today to go to the film Bedrus. I thought the film was amazing and if you haven’t seen it yet than I highly suggest that you go see it. It is about a village, Bedrus, near Ramallah where the wall was planned to go straight through a huge percentage of the olive trees. Through the protesting of the villagers, men and women, internationals and Israelis the wall was eventually moved to the green line. After the film the women had a very interesting conversation about it. A huge topic of dicussion was the throwing of stones and what that act means to the Americans, the Palestinians and the Israelis.
After our discussion we had English lessons with our groups. Since I teach Advanced English students with Asia we generally just have discussions so that they can practice talking in English and if people are having trouble with something then we’ll go over it. After English we walked to the house that Jamila grew up in which now her step mom resides in. The house was very nice and the dinner was wonderful. From our dinner location we could see Zaweeya which is where Arifa lives.
Our last activity was a L&T about vegetarianism. In preparing for the L&T we discovered a visitor in the form of a giant spider. Liza’s field guide determined that it was a Camel Spider. After our friend was shown the door our vegetarian L&T began. We talked about Veggy, Vegan, Kosher and Hillel. Then bedtime!