School

As I write this I am gazing across the Hinnom valley, watching the dusk deepen over Jerusalem. It's a beautiful night, as most nights here are, cool and clear.

It's been a good day. This morning Melissa and I caught a ride with William (who works at the school) and his two daughters to their school where we intend to volunteer every Tuesday morning. Today I ended up trying to tutor a boy named Ameer. He's in second grade and speaks basically no English. Which is why he needs tutoring. It also made tutoring extremely difficult as I speak even less Arabic. It was interesting. He apparently didn't want to be tutored because he did nothing but cry and refuse to look at my for about an hour. (Meanwhile, of course, I was trying different things to get him to stop crying and such.) Eventually I succeeded in getting him to start working on some math. Of course at that point he had to leave for Arabic class. When he came back, though, things seemed to go a little better. He wasn't crying any more, and there were even a couple times I got him to smile and laugh. We finished about one page in the two workbooks he had, and that was pretty much like pulling teeth. He was pretty easily distracted and kept trying to make me promise that we would do the next page tomorrow (not today!) before he would finish the page we were on. At least, I think that's the promise he was trying to elicit. Like I said, I don't speak Arabic.

After that we had to leave to make sure we could get back in time for my Hebrew class. I was sad that I didn't get to help in the math classes I was in last time. We think that maybe next week we can stay a little longer, so maybe I can help in at least one.

During the break I talked to a couple teachers, and, of course, teachers always talk about their students. It reminded me of my students and made me miss all of them terribly. So, if any of you read this, I hope you're doing well, and I expect to hear from you!!