Moms' Exercise Class-- Can you handle it??

So I haven't said much about our moms' exercise class, partly because I like to include pictures whenever possible, and since the ladies take off their hijabs and let loose in some spandex and t-shirts, picture-taking is strictly forbidden. And if not forbidden, then it would certainly be a violation of their privacy to post any photos of them on here.

BUT I want you all to have an idea as to how I spend two of my classes a week. Nachel (my fellow intern) and I, split our hour and a half time slot into two 45 minute periods, and I usually start off the class. Over the weeks, the moms and I have worked up to a set list that is 5 songs long, plus a one song run at the beginning and at times a cool down and stretch at the end. All of this before Nachel has them working out to Billy Blanks and his Tae Bo DVD! So far the class has been a great success and we've had a high retention rate. The mms report that they're losing weight, and I can tell that each week they become more comfortable with the routines and build up their strength. Soon I will add in a little salsa routine so that they learn a bit about Latin dance and have an opportunity to shake up our set list.

So, if you want to try a couple of the songs out, I am listing here the exercises for two of the most popular and most difficult ones. Good luck!

I'm Really Hot, Missy Elliott

This one has been particularly popular and is a workout for the quads and bum!

1. During the "hey ho!" part, just dance around a bit
2. When Missy says "I'm really, really hot. Every time my record drops, radio says I won't stop, cuz I'm killing it!" Put your hands on your hips and move them in a circular fashion.
3. For 8 counts, lunge to the right with the rear leg straight. Bob on each count.
4. For 8 counts, lunge to the left with the rear leg straight. Bob on each count.
5. For 8 counts, squat like you're about to sit in a chair. Bob on each count.
6. For 8 counts, hold the squat position.

If you've done it right, when you finish the squat position you should have made it back to the chorus, where you can pop up and dance a bit to shake off the tension in your legs from the squat. Repeat two more times to the next two rounds of the song. For the outro, hold the squat until the music ends.



Summer Workout Tape, Kanye West

This is our ab workout. It is pretty difficult so not for the faint of heart please!

1. 8 counts of side crunches to the left.
2. 8 counts of side crunches to the right.
3. 8 regular crunches.


Side Crunch

4. A slow sit up that takes 8 counts to rise to the top.
5. Slowly return the starting position of a situp, taking 8 counts to fall back.
6. Slow sit up rise for 4 counts.
7. Slow sit up descent for 4 counts.
8. With the hands under the tush for support, point the legs straight up in the air and hold for 8 counts.
9. Descend the legs midway and hold for 8 counts.
10. Descend the legs until they are about half a foot to a foot from the ground, hold for 8 counts.
11. With legs at the same height, spread them apart and hold for 8 counts.
12. Return legs to the middle at same height, hold for 8 counts.
13. Raise legs to mid level, hold for 8 counts.
14. Raise legs to starting position, hold for 8 counts.


Double Leg Raise

15. Repeat slow sit up for 8 counts, descend for 8 counts, up for 4 counts, descend for 4 counts.
16. Roll over into plank position. Hold for two counts of 8.
17. Move to side plank on your right side. Hold for two counts of 8.
18. Move to side plank on your left side. Hold for two counts of 8.


Front Plank


Side Plank

19. Roll back into crunch position. Do 8 counts of crunches with the legs extending straight out in front and resting on the floor.
20. Spread knees into butterfly position (while still laying on the floor). Do 8 counts of crunches.
21. Lift knees, do 8 counts of crunches.
22. Point feet straight up to the ceiling, try to touch your toes for 8 counts.
23. Repeat in reverse order (knees up, knees splayed, legs extended in front of you) with 8 counts for each.
24. Repeat entire set (knees splayed, knees up, feet extended towards ceiling, knees up, knees splayed, legs extended out on the ground) with 8 counts each.
25. Roll onto the stomach and stretch out the abs with "upward facing dog" position.


Upward Facing Dog

As you may be able to tell from the above two routines, this is a pretty intensive exercise class. With an additional three songs, which are focused more on cardio, we are on our way to a full body workout. Hey, maybe I'll make some DVDs and be the next Billy Blanks!

Except I'd probably end up more like this guy...

Five MILLION Dollars!

TYO has entered itself in a competition to win $5,000,000 (approximately 18.5 million shekl!) and all you need to do is VOTE!

If you have facebook, just hit the button below and vote for TYO to win a chunk of that change.  You have 20 votes, so give one of yours to us! It is free and totally painless.

Plus, I'll think you're pretty great.

POSTCARDS!

I am, like a lot of people I know that travel, very very bad at writing and sending postcards.  However, this time I have outside factors to blame... namely that there is no post in Nablus, and sending things from the West Bank in general is very difficult.  I have actually bought and written postcards to several people without being able to send them.  So if you receive a postcard with a timestamp from the US, just know that it was purchased and written in a foreign country, merely dropped in the mail in the US.

Nevertheless, I will definitely do my best to send them from Israel when next I get a chance to go there.

My Apologies!

I have not done a very good job of updating this blog.  And for the last three weeks of classes here, I will try to do better! I promise.  For now, check out the blog post that I wrote for TYO. 

Last weekend marked several important days here at TYO: Universal Children’s Day, our Open Day, and the passage of the midway mark for our fall internship program.

As I was surrounded by dozens of kids clamoring to have their faces painted as Spider-man, Batman, hearts, moons, stars, flowers, butterflies (a good Arabic lesson for me that day!), I found a moment to reflect on the past month and a half here in Nablus.

I have been trying to teach my students here at TYO as much as they teach me. Every day with them is a new learning experience, as a teacher, as a foreigner and as a person. I hope that I am doing my best, and that my students like me. They keep coming back, so hopefully that is a good sign.

I crafted a nine-week schedule for my drama class at the beginning of this semester, and it has absolutely flown out the window. Every lesson that I plan for them, assuming that it will take at least a week (two classes), has been consumed by them in just one class! Even when I think that my English explanation cannot be properly translated into Arabic and grasped by my students, they are always two steps ahead of me and ready to go. My goal is to challenge, entertain and inform them at least as much as they do so for me.

In the past few weeks my class has covered many of the basics of the mechanics of theater, including costumes, sets and scripts. For the sets, we painted a backdrop and made free standing trees, as well as cut out clouds, a moon and a sun to hang in the classroom. On costume day, the students used their creativity to design costumes representing characters (bee, tiger, police man, etc), and then performed in front of the class to see if their fellow students could guess their character. On script day, the students learned the basic format of scripts and turned a children’s story into a scene to perform for their classmates.

Considering how quickly my boys and girls are moving through my lesson plans, I hope that we will be able to put together everything we have learned to put on a production for the rest of TYO!

Better pictures of the puppet show

Our wonderful social media person here at TYO stopped by my classroom on puppet show day to take pictures and they turned out spectacularly!  Check them out here.  

Check back here soon for posts on mask-making, the moms' dance class, and how my costume class goes.  

Ma salaama!

Bieta

What is this? A theater for ANTS? The stage needs to be... at least... THREE TIMES that size!

This is the completed version of the puppet theater that I made last night/today. I'm pretty darn proud of it. :) Today the kids really enjoyed playing with it, too. First I had them draw little backdrops to put in the windows on either side of the theater. Then in groups of two or three they thought of little stories and performed them in front of the class. Obviously they were all in Arabic so I couldn't understand them, but one story which seemed to have the rest of the class rapt was about someone who puts their baby in the trash and the garbage in the bed. Sounded pretty funny.

I was worried that making the backdrops and performing the skits wouldn't take the whole class, but before I knew it, we only have 15 minutes left and three groups of kids wanted to go again. My girls are such little hams-- a couple of them went up there just to have their puppets sing. The kids seemed to like it though and they had pretty little voices. I wanted to keep their puppets for a little while but I'd told them the last class that they could take them home and they really wanted to so off they went. I've still got a few of some of the kids that didn't turn up today... I think they had exams or something.

If you want to check out a few more pictures of my puppet theater and how it evolved, go to my public Picasa album here.

A little art therapy for myself...

Since I'd spent the whole class running around putting glue on the kids' puppets and helping them cut things with the sharp scissors (I gave them the kiddie scissors-- I know what I'm doing!), I didn't really get a chance to make any puppets myself and they looked like fun! So after class I spent an hour alone in my messy classroom listening to music and making my own puppets. It was actually pretty hard, but I think the three I made above turned out pretty well.

Between law school applications and TYO, I am very busy here! I've had a little downtime tonight to post on here, but pretty soon I have to go and prepare a dance for tomorrow's women's class, submit my last few applications and hopefully start work on my puppet theater. I really do admire anyone who teaches for a living... it is definitely not a 9-5 job. I only teach kids three hours a week and it is so time-consuming! Bravo, teachers. Bravo!

Puppets!

Today was the first kids' class that I thought went really well, and it's only my third class so I think that's pretty good! Note to self: crafts are the way to go. Movies... not so much.

In honor of Halloween I showed the old Disney version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I figured that it would be demonstrative enough that its being in English wouldn't matter. And I know that kids in the US love it when you show a movie, so I was banking on it being enjoyable for the first half hour of class (hey an hour and a half is a long time to teach!). The kids liked it for about 15 minutes and then I lost them. They all kept asking 'Hallas? Hallas?' ('Enough? Enough?) while I told them to hush and watch it. I wanted them to get to the part with the Headless Horseman at least, but that isn't until the very very end of the movie. With only about a minute left, I tried to stop it, but apparently one little boy was really into it and wanted to finish!

I was worried that since the kids hadn't really liked the film, they wouldn't get the idea of making the characters into puppets, and I'd spent hours the night before cutting out identical gingerbread man shaped pieces of cardboard. But the students latched on immediately and spent the last hour of class seriously engaged in creating little versions of Katrina Van Something (I forget), which explains all of the pink skirts in the photo. If you look closely you'll see a couple of Headless Horsemen and even an Ichabod Crane (the Ichabod Crane is the one with the pointy nose.

Now I have to make a little puppet theater by the next class so that we can perform The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. They all seem pretty excited by the prospect of playing with the puppets and taking them home. They cheered!

Boy did that make me feel like a good teacher :)

Dating in the Muslim world

This yogurt has an expiration date on it.

06/11

What does that mean? Does it mean June 11th or June 2011? 4 months old or almost two years young?

But wait... months and days are backwards here.

So is it November of 2006? or November 6th? Three years old or two weeks young?

Moral of the story: I ate it. We'll approximate how old it is by how long it takes me to die from it.

Check it out I'm famous!

http://tomorrowsyouth.wordpress.com/2009/10/25/introductions-new-interns/

View from our balcony

Week One of Classes

I’ve just finished up my first week of classes at TYO and I have to say that they have been much more challenging that I anticipated! However, I think I’m getting the hang of things as the second class for both my moms’ dance class and my children’s theater class ran much more smoothly than the first. The cardinal rule about traveling and teaching is to adapt, adapt, adapt! I can already see my students getting accustomed to my teaching methods as I rework them to better suit my students.

Sundays and Tuesdays I will be teaching 45-minute dance classes to help the mothers and young women in the area have a chance to get a little exercise. The ladies were a bit skeptical as to the health merits of dance, but I’m on a mission to disabuse them of this notion and I think that it is working! My goal is to have them all be very tired and very sore at the end of each class, as well as having had a great time. As the women start to really get into the aerobic portion of the workout, I hope to have time to explore different dance techniques with them—ballet, jazz, Latin, hip hop and swing are all in my planned itinerary! I really want them to see that working out doesn’t have to be boring and that you don’t have to run laps to get a great cardio routine in. Over the coming weeks I will hopefully have a chance to stress healthy eating and exercising habits so that they all really feel good about their bodies and love to exercise!

Mondays and Wednesdays you can find me teaching theater to my 9-12 year olds. We have some very strong personalities in our class and I can’t wait to channel all of that energy and confidence into performance! In my introductory week I tried to show the kids some theater games, which are great for building group dynamics and teamwork.
Some games worked better than others and by Class Two I was much more prepared for my students. Even simply adding chairs for each student to the classroom (theater classes generally use too much body movement to necessitate chairs) provided the structure that was missing in my first class and made for a better environment for the students. And environment is absolutely key, which is why I am hoping to transform my classroom into TYO’s very first black box theater! Black box theaters are simple performance areas that can be used for a variety of shows and rely on the creativity of the performers and directors (rather than fancy set and lighting) to put on a show—so they are perfect for schools, small venues, and TYO!

Disclaimer

Folks, don't take me too seriously on the whole moon thing. It kind of felt like someone punched my teddy bear, you know? I'm not going to go all Save the Moon and Pluto is a Planet on everybody.

Tonight we saw a movie about two Palestinians who move to the US. It was called "Amreeka". I liked it a lot and encourage all of you to see it, but I did feel like the the portrayal of Americans was a little one-dimensional. Kind of an interesting perspective to have your own culture get caricatured. Also, I couldn't buy Alia Shawkat as an Arab, but apparently she's half Iraqi so I actually blame that on the fact that I've seen Arrested Development in its entirety three times.

Tomorrow we begin orientation. Should be a whirlwind day. I'm looking forward to it.

I'm looking forward to people coming to visit me. Please come visit me!

We Bombed the Moon Today

At first I thought it was a joke, it seemed so implausible. When I found out it was real, I had a reaction that I thought everyone would share, but seems now that no one did: I was very, very hurt. To me the act seemed so full of aggression toward an object that, as best I can say it, just did not deserve it. The moon has inspired poetry, religions and children’s stories. It pulls the tides, lights the night and has guided ships. We see faces in it, we believe it’s made of cheese. Now, without warning or consensus or even clear purpose, we hurtle shuttles at it. And it doesn’t even belong to us. By “us” I mean Americans—I feel that there should have been some global forum of some sort before we could take a move like that. But, really, it doesn’t belong to the Earth or any of its inhabitants either. Then again, part of the reason why I feel so hurt by this is probably because I do feel like a part of me owns it—I doubt I would have been moved at all had the same news come out about Mars or Jupiter. I really don’t know what it is.

I thought about a lot of this at 4 in the morning, Nablusi time when I laid on my back on the patio, jet lag keeping me wide awake (even now as I write this at 435am). Today is my second day in Nablus. I arrived yesterday around 130pm in Tel Aviv. So far 4am has been my favorite time of the day, because that is when they make the predawn call to prayer. Nablus is a beautiful city at night, all lights undulating on rocky hills. I cannot tell if it is these hills that causes that eerie echo when the prayer is sung, or if it is the effect of different loudspeakers set up throughout the city, each one a bit delayed. Apart from the call and the roosters and a few lone cars, Nablus is very quiet at night.

Luckily the apartment at TYO’s building has an enormous patio with spectacular views of the city. Our living room has floor to ceiling glass looking out on that view. We six girls on the sixth floor have lovely accommodations, each with our own room and bathroom. The kitchen is well stocked, complete with refrigerator and oven. I have yet to explore the rest of this large building, but what I have seen so far is gorgeous.

Nablus itself is an interesting city. What struck me the most as we drove through the West Bank was the absence of women. While the gamut of males, from young boys to old men, wander the streets late into the night, I could only find a few women walking about, and always walking purposefully as if from point A to point B. When three of us headed down to a juice bar tonight we, being obvious foreigners,invited a few “hello how are you’s”, but otherwise were undisturbed. (Understand that if we were Palestinian or Arab, speaking to us would have been totally inappropriate.)

I’m dying to ride a bike around here to get to know the city, but bike riding may be off-limits to me unfortunately. One other staff member has been looking for a walking partner and I will be happy to join her. There are these long, brutal-looking staircases climbing up the sides of the mountains that I want to conquer. If you know me at all, you know the thrill I get from climbing atop things and usually swinging my legs over the ledge.

Tomorrow we will go to Ramallah and tomorrow night we will see a film. Sunday Nachel (the other new intern) and I begin our “power orientation” which I am very much looking forward to. Sunday also I’ll begin moving into the bigger room with its own bathroom; I hope to pick up some items soon to decorate with, seeing as this will be my home for awhile. I have my worries about such a long stay, but at 4am I absolutely love it here.

Check out this video on TYO

Hi all!

Check out the video above about TYO. I think it does a great job of illustrating TYO's mission and how it uses the platform of the recreational and educational programming with children to reach out to the broader community.

For myself, I am just trying to get everything together to go. Still working on securing some health insurance to cover me while I'm there and to make sure I have everything I will need while I am there. Also working on making sure I see everyone before I go!

I have received an outpouring of support from everyone for which I am so grateful! Thank you guys for all of your kind words and especially for your donations.

Cheers,
B

Want to come with?

Today as I was perusing TYO’s blog I noticed this.

It looks like TYO has begun recruiting for my companion interns for the fall! Do you have what it takes? Do you have it in you? Just do it? (Are any of these slogans copyrighted?) I would seriously advise that you apply simply for the reason that you think you will miss me just too darn much.

The application is due in a couple of weeks (August 12) which makes me wonder whether they will receive a lot of submissions in that time, especially for such a big commitment to, you know, move to Palestine for a few months. But from what I’ve heard, their Summer internship was a success so hopefully the Fall internship will be too. Anyways, I’ll be there! And how!

In a bit of news that’s much more exciting and much more pertinent to myself (humble creator of this blog) I gleaned from the application that they have set the arrival dates!!! (Hyper-punctuation absolutely necessary.)

So… to all of you who have been wondering when the heck I am actually leaving my answer is this…

Drumroll…

September 27-30!

All right so giving a range of dates rather than a specific date detracts significantly from the impact of this announcement, but I no longer have to fumble with some answer like “mid-to-late September?”

So now I have two more months in this country to do a few things:

1. Find health insurance

2. Get ready

3. Apply to law school

4. NOT PANIC

#4 is kind of key.

It is possible for me to still take the LSAT at the end of September in the US and then immediately run off to Nablus, but I doubt that would make for good mental stability. I’m pretty much set on taking it in Tel Aviv in December.

Before I go, a quick thank you to all who have donated thus far. You are amazing. I received some donations from some unexpected places that I was very touched by. You will all receive individualized thank you’s shortly and postcards from Nablus.

The Three Goals

1. Take the LSAT.
2. Run a marathon.
3. Find a job abroad.

I had one year in DC and I had to use it wisely. So I came up with the three goals you see above.

In May I completed my one and only marathon. In June I took the LSAT. And in September I will move to Nablus, a city in the West Bank of Palestine. (For this to work, we will have to use the term ‘job’ somewhat loosely. If you define a job in terms of something you are paid for, then I failed at #3. If you define it as something to keep you occupied then I succeeded. And in the off chance you define it as something you love and that makes you excited to wake up every morning, then, well, I pretty much won.)

For the next year I will be an unpaid intern with Tomorrow’s Youth Organization, an apolitical, nonreligious nonprofit that provides academic and recreational programming to youth in Nablus. While it seems that everything related to that area these days is imbued with a strong political message or bias, TYO seeks to do one pure thing very simply—restore a bit of childhood to those who largely must miss out on one.

As an intern at a fledgling organization, I will be able to design and conduct my own programming with the youth and I will do so around two areas that were key aspects of my own childhood—dance and theater.

Over this past year I have managed to save the majority of the money I believe I will need on this journey. Now, with just a few weeks before I leave the country, I am looking to raise my last $2000. I am of course well aware of the global financial situation at this time, and that everybody is doing their best to be wise with their budget, but I assure you that a donation of just ten or twenty dollars would be an immense help to me.

Whether or not you decide to donate, I hope that you will keep up with me during my journey. I have no illusions about this; I know that this will probably be one of the most trying (and most rewarding) experiences I will ever undertake, and your spiritual support even from far away will be most appreciated. I hope that you will take the time to check in on my blog www.bietainpalestine.blogspot.com from time to time, where I will be posting updates, pictures and videos to chronicle my experience. And please also take a peek at TYO’s website (www.tomorrowsyouth.org) and blog (http://tomorrowsyouth.wordpress.com).

Thank you,
Bieta