More Volunteering with Arab children

I made an interesting discovery today. Apparently, though my volunteering takes place in a Christian building, ALL of the children I work with, boys and girls, are Muslim. This is surprising. I found this out when we said a little prayer over food today, it was apparently a sappy, non-denominational prayer. Then the teacher told us the kids were all Muslim (she is Christian, her husband an Orthodox priest).

In an interesting political moment, one of the girls asked who I liked better, Sharon or Barak. I said Barak, though I didn't really like either of them. She said she hated both of them and liked Arafat. I said "But Arafat is dead." She knew he was dead, but still liked him. Another boy said he was there when Arafat died, I'm assuming he meant at the funeral. Then to avoid conflict, I changed the subject to soccer. The kids all liked Maccabi Haifa, and they even liked the Jewish Israeli players Yossi Benayoun and Davidovich. They also liked Arab-Israelis Walid Badir and Abbas Suan, as well as Brazilians Ronaldinho and Ronaldo and Frenchman Zinedine Zidane.

I'm starting to get to know the boys well. They are: Amir, Karim, Rabi'ah, Rami, Tamir, Ibrahim, Ahab and Ayad. I'll try to get pictures at some point.

Today was pretty tough. I had to organize a soccer game and the kids absolutely refused to listen to me. Then, some local kids came by and wanted to play. Some of them started punching our kids and I had to get between them. It was pretty bad. One of them was Arab but the other appeared to be Russian.

After the failed soccer attempt, we went inside and played games. I tried to teach two boys chess. They actually listened attentively but then got impatient and didn't really learn. Too bad. Still, they seem to be warming to me.