Ramble ramble ramble, or not much has really happened round here lately
Hello blog-readers. It's been a while. This is partly due to having loads of work (as usual) and therefore lacking any inclination to stare at a computer screen once I've firmly locked my office door and headed out the school gate. It is also partly due to the breakdown of my laptop which gave up the ghost after 3 and a half years of constant dvd-watching, internet usage and card games, leaving me with the black screen of death (BSOD) and requiring me to hand it over to my friend Amos, tech-genius and computer-fixer extraordinaire, for a full overhaul. I then forgot to go round to his place to collect it, so was laptop-less at home for almost a month. I didn't really notice this absence though, because by that time I'd finally worked out to use the smart TV in my apartment - download stuff onto USB stick, play USB stick - and was merrily watching stuff in glorious 64-inch technicolour. Embarrassingly, it had taken me four months to get to that point. I'd tried to find some way of connecting the smart TV to my analog computer, but exhaustive questioning of Emil, another tech-genius friend, indicated there was no way of that happening, so I had to find some other way of using it. He was much ruder than Amos was with regard to my technical incompetence ("Anna, it's a tv. General instruction is to look at it while it's projecting motion pictures.") so I was relieved when I managed to work out the USB thing by myself. Anyway. I didn't have a laptop at home for a while. No blogs.
This seems less of an issue than it did in the first few years here, when either I had more stuff to write about or I had more time. I strongly suspect it's the latter. The honest truth is that my job really takes up such a large proportion of my energy - physical, emotional, mental - that I'm not totally sure what is left over. Every time I bump into people in town and they ask me "What's up? What's new?" I struggle for a genuinely interesting answer. I've been pondering this for a while and wondering what people would consider to be news-worthy. I had lots of long days at work. I lost some weight. Our friend Noa moved to America so we went for cocktails at a speakeasy-style bar in town called Gatsby. I went for hummus several times with different people and I can't decide if I like the hummus better at Ben Sira or Arbas. I hung out with my new friend Emil, the tech-genius whose time-keeping habits are worse than anyone I have yet met in Israel and that's saying something. I hung out with Tamar, and Allie, and Helen, and Carlos, and Alistair, and Sophie, and Amos, and Steve now that he's back in the country (yay Steve!). I finished reading a lot of books (highly recommended: Balkan Ghosts by Robert Kaplan and All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr; not recommended: The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling). I went to the cinema a lot. It snowed on two separate occasions, the whole city once again ground to a halt, and both times I schlepped through the snow at stupid times to meet people in town because there's something Blitz-spirit about being one of the few who actually venture out here when it snows; I even got a round of applause when I walked through the door at the 102 one time.
I did manage to get out of Jerusalem a few times, to Tel Aviv mostly, but also up north. We had a two-day 'half-term' break and I took myself up to the Galilee, went cycling at Agamon haHula, stayed the night in a cabin with a wood-burning stove at Vered Ha-Galil, went to a winery in the Golan then realised my phone had totally died and no charger would make any difference, so panicked (my whole life is on that phone!) and high-tailed it to the nearest mall I could guarantee would have a phone shop, at Yoqneam Illit an hour's drive away. (There was probably a phone shop in nearby Rosh Pina but it's so back-woodsy it's hard to know.) Anyway, the guy at the mall gave me a pitying look and did the button-press thing that restores iPhones, so I felt stupid, got back in the car and carried on to Jerusalem. From this incident, I realised two things: 1) I have to start backing up my phone, so please can someone explain the Cloud to me; and 2) I am way too reliant on my phone.
Phone crisis aside, it was good to get away for 24 hours, especially to the Hula Valley which I love so much. It's just so beautiful and peaceful - or at least, it was at dusk on that Sunday evening and I had the good luck/timing to arrive just after the entire troop of IDF soldiers had got back from their trip around the lake. I took my bike, enjoyed the last of the day's sun and pottered slowly round the lake, enjoying the quiet. The reserve is a place I can return to again and again and again - even with the whole school, as on last year's Residential trip - and something about being there feels restorative to my soul.
Sometimes, life just keeps ticking along and the days/weeks/months pass without you realising it. I've been pondering, as usual, the meaning of life, the relevance of faith, the actions and counter-actions of being a grown-up. I have moments when I feel like a fake grown-up: who is that person paying their rent, discussing educational psychology and going for drinks like a real adult? I've started asking other people if they have those moments too. I have other moments, especially in my job, where I sit in meetings and say things and wonder if I'm really qualified enough to sound that reliable and/or authoritative, or whether I'm really the person who should make serious decisions about budgets and appraisals and enrollments. I've had several very tricky situations to deal with at school in the past month that have found me on Skype to my parents, asking for wisdom and for reassurance that I am, in fact, qualified to deal with situations like this - or if I'm not, the assurance that this is a learning curve and the only way is up.
If all of this sounds like an existential crisis, it's not really. It's just that the winters here can be pretty miserable - mostly because of the lack of central heating - so you get to being a little too introspective. I'm still really enjoying life here, the loudness of it all, the laughter and shouting and craziness. I spent this past Saturday mooching round the Old City with friends, eating baklava, sitting on a rooftop enjoying the sun and thanking God for bringing me here. In six months time I need to start looking for my next post, which requires thinking about leaving, and I really don't want to start doing that. But you see what I mean about being a grown-up? Imagine if I had a husband, and a mortgage, and children that were actually mine, not just the ones I look after on a daily basis here at school. But I don't. I have a fairly uninspiring bank balance, and a balcony with a really great view.
I have also been pondering more weighty issues of late, namely gender equality. Perhaps the fact that yesterday was International Women's Day has made me think of this issue more; half of the buzzfeed articles in the past 24 hours have been about equality and feminism and latent sexism (like this one: http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/hear-me-roar. Or this one: http://www.buzzfeed.com/elliewoodward/im-not-bossy-im-the-boss#.wldgBWxOz). Perhaps it's my usual perusal of Vagendamagazine.com (this recent article is a favourite: http://vagendamagazine.com/2015/02/on-female-guilt/). Perhaps it's because I've had the blessing this year of teaching the IB Geography class while our regular Geography teacher is on sabbatical, and one of our units has been on disparities in general and gender inequality in particular, so the issue of women's rights has been in my head a lot. Last year I read Half the Sky, by Nick Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, which is about global gender inequality and the grassroots movement by women, on behalf of women, to eradicate it in all its forms - in unequal school enrollment, in the trafficking of women, in FGM, in maternal mortality, in employment. It's an amazing book which you absolutely should read. What struck me most, as I read it, was the incredible fortune I had to be born a white, Western women, with parents who brought me up in such a way that it never even occurred to me that being a woman could or would hold me back from whatever I wanted to do. But even in my privileged, white Western world I keep bumping into glass ceilings, or walls, or doorways - time and time again, instances where women are not treated in a way that seems to be me to be fair or proportional.
Last October I went on training for Headteachers of schools that run the IB Diploma Program. There were 12 of us in the room and only 3 were women. This, in a profession where (in the UK at least) 60% of all secondary school teachers are female, and almost 80% of all primary school teachers (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/182407/DFE-RR151.pdf). I know that UK is not representative of the world as a whole, but it surely is representative of the pattern in Western countries and to my mind that's ridiculous. Firstly, where did all the men go? Thirty years ago that ratio must have been different. And secondly, talk about disproportionate! In a profession where women so clearly outnumber men, why why why are more women not in management? Clearly you shouldn't promote someone purely because of their gender, but in a pool where 75% are women and 25% men, it's massively out of whack for the proportions to be totally reversed in management. Why shouldn't women reach for the highest goal they can find? I like the response of Emma Watson, of Harry Potter fame, to a young girl who tweeted the following:
It's interesting also as a Christian to think about this, because there's a lot of Biblical teaching that has been interpreted to support the notion that women have one sphere and men have another, and never the twain shall meet. I firmly believe that God created men and women to be special in their distinctness. I also believe that God did not intend for men to be given preferential treatment or to abuse their position as the head of a family to maintain dominance over women. I'm not a strident feminist. I like my bra and don't want to burn it. I know that men and women engage with things in different ways on emotional, mental, physical and psychological levels. Yet none of this means at any point that women should held back purely because they are women, or paid less, or for that matter patronised. Ephesians 5: 21 says that we should 'submit to one another out of reverence for Christ' - because that is how to honour God and how to honour those with whom we are in relationship, whatever the gender.
Not much has happened lately, so maybe that has given me the time to think more about gender inequality, and women's rights, and what feminism really is, and what I can do to promote the self-esteem and intellectual development and emotional well-being of the girls at my school in preparation for entering a world that still, still, holds women to be less than men, even in the 'developed' West, and how I can model the way Jesus treated women to all the students at my school - loving, not judging; releasing, not controlling; valuing, not ignoring. And as for tonight, I'm going to go home, enjoy the sunset from my balcony, have a gin & tonic, watch The Hour and feel grateful that whilst there are still barriers for women, they are nowhere near as strong and all-pervasive as they used to be. Blessings, y'all.
Coming soon: another general election! Will Bibi get what he deserves (whatever that may be)?
This seems less of an issue than it did in the first few years here, when either I had more stuff to write about or I had more time. I strongly suspect it's the latter. The honest truth is that my job really takes up such a large proportion of my energy - physical, emotional, mental - that I'm not totally sure what is left over. Every time I bump into people in town and they ask me "What's up? What's new?" I struggle for a genuinely interesting answer. I've been pondering this for a while and wondering what people would consider to be news-worthy. I had lots of long days at work. I lost some weight. Our friend Noa moved to America so we went for cocktails at a speakeasy-style bar in town called Gatsby. I went for hummus several times with different people and I can't decide if I like the hummus better at Ben Sira or Arbas. I hung out with my new friend Emil, the tech-genius whose time-keeping habits are worse than anyone I have yet met in Israel and that's saying something. I hung out with Tamar, and Allie, and Helen, and Carlos, and Alistair, and Sophie, and Amos, and Steve now that he's back in the country (yay Steve!). I finished reading a lot of books (highly recommended: Balkan Ghosts by Robert Kaplan and All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr; not recommended: The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling). I went to the cinema a lot. It snowed on two separate occasions, the whole city once again ground to a halt, and both times I schlepped through the snow at stupid times to meet people in town because there's something Blitz-spirit about being one of the few who actually venture out here when it snows; I even got a round of applause when I walked through the door at the 102 one time.
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| Solo mini-break |
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| Pelicans at Agamon haHula |
Phone crisis aside, it was good to get away for 24 hours, especially to the Hula Valley which I love so much. It's just so beautiful and peaceful - or at least, it was at dusk on that Sunday evening and I had the good luck/timing to arrive just after the entire troop of IDF soldiers had got back from their trip around the lake. I took my bike, enjoyed the last of the day's sun and pottered slowly round the lake, enjoying the quiet. The reserve is a place I can return to again and again and again - even with the whole school, as on last year's Residential trip - and something about being there feels restorative to my soul.
Sometimes, life just keeps ticking along and the days/weeks/months pass without you realising it. I've been pondering, as usual, the meaning of life, the relevance of faith, the actions and counter-actions of being a grown-up. I have moments when I feel like a fake grown-up: who is that person paying their rent, discussing educational psychology and going for drinks like a real adult? I've started asking other people if they have those moments too. I have other moments, especially in my job, where I sit in meetings and say things and wonder if I'm really qualified enough to sound that reliable and/or authoritative, or whether I'm really the person who should make serious decisions about budgets and appraisals and enrollments. I've had several very tricky situations to deal with at school in the past month that have found me on Skype to my parents, asking for wisdom and for reassurance that I am, in fact, qualified to deal with situations like this - or if I'm not, the assurance that this is a learning curve and the only way is up.
 |
| #balconymornings |
I have also been pondering more weighty issues of late, namely gender equality. Perhaps the fact that yesterday was International Women's Day has made me think of this issue more; half of the buzzfeed articles in the past 24 hours have been about equality and feminism and latent sexism (like this one: http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/hear-me-roar. Or this one: http://www.buzzfeed.com/elliewoodward/im-not-bossy-im-the-boss#.wldgBWxOz). Perhaps it's my usual perusal of Vagendamagazine.com (this recent article is a favourite: http://vagendamagazine.com/2015/02/on-female-guilt/). Perhaps it's because I've had the blessing this year of teaching the IB Geography class while our regular Geography teacher is on sabbatical, and one of our units has been on disparities in general and gender inequality in particular, so the issue of women's rights has been in my head a lot. Last year I read Half the Sky, by Nick Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, which is about global gender inequality and the grassroots movement by women, on behalf of women, to eradicate it in all its forms - in unequal school enrollment, in the trafficking of women, in FGM, in maternal mortality, in employment. It's an amazing book which you absolutely should read. What struck me most, as I read it, was the incredible fortune I had to be born a white, Western women, with parents who brought me up in such a way that it never even occurred to me that being a woman could or would hold me back from whatever I wanted to do. But even in my privileged, white Western world I keep bumping into glass ceilings, or walls, or doorways - time and time again, instances where women are not treated in a way that seems to be me to be fair or proportional.
Last October I went on training for Headteachers of schools that run the IB Diploma Program. There were 12 of us in the room and only 3 were women. This, in a profession where (in the UK at least) 60% of all secondary school teachers are female, and almost 80% of all primary school teachers (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/182407/DFE-RR151.pdf). I know that UK is not representative of the world as a whole, but it surely is representative of the pattern in Western countries and to my mind that's ridiculous. Firstly, where did all the men go? Thirty years ago that ratio must have been different. And secondly, talk about disproportionate! In a profession where women so clearly outnumber men, why why why are more women not in management? Clearly you shouldn't promote someone purely because of their gender, but in a pool where 75% are women and 25% men, it's massively out of whack for the proportions to be totally reversed in management. Why shouldn't women reach for the highest goal they can find? I like the response of Emma Watson, of Harry Potter fame, to a young girl who tweeted the following:
It's interesting also as a Christian to think about this, because there's a lot of Biblical teaching that has been interpreted to support the notion that women have one sphere and men have another, and never the twain shall meet. I firmly believe that God created men and women to be special in their distinctness. I also believe that God did not intend for men to be given preferential treatment or to abuse their position as the head of a family to maintain dominance over women. I'm not a strident feminist. I like my bra and don't want to burn it. I know that men and women engage with things in different ways on emotional, mental, physical and psychological levels. Yet none of this means at any point that women should held back purely because they are women, or paid less, or for that matter patronised. Ephesians 5: 21 says that we should 'submit to one another out of reverence for Christ' - because that is how to honour God and how to honour those with whom we are in relationship, whatever the gender.
Not much has happened lately, so maybe that has given me the time to think more about gender inequality, and women's rights, and what feminism really is, and what I can do to promote the self-esteem and intellectual development and emotional well-being of the girls at my school in preparation for entering a world that still, still, holds women to be less than men, even in the 'developed' West, and how I can model the way Jesus treated women to all the students at my school - loving, not judging; releasing, not controlling; valuing, not ignoring. And as for tonight, I'm going to go home, enjoy the sunset from my balcony, have a gin & tonic, watch The Hour and feel grateful that whilst there are still barriers for women, they are nowhere near as strong and all-pervasive as they used to be. Blessings, y'all.
Coming soon: another general election! Will Bibi get what he deserves (whatever that may be)?
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