D-10 Hebron city centre

Today, after the class, Manar took me to the old city and the city centre of Hebron.

To get to the old city, we had to go through 2 check points, and Manar was not really comfortable with it. The "chance" he has in this complicated situation is his European looking face combined with a perfect English (plus a true European girl by his side!). So he just plays the tourist as they don't ask for the passport...
When getting face to face with setlers, all the palestinians look at their feet though.

The old city is beautiful and full of shops... At every corner, a man was shouting to me "Welcome to Palestine!"

It was really nice to see another part of the city! The city centre is messy and dusty as I like it :)

Another thing is that people are driving like Crazy! There are no red lights, cars are going very very fast and with nobody wearing a belt of course. People are walking in the middle of the streets (Manar was doing the same and I was not feeling really safe!).

On the way back, I bought some vegetables and cooked a french quiche ... Hmm, it was so nice to eat something from back home :) Don't get me wrong, I like a lot the food here, but I am a bit sick of falafel and hommus for breakfast !

D-9 and 10 in Al-Mahawer

On the first day, I did not get the chance to speak too much with the manager of the centre, so he absolutely wanted us to meet and talk yesterday in his office. He expressed a lot his gratitude for my presence in his centre, and repeated many times that I was here at home, and could ask whatever I wanted. Arabic people are always very welcoming.

In this centre, we have some more teenagers; in fact, the class is open to children from 12 to 15 but in Shira, they were all around 12-13. The teenagers are not as easy to teach, but we are doing our best, my translator Manar and I :)

When they play individually, the boys can be quite aggressive between each other, so I try to make some team work as much as possible. As a team, they get along better.

As the level is a bit more advanced, we are doing exercises with check-mates in 2 moves, and learning also how to win some common finals of games: they come to the board and play one move each which forced them to think all together.

There are some talented girls in the team: they understand everything new faster that the others, and have a good global image of the board, whereas the others are mostly stuck looking at only one side.
However, yesterday and today, in the team game, the boys won ! (again and again!).

They got also their project t-shirt. I think it is really important for them to be included in this project and to wear them. In the street, I met two moms with my students, and they were thanking me for coming here and teaching them, as during this time they are not in the streets and they do something constructive.