hopefully this post will be short. i am so tired!!
so i explained a couple days ago i am on the service committee. today that was put into action! myself and 7 other kids (four of them work with me on the committee) went to st vincent's school in ain kerem. ain kerem is a upscale neighborhood on the outskirts of west jerusalem. it is very european/mediterranean. i was a fan! st vincent's is a school for handicapped children. most of them are israeli. they live and attend school at the center and rarely see their parents. it is pretty sad, but the center is surprisingly nice. it had a lot of hospital like elements and i felt kind of at home. it definitely had a strong european influence, as well as lots of winnie the pooh plushes, which also helped.
the reason we go to st vincent is a girl named miriam. if i understand correctly, she is austrian (?).. but she is member of the local branch here and is in charge of the young adults at st vincent. the center pays for a van to take us to and from ain karem. we are dropped off near a place called mary's spring kind of on the main street then walk up a hill to the school. it is in such a beautiful location, they are lucky! it is at the edge of the city so it overlooks the rolling hills that surround jerusalem. wow it is pretty. it is hard to capture in a picture or explain in words. it is super green over there and lots of flowers.
after entering the gate and walking the grounds, we met the kids and were split into two groups. we worked with the young adults who are no longer in school. they are extremely handicapped and pretty vegetative. none of them could speak. one could nod, only one wasn't in a wheelchair. most of them suffered visual impairments and only one didn't eat/drink through a tube. (moral of the story-count your blessings) so like i said we were split into two groups. half of the group made paper maîche in the art room, and my half wheeled our kids out into the garden. there were a couple different 'sections', the sound garden, the smell garden, then the playground. in the sound garden there were cymbals, chimes, and triangles hanging from the trees and we played with that. if the kids could move their arms they would play with the instruments as well. my friends, osher (pronounced 'osha'), was very docile and couldnt really move her arms so she just enjoyed the sounds. after that we went through the smell garden. they have lots of herbs and flowers growing that the kids could smell. we would pick various things and hold it up to their noses. osher really liked the lemon, it made her smile. after that we took them to a playground area that was nice and shady. here we played with bubbles and play-doh. osha can't really move her hands so i would take a ball of play-doh and kind of knead it in her hand for her. for the grand finale we put the kids in a circle and played with a parachute, just like we do in the states as elementary school kids. i think they really liked it. they would get all smiley and look up and watch the colors. it was a cool experience! i was impressed by the facility and their caretakers.
after that we decided to spend some extra time in ain kerem. there are a lot of beautiful christian churches there. before we made it to the school we actually got lost and stumbled upon the church of the visitation completely on accident. i'm glad we did, we went back there and it was beautiful! it is perched up on a hill and had some really pretty chapels and gardens. there were lots of levels to it- it was almost a compound. we got there right as it closed but the monks who were running it were kind enough to let us in. they were sweet.
so i guess this church actually sits on the place where elizabeth, john the baptist's mother, hid john the baptist when the decree was issued to kill all babies under three (this was when they were trying to kill a young christ, remember?) i had never heard this story but i guess she was fleeing jerusalem and couldn't find a place to hide baby john, then she said a prayer and this rock opened up for her and gave them sanctuary. cool story. this mosaic was in one of the chapels.
we headed back down the hill and stopped at one of the european looking cafes. they had a gelato counter and wowwowowowoowowowow. it was so good. i got lemon mint and guava. the lemon mint was AMAZING. it had huge chunks of mint in it and was so refreshing on a hot day. a lot of the shops had english names so you can tell it's more western. it was interesting. we popped in a art gallery while we waited for the van to come get us and the man moderating it (who also happened to be the artist) spoke good english. he had a small cot in the back of the building and it looked like he lived there. we also tried to go to this other famous church called 'our lady of zion' or something, but it was closed because it is sunday. hopefully we will get another chance. the gallery had some really cool oil paintings that i might make an investment in sooo we will see about that too. it really was a super pretty area. i was proud of our little outing by ourselves.
so i had these really good intentions and was gonna get all my homework done/ go do the ramparts walk or something but i actually got kind of sick today so i stayed in and was out like a rock.
tomorrow is our first field trip so that is exciting! it is also my birthday sooo wahooooo! haha i am trying to find something to do in west jerusalem or something. anyways. i hope everyone has a great day! xo
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