"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time" - Thomas Merton

One of the classes I will be teaching in Palestine is art for 9-12 year old low income and refugee kids. For the last week, I have been brainstorming a pretty good list of ideas that have broader themes or an art therapy, psychosocial component like creating masks or future self portraits. But for those of you artistically inclined or who have experience working with kids in this age group, do you have any suggestions for me? I'm soliciting advice, so please feel free to email me or comment below!

"Before you try and change the world, let the world change you"

I leave for Nablus in just over a week, and I'm still trying to convince myself that I need to pack up and get ready to go. I'm getting a slow trickle of information from the organization I'll be interning with, Tomorrow's Youth Organization, about what I'll be doing and what my work schedule will look like, and I am getting really excited to head out. I can't wait to be headed back to the Middle East, back to improving my Arabic, and taking one of the biggest and most concrete steps toward starting a career as a humanitarian aid worker in the Middle East. Although one day hopefully I'll be able to abandon the moniker of "intern" and actually have enough experience to get a paid position, I'll happily take it if it gives me experiences like this one.

As frustrating as it is to know what I want to do and feel like I'm taking tiny baby steps to get there, I think that I need to just soak up as much knowledge and as much experience as I possibly can while I'm gone. Before I try to change the world, I need to understand as much as I can about it. I need to accept that I don't know nearly enough, get some first hand experience working in the field with youth and women in the Middle East, and come back with a better understanding of what I don't know and what I need to know before I can actually start a job.

Aside from the professional aspects of what I'll be gaining from the internship, I'm also excited to go back to a region so steeped in history and culture. The feeling of standing somewhere that literally dates back to monumental turning points in world history is hard to explain, and one I have only felt a few times in my life. Standing in the ruins of Carthage and Dougga, sitting in the oldest synagogue in North Africa and seeing the sand shift through the Sahara Desert all gave me that sense of history when I was in Tunisia, and Israel and Palestine are even more deeply rooted in things that impact us today.