Brazil and Palestine - making new friends during the pandemic.
Athalo and Instisar’s students have been e-meeting since December 2020, sharing culture, identity, fun and games!
We are all facing a pandemic, each one in our own country. Everybody is at home, it is not possible to travel or visit a new place, and it is pretty hard to make new friends. Is it? Not for us!
Since December last year, some Brazilians and Palestinians have been meeting every week for the Hands Up Project, where we are able to meet new people, their stories and the stories of where they live. Also, we are all English learners, so it has been an excellent opportunity to have fun while practicing the language.
In our first meeting, we played a board game in the main room to ask each other questions and get to know each other. Then, we went to breakout rooms in smaller groups and talked about what we had in common. By the end of the meeting we had several ideas of what we wanted to talk about when we met again, so we decided to have a new topic each week. We also talked to Nick Bilbrough, the founder of Hands Up Project, and learned that one of these Palestinian students wrote a story for “The Toothbrush” collection, Sa’sa and Ma’ma.
Who doesn’t love talking about food?
Brazil and Palestine have different cultures, traditions, flora and fauna, and that is exactly what made our meetings so fascinating. We have talked about things such as typical foods, holidays, family, and wedding traditions, but it often seemed like it was not enough: we were always curious to know more. Both groups were really willing to learn from the other, which I’m sure changed significantly the way we see each country and their respective people. We have even played a Kahoot! quiz about stereotypes of our countries and discussed them!
Students play a Kahoot to talk about national stereotypes.
When it comes to language, it was nice to see how everybody was constantly learning new words in English because of the specific vocabulary each topic demanded for the conversation to flow. Sometimes during the meeting we would take a look at the dictionary to better express ourselves, or share pictures to show the other group something they were not familiar with. It was a language challenge to explain things that are only found in our country, but also incredibly satisfying to understand how our daily life can sound amazing for someone outside our culture, as well as it was awesome for us to see theirs.
Another amazing thing: now we know some words and expressions in Arabic, and they know some in Portuguese. We have noticed that there were similarities between our native languages and as any kind of cultural identification, it provided great debates and lots of laughter.
Our Hands Up meetings express perfectly the beauty of a safe and comfortable learning environment: the exchange is spontaneous. We all felt free to share, ask, and make mistakes, which allowed us to experience personal, cultural and linguistic development. We have made new friends who are now part of our lives and we hope to keep in touch even after the project is over. I’ll absolutely miss our Tuesdays together.
Students share their hobbies and passions.