Note from Ruthie

Hey guys,

We sent this email out last week to all the OTYF donors, but Kathleen said we should share it with you all!  Please donate if you can -- we are using each dollar to get us from class to class and meeting to meeting and get us tuna salad sandwiches.  (rally.org/olivetreeyogafoundation)

Hi Olive Tree Yoga Foundation Supporters!

We have been in the Middle East for a week.  In that time, we have made some amazing connections and met new yogis and activists who have become OTYF supporters as well!

In our work, we have been reminded that the Middle East runs on Middle East time. Nothing happens right away, at least until you have had several cups of tea and some dates, and we have had to remind ourselves that we have to show up, be present, be visible, be persistent, be kind, be patient, and then things start to happen.  And man, oh man, have they happened!  

After a week on the ground, we are now scheduled to teach large groups of children at Wings of Hope in Bethlehem, a non-profit therapy and education center for people affected by trauma.  There are a lot of kids who are affected by trauma, and we get to offer them an oasis of fun and connection.  

We have a big meeting in the Aida refugee camp on Saturday morning to arrange our classes with the children there.  When Kathleen went to Aida this week, she trailed a huge group of children behind her wherever she went, excited to see her and hang out with her!  I can only imagine what is going to happen when we get the whole OTYF crew of Kathleen, Amber, Georgia, Anastasia and Zanna and the children Aida together to do yoga!  

I will be teaching classes with a local teacher, Nahed Bandak, and getting to know the local group of yogis in Bethlehem even better.  Monday morning, I get to co-teach a class that she describes as "Yoga in Skirts" for elderly women.  I can't wait!

We are also taking our OTYF awesomeness back into Israel regularly.  The OTYF teachers teach about 4 classes a week at Jerusalem Flow Power, and to get there, we walk to the Bethlehem checkpoint, (and crossing through that can take forever!), catch a taxi to the studio, teach, taxi back to the checkpoint, walk back through, walk home.  We are dedicated to continuing to connect to amazing people inside of Israel, many of whom are doing peace work.  

We are headed to Even Yehuda to teach a workshop on Monday, which requires us to walk to the checkpoint, take a taxi to a car rental, rent a car, drive up to Even Yehuda, teach until 10 pm, drive back to Jerusalem, drop the car off, taxi to the checkpoint, walk home.  

Next Friday, we not only teach two classes at Jerusalem flow power, but we are leading a workshop on Alignment and Power Flow at Zman Yoga in Jerusalem!  We took a workshop with them, and the owners Merav and Zohar offered to do a fundraiser for us!  We are so lucky.  

We are even leading a workshop at Bala Yoga outside of Tel Aviv!  Our lives are full, rewarding, and full of connections.

I include all the travel details so you can see what our day-to-day lives are like (and maybe get a glimpse of the day to day life of the Palestinians we are living with), and how we spend the money you have so generously donated.  On the road, we eat falafel, we drink coffee. we buy bottled water (see my previous post on Jerusalem Belly), and sometimes we stop and grab a shakshouka (you gotta look this one up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakshouka).  We work hard, sweat constantly, support each other through homesickness, fear, and frustration, we lift each other up, laugh a lot, and are reminded over and over again of the greatness of the human spirit.  

Thank you so much for your previous donations.  Your support has gotten us here.  The support of the Israeli yoga community has been overwhelming.  The support and love from the Palestinian yoga and general community has been totally amazing.  We want to keep offering classes in places where we need to drive, we want to offer classes in Hebron, we want to visit Farashe yoga studio (recently featured in the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alaina-sadick/bringing-the-benefits-of-_b_1634643.html) in Ramallah to learn about their teacher training program, and we want to bring some teachers to Bethlehem from Ramallah and Jerusalem to help us craft the specifics of the OTYF teacher training program.  Just imagine the logistical planning it takes to get a teacher from Ramallah, through several checkpoints, through Jerusalem, and through more checkpoints to get here to Bethlehem.  We have to help them make it as easy as possible, so we can make our trainings and connections as powerful as possible.

Any donation you make is going to these projects.  We want to make this summer as powerful as we can, and anything you can send will bring us that much closer to making this project FLY!

Thank you all so much for loving OTYF.  Thank you so much for supporting us on this powerful journey!

Ruthie