Tonight we had our first real individual interviews with families -at a Jerusalem book fair. When we arrived at the book fair, the scene was incredibly lively. Next to the stand of books there were couples dancing to different kinds of music from an American slow song to a Spanish tango. It looked like they were having so much fun, and we couldn’t resist joining in. Once we were done dancing, we started looking for a family to interview. We were told to find a family that we could interview that was a decent size and ask them about their “unofficial roles” in their families whether it be the funny one, the smart one, etc. More than interview them, we wanted to just talk with them to really experience the discussion.
We found a family with four younger children enjoying Rebar smoothies and asked if we could interview them. The parents looked a little cautious but the children were eager to talk to us. When they kindly agreed to to the interview, we asked about the children’s names and ages. Ayala and Yair are twins and 11 year old. Ariyen was 9 and Avishai was 2. They live in Jerusalem and the parents attended Shwa Hafefer for school. Although they did not verbalize it, the children’s roles seemed pretty clear to me. The two boys, Yair and Ariyen were the goofy kids who liked to talk and play. I could tell by the way Ayala was checking on her baby sister, Avishai, and stroking her hair that she was the responsible, caring older sister. The parents were very kind to us, and seemed enthusiastic about our conversation. We took their picture, thanked them, and left.
We recorded the interview instead of writing down everything they said. I found this strategy was much better for getting the details. We were able to look at them and have a real conversation without worrying if we had written everything down. Engaging with them was fun and gave us our first chance to glimpse into modern Israeli life.