Ok so this is nothing like a haiku, except that it is (sort of) short and (sort of) poetic.
I just wanted to share with you something my roommate wrote, with a bit of additions from me/others, trying to explain what it's like to live in Israel.
Longer blog coming soon, but with my FAVORITEHOLIDAYHALLOWEENOMFG coming up, I gotsta get preparin. LOVE!
everything that doesn't really matter is totally relaxed. no one dresses up for any occasion. people wear jeans to weddings. no one's ever on time. plans are never ever concrete. everyone wants to help you all the time (read: nosiness). food-borne diseases aren't a concern. pushing is a way of life. getting from A --> B is never how you get from B --> A. traffic laws and safety regulations are universally ignored. but all of this is what makes it special.
Wow, I can't even begin to recount how nuts and exciting and adventure-packed the past 48 hours have been. But I will try.
Thursday Eve: Where our tale begins. Becky decided to let us come along to an arts performance, for 29 shekels (woop! the equivalent of around 7-8 dollars). From what we had seen online, it was a dance-ish group. Weeelll, I think that title may have been a bit misleading. This was one of the more out-there arts performances that I have seen in a looooong time, well, maybe ever. The opening scene was stark sexual imagery, glitter included, one of the middle scenes included a man and a woman across the table from each other slapping each other in the face, HARD, and then hugging and old man in a teddy bear costume, and another scene included nose-flute playing and a fabulous 'single ladies' dance, which I'll attach the link to. It was an overall interesting experience to say the least--one of those things that I'm glad I went to but nevertheless was like uhhhh, what just happened??
After the show, we cabbed it over to Alice, a new club where WUJS was throwing us a party. It was quite fun, and the bar was on the 16th floor, so it had great views ofthe city. Becky and I planned on going to Jerusalem that night on the free bus back with all the WUJSers from jerusalem, however, this is the ONE TIME that something in Israel actually happened on time and we had a "walk out the door at 1am and see the bus pulling away from the curb and shout NOOOOOOOOOOO" moment. But really, what actually leaves on time??? Oy. So that was frustrating, but we decided we werent going to be thwarted in our plans for Jerusalem, so we did a J-ru take 2 plan, which involved waking up at 8 am and getting our butts in gear. So we did: 8am, rise and shine, and trekked it over to the central bus station and hopped a bus for J-town. We were armed with water, a compass, and a rather dinky map of jerusalem: these were our only luxuries. We both had already done all the touristy-stuff with Birthright, so we wanted to do a more "lets point our finger on the map and explore". The first place we decided to explore was the "big green patch to the left of the old city--OOH LETS GO THERE!!"...which, incidentally, just happened to be the Supreme court and Knesset area. Shweeeeet. After being sort of lostfor 4.5 seconds becuase there are like 4 central bus stations on that darned map (prompting becky and I to ask "eyfo the F anachnu" (translated: where the F are we??), we headed out for the grassy knole. Slash official government buildings. You know, whatevs. It was fun to wander: we got judicious pictures in front of the courthouse, helicopter pictures on the helopad (becky being the helicopter, of course) and menorah pictures in front of the Knesset. It was a fun explorey day so far, and then we decided to begin our epic spiritual journey.
let me explain: this spiritual journey was going to be all over the place. It was going to start with an orphanage, one that Becky's family donates money to and to which she got a mandate to visit. Using our deductive skills, the "greater Diskin Orphanage" would probably be on diskin street, right? After playing where's waldo with street names on a map, we finally found diskin and practically climbed a mountain to get there (sigh I'm such a flatlander). Diskin=an old person home street. No orphanage. Never fail, we hopped in a cab, and he knew the address. Taking one look at us (me with my elbows showing and becky in shorts), he was like "uhhhh, i think this is a really religious neighborhood. We'll see. If it is, you cant go in like that". We knew this, but didnt expect our beloved spiritual quest-ness to end or to be somewhere like that, so we trudged (cabbed) forward. Um, OY. Probablythe worst idea we've ever had. Thanks, Becky's grandpa. Haha, just kidding. Sort of. So, the gist of the story is we show up and its a beautiful building and we go through the gate and start taking pictures and then hear ANGRYYELLING in hebrew which I got the gist of: no orphanage was to be found here. This was an ultraorthodox yeshiva. oops. like, BIG OOPS. We attempted to hi-tail it out of there, but had to make our way back through the neighborhood first--Becky was like 'I feel like everyone is staring at my knees' and I said "ITS CUZ THEY ARE". It was a pretty scary experience, after hearing stories of people getting stoned in neighborhoods like that, we were practically running out. WHoof.
After that not-so-fun spiritualquestpart1, we decided to head to the old city, which had plenty of spirit. WOOOP. haha, anyways....we decided to give in and buy pashminas to cover up with--becky saronged hers, and I draped mine over my elbows-ish-area. Sigh, it sucked becuase it was HOT out too. Darned elbows. At least I got the man down down down on the scarves, paying about 25 shekels for them (about 6-7 dollars). I win.
Fresh off my monetary savvy, we stopped for lunch. Woah, did we get shammed. At that point, there was nothing we could do, but goshdarnpeople--I AM NOT AN AMERICAN TOURIST. I AM NOT ON BIRTHRIGHT. DO NOT THINK YOU CAN SCAM ME BECUASE I KNOW WHATS GOING ON. now, at least. It wasnt too bad but we got scamalamed, SIGH. We put up a fight and ended up getting money back, but that makes me SO ANGRY GRRRR. Oh well, live and learn. At least it was a good lunch.
After lunch, we had read about a special event on Fridays at 3, so to continue our spiritualquestpart2 (which may just have been a spirit other than ours: its still cool), we decided to walk the Via Dolorosa with Franciscan Monks and 8 bajillion people that come from around the world to walk it with them. Apparently the Via Dolorosa is the path of jesus's last walk, and they have about 14 stations along the way with various significance. Its also really interesting becuase the path starts in the middle of the Muslim quarter, which becky and I were instructed on birthright NEVER TOENTER BECUASE WE WERE AMERICAN JEWISH WOMEN TOURISTS. So, we chatted up a few policemen in the old city, told them what we wanted to do, and asked if it was safe today to go in. They assured us that it was, so complete with pashmina accoutrements, we trekked it into the muslim quarter. Gulp. Not so scary, but we got a bit lost along the path and saw a monk running and declared a national "FOLLOW THAT MONK!" movement, and ran after him. And then we met a nice australian man lookingfor the start of the tour too, so we found it together. Shwang. He was doing something really cool--reading through the bible and going like everywhere it went--he had already spent 2 months in Syria and 2 in Jordan I think--darned cool! So we followed the monks for a bit, listening to the stations in like 7 different languages and generally processing with a giant crowd through the old city. After the fourth stop, we decided to branch off, and 3 minutes later we were at the Kotel (western wall). I have some slight fundamental issues with that place, especially the layout and the seperation and how it is a blatant show of how women are second-class citizens there, but we went anyways. I'm telling you--what a fabulous place to people watch. After the Kotel we decided to wander the Jewish quarter for awhile, and found our way back to the Jaffa gate to head home. Whoof what a day!! I had read (smartly) beforehand that you can take a sheirut (shared taxi) back to tel aviv from Jerusalem at a place called Zion square, so we found it on a map and walked there (we were dead tired at this point because we had been walking for like 8 straight hours and it seemed entirely uphill and woosh.) I think the square was under construction, becuase it was all funky and there were NO sheiruts to be found, only a cab. Knowing that the sheirut was 30 shekels, we asked the first person we saw (just happened to be a cabbie) if he knew where the sheiruts were. A heated discussion ensued, as the cabbie tried to persuade us to get in his cab for 250 shekels ("um, the sheirut is 30 shekels. there is no way im paying 250 shekels for a 30 shekel ride." him:"but I have small car! 230 shekels for you!" me: (after already being scammed once today) "um, that still isnt 30 shekels.") For some reason his mathematical logic was not so hot that day, but fortunately a nice man stepped in and told us that becuase of the construction the sheiruts were around the corner. We couldnt take the bus back, I forgot to mention, becuase they stop running 1 hour before shabbat. All over the country. Talk about inconvenient!!!
So we found a sheirut and hopped it back home, just in time to make Shabbat dinner with everyone and enjoy it on our roof. Shabbat was spent lounging around and cooking, and then we decided to be super awesome and go to a Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer game!! it was apparently a big rivalry with Hapoel Ramat Gan, a neighboring town, and they won 3-1!! Im gonna have to post some video/pictures on here becuase it was NUTS. And, we also got slightly scammed becuase we learned afterwards that women can buy kids tickets (becuase so little women go). The game was AWESOME, and was just what I needed to pump me up (can you IMAGINE israelis watching soccer?? It was HILARIOUS!). That night was also the Nike 10K Night Run Tel Aviv, so we decided to go cheer on our 4 friends that were in the race. Not really knowing where the race ended, we went to the start and followed our noses (slash helpful local advice) to the end, basically walking a 6k while we were at it, lol. The way there was hilarous--we were still wearing our maccabi tel aviv garb, and got stopped on the street probably 44 times with people wanting to know what the outcome of the game was and what the score was. It was awesome! We also accidentally found our runners in a sea of Red Shirts--we were so convinced we werent going to find them after the finish line, but we did!!! it was so cool to see them and all of the runners, and was a great ending to a great night. And a jam-packed 48 hours.
The fun doesnt stop there though: Tonight we have a concert in Jerusalem (Idan Reichel--hes a very popular singer both here and in the states), tuesday is a field trip to a buncha embassies, and OH YEAH ITS MY BIRTHDAY ON TUESDAY WOOOOOOP! Im stoked. And, we are having a halloween party. We are gnna have to get pretty crafty since people here dont do halloween, but I think we can make it work. Wowww.
Ok ya'll, I'm out! Best wishes from the motherland!!!
HWOTD: lenamnem. To nap. A favorite activity of mine, but also we call it the 'cookie monster' word becuase if you say it fast it sounds like nom nom nom nom nom. hahahahah.
Hiking hiking hiking! And, being good girs and drinking Loooots of water! (it was HOT)
Happy 100 years tel aviv!!! Giant concert with everyone!!Graffitti. Love you mom.
Shaloooooooooooooom.
Its late, and im doing a quick little update on my life here, and what I've done the past week. Again. Aren't yall tired of me yet?? Like, really? Still reading?? sigh, ok fine. Here goes.
1: the move. Oh, the move. It was really hell. I mean, that ish SUCKED. But, we got through it (of course with nothing going the way we had planned and with lots of hurdles to jump over: welcome to israel) and now we are all very happy and settled. Honestly, its great being here becuase its newer, cleaner, closer to everyone and everything, and nice. The downsides are not living in our old neighborhood which was the bomb-dot-com (ohhh yes), having a MUCH smaller room (hello 2 ft of personal space), and living above a music college. Which likes to play rock music. Until 12:30 at night. hahah of course!!! No, but its really wonderful and open and i like the floorplan SO MUCH BETTER and IM GETTING AN OVEN OMFG!(*#@!YR%*!(@@. Yeah, a bit excited.
2: Work. Work is going pretty well: yesterday was a bit boring but I get to see really cool things like ICSI and IVF done all the time, and its just SO FREAKIN COOL TO SEE THAT, like really. And make babies. Ow owww, haha. And, we cant forget my bomb diggity scrubs vending machine, now can we???? SCRUBS OUT OF A VENDING MACHINE PEOPLE. WHY IS THIS NOT MANDATORY IN THE US!?!??! Lots of caps today--guess I'm excited. Work can get boring, and its SOo freaking early (I have to wake up at 6 am. you have no idea how much i must love seeing reproduction to drag myself out of bed at 6am. wtf.)
3: Last shabbat was our first shabbat in the apartment and was really nice. We had a wonderful roommate dinner all together and a nice little bubbly to celebrate our arrival/homewarming to our selves, and it was very nice. And my roommates made a trifle for dessert, which they were totally stoked about but I dont like pudding. I know, I'm the weird kid. After dinner we had a rooftop party on our sick rooftop and just hung out and played board/card games (come on people, we dont have tv. this is what happens. This and puzzles--ohhh puzzles). Does anyone remember playing Set, or has every played it? Its the best game ever, and me playing that as a 10 year old is probably what positioned me to my love for logic and figuring out answers and patterns. I havent played it in about 11 years, but I rocked at life. WOOOHOO MY BRAIN ISNT TOTALLY SHOT FROM UNDERGRAD WOOHOOO!! We also played shesh-besh, better known as backgammon in the states (still getting that one back) and I won BOTH games of RummiQ, thankyouverymuch (even though I had never played before). Woooooop. The other funny story from that night is that Jacks and Becky, both my roommates, decided to invite their Israeli guy friends to join us on our roof. Ok, so this can get kind of confusing, but Yoni is Jacks' cousins' neighbor, in some random neighboring city, who she met (and got fake married to by a 10 year old, ahem) over the high holy days, and Amit was Becky's armed guard on her birthright trip, and they stayed in touch. So yoni walks in, says hi, sits down, and starts playing, and then Amit walks in a few minutes later. They look at each other, and Yoni says, "huh. That's my cousin."
.............UM, WHAT???!?!?!?
This revelation continued to shock us all night, although both boys seemed really unfazed by it. Apparently this happens all the time in Israel, but for the amount of random things to happen to bring those two together, it was just freaking us all out. And, totally hilarious to boot.
4: hike-a-thon. So, we were sick of lounging around on Shabbat doing nothing (OMG i know, me, right? who would have thought me=hate lounging), so we decided to plan a hike for Saturday afternoon! After Becky had talked to her cousin/uncle who knew some trails, we decided to hike along the Yarkon river north of tel aviv. We were under the impression that this hike was like a MAYBE 2 hr hike, back into tel aviv to the port: so we hop in a cab and go along. After about 3-ish minutes of talking, our taxi driver starts talking to us and somehow he starts telling us a joke about 3 junkies and a crocodile...hahaha. It was the best joke i've ever heard, but made so much better by the broken english drug-usage vocabulary ("so the first guy, the first was very much liking up. the cocaina, you know, the up!" us: "uppers?" him: yes yes, uppers!!") It was pretty much awesome. Anyway, we got a taxi to take us to like the mid-north of tel aviv and drop us off, and the plan was to hike back into tel aviv. Simple enough. However, as we started on the trail, and HIKED (and almost got run over by ATVs, which answered my question 'are there ATVs in Israel becuase this looks like an ATV trail') for about 3.5 hours (through orchards, along highways, on ATV trails, you know, the usual) I started being like uhhhh, hmm. We're hiking east. Im so glad i brought a flashlight. And, randomly, Becky's cousin came and found us on his mountain bike on the trail and led us to a garbage dump (um, hello Mt. Trashmore), and we hiked it at sundown to see a great view of all over. It was fabulous. And, then we figured out that we had hiked all the way to Hod Hasharon. Um, what???? That's two towns over. And i needed my flashlight. SHawang!!
After the hike, we bussed it back to tel aviv and made our way straight to the port (damn im a trooper) to do dinner and go to the concert/final celebration for the 100year anniversary of Tel Aviv. It turned into a mega-outside party concert-water-show and was awesome. We met up with some other program people there and had a real blast--the concert turned into an impromptu israeli parkinglot rave to random israeli techno and was just so much fun--i havent danced like that probably ever and it was just silly and ridiculous and wonderful. AND, i had real soft serve ice cream for the first time (they only have like frozen YOGURT here, or ice cream. blech.) which made my night complete. We were bushed, so we headed home and cinderella'd it.
Today, we had our siyur "field trip" and visited a kibbutz on the green line that has lived in coexistence with a palestinian village for many years. It became quite famous in 2000 when it fought for the rights and land of the Palestinian people, and unfortunately this made them the target of a terrorist attack. A gunman came into their kibbutz and picked a random house and shot a mother and her two young kids. Really horrible stuff, even more so followed by the message "there are no good jews or bad jews, only jews that have stolen our land." It was a 'message' to the cooperating parties, which is just awful. They have a hard time putting what happened alongside their ideology of equality, and it was hard to hear him talk about that. We also talked with an Arab Moslim Palestinian Israeli, who shared his side of the story and it was really really interesting to hear a perspective from the other side, even if it is hard to hear someone say to your face 'you shouldnt be here and israel shouldnt have been created'. It was also REALLY good for me to figure out all these buzzwords that everyone keeps throwing out here, mainly the identification as Arab-Moslim-Palestinian Israeli. We figured it out like this: it breaks down to race-religion-regional identification-country. Its the equivalent of a Filipino-Christian-Virginian-American. Whoof, much better. Here its just that religion and racial breakdown mean so much more, so people identify themselves as that, and also since everyone asks. The kibbutz is also on the green line, so it was interesting to see how the war has directly affected them (they talked a lot about how the social sense of Israel has really been put on hold for like the last 40 years, and all of the social developments like equality and figuring their own internal problems out have been put on hold---really interesting stuff). It was also really interesting to learn about the word Palestinian, and what it means, and how it was used (ask me if you really want to know) before 1948 vs after. We also went to the refugee camp for jewish immigrants to the British Mandate Palestine after WWII who tried to enter the area illegally--woah, never knew about that before, and its really scary to see how much like a concentration camp it looked. And to imagine the Holocaust survivors being sent there after living through Auschwitz or somewhere comprable. Wow, really eye-opening to see that in Eretz Yisrael. Learned a lot today, and definently mulling over a lot. I like our field trips.
In other news, ulpan is going really well. I finally dont feel totally lost in class, and though I still have problems forming sentences, I feel much more confident, so YAY!!! Also, shout out to the Russell-Zobels for my birthday card--it got here in record time and made me smile!! Especially the testosterone nation part--thanks for the well wishes!!! Miss you!!
Finally, I would like to tell you all: I got my first joke on a t-shirt today. In hebrew. I know, you should be SO PROUD. The t-shirt was a big duck and a little bear, with a voice bubble from the little bear saying "Ken. Ata Meumetz." Which means "yes, you are adopted". SO FUNNY AND I GOT IT!!!! hahahhaha
Love yall!!!
HWOTD: meumetz. obviously. it means adopted. Like my mom (snicker).
Now, let me explain. No, I am not some creepy dude trying to get you alone. Merely trying to explain that since my apartment has discovered surfthechannel/megavideo, we can now watch tv shows. 72 minute limit per day, but still. Aaand, last episode of glee (DUH, we're all addicted to glee), they sang "alone" by Heart. And since, it has become our theme song for the apartment and we have generally been rocking out to 80's horrendousness/beststuffever.
"We built this city....we built-" I digress.
This past week has been long, and is still continuing on that trajectory. Today everyone in the Hertzl apartments took off of work and stayed home to pack up all of our stuff. MY MOM should be proud becuase it really didnt take me very long--everything was already organized into its respective places so i just shoved it back in my suitcases and was good. I was also proud becuase I only needed 1 more backpack to put stuff in than I came with, a good sign for when I actually have to leave this place (can you believe I'm 1/4 of the way done? and its almost my birthday???). We also have to pack up all the food and everything too, so schlepping tonight/tomorrow is going to be fun. Slash they hired a moving team and I am going back to work tomorrow, but still.
Speaking of work... I had my first day on Monday. And may I just say, IT FREAKING ROCKED. I didn't really get to do anything hands on, but I really enjoyed watching all of the procedures and seeing stuff happen. After studying this area for so long, to see it going on right in front of me was AMAZING. There were some iffy moments, since I just came from a really sterile lab environment (ahem, using a long rubber tube and their own mouths for suction, ahem), but overall it was a wonderful experience and I cant wait to go back tomorrow. I will be in the IVF lab for the next 2 weeks, then in the Prenatal Genetic diagnosis lab for 1 week, and then the stem cell lab (you know, they just have their own stem cell lab, !!!) for 1 week as well. YAY!
And, can I just dork out for a moment and explain HOWFREAKINGCOOL the scrubs vending machine is F!@$&@(!@(#&!!!! I will say it again. SCrubs. vending. machine. As in, i get my uniform from a machine, that is automated. With a swipey card. SO COOL!
Other things that I've done in the past week:
*The Matisyahu Concert in Jerusalem: Unreal. It was the first time back in jerusalem for me this trip, and we were only there for a few hours, but it was still amazeballs. Matisyahu was a very dynamic performer, and the best encore that I have ever seen of any show in my whole life. Crowdsurfing, lulav-shaking...it was a blast. And all outdoors, right in the shadow of the old wall of the old city. In Jerusalem. Im such a lucky ducky.
*Hike to Mt. Meron and Rosh HaNikra: This was yesterday, and I think I'm going to ask Ricky, our leader, to start giving me a better idea of what to expect for our hikes. After the last sweaty, sticky, hot, desperate-climbing-oh-my-gosh-im-gonna-pass-out hike, all of us were expecting something along the same vein for this one (only some people came this time). No, totally wrong. We approached this GIANT mountain all sort of groaning, but were told 'oh, we're driving up and you're just walking down.' Um, what? So, we sort-of-kind-of walked downhill in the shade of big trees for less than 2 hours and we were done. Barely broke a sweat. Huh??? This was at the complete other end of the spectrum from our first hike, but we still had fun beucase of the view (right across from Sfat and, well, Lebanon) and becuase we played fun mind games on the way down. The first of these, thanks to Becky, was: If I'm holding a bee, whats in my eye? Let me know if you get it.... (hint: what are you if you're holding a bee?) And then was a crazy one about "If he had seen the sawdust, he wouldn't have died." And we had to ask yes/no questions to get to the scenario. Took us awhile, but we got it! Really fun, lol. Slash im a huge nerd (shocker).
*Watched 1/2 of a bootlegged version of Inglorious Bastards: Woah, Quentin Tarantino is a madman/genious/freak. Like, what a whacked-out movie?? We only got through 1/2 and it was a baaad bootleg, but whoof. Yep. Thats about all I got to say about that (you know how I feel about blood peoples....oy!)
The only other things that are going on state-wise here are that the crazy mopedists/motorcyclists are staging protests becuase they are increasing their insurance rates. Becuase they are maniacs. Who try to kill me everytime I step outside my apartment. Becuase they drive on sidewalks when they feel like it. I digress... The riot was pretty cool: A sea of riders coming down Hertzl street, honking and making a ruckus and waving flags and signs and wearing underwear and being generally rowdy. But people on the street were cheering them and it was really cute. It was like a 15-minute long constant stream, but pretty cool. The other thing going down here, which I have been chatting with Michal about, (and I am not sure if this is a local Tel Aviv thing or an all-of-Israel thing) is that they are talking about what to do with all of the illegal refugees who are here from all over: Ethiopia, Darfur, Sudan, etc. This directly affects Michal becuase these kids are in her schools, and the general talk right now is to send them back to where they came from (=not good). Its shocking that they have come to a decision like this given the history of the country with the law of return AND the fact that its a jewish state, Holocust, refugees...HELLO??? It's very tough to see this go down right now, but they are working through it.
That's all for now, I hope you all are safe and sound and staying warm (haha, suckers) while I watch my roommate pack and procrastinate doing my ulpan homework. Sigh. Maybe I'll begin planning birthday/Halloween shennigans for myself. Hmm, what am I going to get me for my birthday?? :)
LOVE FROM THE MOTHERLAND!!
HWOTD: balagan. It means crazy/hotmess/nuts. like, everythings balagan here. like WOAH.
My scrabble board, where I finally beat Michal (SORRY she hates it haha). This gets filed under the "things we do when we don't have TV".
We had no fruit, nor a real sukkah, but what do we have? A porch and Jewelry!!! Plenty decorative for us!
Checkin out the streaming elections for the Olympics! We were out :(
Well hey ya'll! Howzit?? boy do I got a lot to update you on. I am going to attempt to do this chronologically, but I may fail. I'm just warning you--I've been battling some insomnia this week and I'm just.not.all.there.yet. To the batcave!
I guess first things first, I made the agonizing decision to cancel my LSAT. sigh. I did it in the last hour, after much deliberation, and while I dont regret it I don't think I am going to easily get over not knowing what score I would have had. Its one of my problems in life--I hate not knowing things like this. I also feel slightly failure-tastic and all-for-nothingish, but I think that will pass. I came to the conclusion after this whole mess that I am happy with my score, and am confident (enough) that it can get me into the school of my choice.
Sukkot started on Friday, and since most people were out of town,my roommate Becky and I decided to have a fruit-themed dinner, which turned into a mango themed dinner, and we cooked and had a ball and decorated our fake sukkah (ahem, balcony, ahem) with decorations (ahem, jewelry, ahem) in honor of the holiday. and had guests over, yeah us for being good jews! We made the most awesome mango-cilantro quinoa salad, and had lime-cilantro chicken and mango juice as well. What a wonderful night. And in "we have to live without TV part 2", we played texas hold em with whatever 'poker chips' we could find. These consisted of: agurot (israeli cents), an assortment of credit and starbucks cards, and unopened various razor blade cartriges. Us jews obviously came prepared in that area, hahaha. It was a really fun night, and fun knowing that I dont totally suck at poker (Becky, who had to help me buy back in, would not like to concede that point. haha I so hope you are reading this.)
In other "we have to live without tv" news, there have been some EPIC travel scrabble tourneys going down in this area. I mean, epic. See above picture--my fam should be SO PROUD. Michal and I are both fierce competitors, and neither of us like to lose. That makes for some funnn games, haha. When we're not tearing each other apart on the scrabble board, we got the opportunity to hang out this weekend and ventured into Yafo for some famous hummus ful. Now, americans, there's hummus, and there's hummus ful. Hummus ful has either beans or chickpeas like, in it, and its homemade hummus, and simply to die for. We went to yafo for arguably the best hummus around, at a place called Abulafia, which is also a famous bakery. It was a very fun adventure, especially since Yafo is a pretty Arab-centric place.
This weekend we also ventured out to the movies! I was so excited because we decided we were going to see Geshem Shel Felafel, or cloudy with a chance of meatballs (or, in Israel, Falafel), in 3D. we were STOKED, and so ready to go have a movie-and then-celebratory-falafel night. I got us to the movie theater without a hitch (yay my photographic placement-memory) and we bought our tickets (REALLY pricey here--45 shekels for a movie which is like over 11 dollars...whoof!) and waited for our other friend Jacob to join us. As we were waiting, Becky was just wanting to make sure that the assumption about movies in Israel that we had was correct, that they are English movies with hebrew subtitles. After Michal assured us that "Of course its in English!", we sent her to go check, and turns out, its the ONE MOVIE in the whole theater that is actually dubbed in Hebrew. Of Course (welcome to my life). So, we switched our tickets for Up, another Pixar movie, and it was good as well. There are assigned seats here in the movie theaters which was interesting to get used to, and the theater was VERY small, but other than that it was a good movie experience. Really wish we could have seen shelFalafel though. Sigh.
Yesterday my gym partner/friend Amy and I decided to be brave and try a class that our gym offers--we settled on vinyasa yoga. We somehow also talked our guy friend Matt into joining us for the fun. Let me tell you, not only was this class all in hebrew (both a fun way to learn how to say down dog in hebrew (chattarunga is the same!!) but also really funny interjections just for us of "PUSH FORWARD YOUR TUSHIE!") but it was also NOT a beginner class. I was sweating up a storm!! There were some really buff guys in the class too-intimidating! At least I havent totally lost all of my flexibility, lol. It was a really good experience but MAN have I been getting more progressively sore as the day goes on! Great class though--next we shall try pilates, and perhaps bellydancing after that?
Today we went on another field trip, this time to a childrens museum in Holon (south of Tel aviv). Our purpose there was not for the childrens part but to take part in an exhibit called...well, I dont remember what it was called, something about Silence. In the exhibit, you have a deaf tour guide/instructor, and they take you through the experience of being deaf/vocally and hearing deprived (because you can't ever really know what it's like to be deaf unless you are deaf). So, we weren't allowed to speak, and we were wearing heavy duty rifle-range-grade earmuff things, so we really couldnt hear. To tell you the truth, I was a bit apprehensive about this (in a totally closed-minded, I-am-going-to-embarrass-the-hell-out-of-myself-using-nonverbal-communication way) but I have to say it was the most eye-opening and wonderful experience. You moved through a series of rooms, where you had to communicate first with your hands, then with your facial expressions, then with your body, and then we learned a bit of Israeli sign language (different from ASL) and ordered coffee/water at a "silent bar" from another deaf waiter. It was such an eye-opening experience and really made you so aware of how sound and your voice affect communication and perception of life. It also, for me, was not the total embarrassment factor I expected, but was really nice to open myself up to this new way of thinking and problem-solve ways to communicate without a voice. It was also not as hard as I thought it would be--when everyone is communicating like that, and with SUCH an amazing deaf leader, it was much easier for me to pick up on what people were trying to get across than I expected. Really, really wonderful. They have another exhibit there called Dialogue in the Dark about blindness, and I would really love to go back to experience that as well.
I guess the only other big piece of news from this week is that we are definitely, 100% moving apartments, probably sometime next week. While I am excited for being able to have a closeness with the rest of the girls on the trip, and a REALFREAKINGOVEN, I am sad to leave our Hertzl apartments. My beloved City Cafe three doors down will now be a 10 minute walk, and our downstairs AM:PM (convience store) with the SUPER nice cashier ladies who give me hebrew and arabic lessons will no longer be. And our 10 shekel falafel stand on the corner. Oh, how Iwill miss this area. And our balconies--no balcony at the new place. But, I think we are all bucking up and saying it will be for the best, we just are DREADING PACKING EVERYTHING AGAIN OH NO. At least they are hiring a moving company, so all we have to do is pack up and they will move it, thank goodness. I was having nighmarish visions of schlepping 87 lb bags on top of taxi cabs. OY.
Tomorrow our group banded together and got tickets for MATISYAHU IN JERUSALEM--its going to be epic. This will be my first time back in Jerusalem since I came on birthright, and I am SO looking forward to this concert!!! I think it will be insanely fun.
Miss you all, and wishing you a happy sukkot and SORRY its getting cold there but I am just dandy in my shorts and tank top. and Mediterranean. hehe. Jealous yet?? COME VISIT!!
Chelsea is a spunky 22! year old Jew leaving her cozy life on the coast of Virginia for a six-month adventure in Israel. Feel free to encourage the dream and help her explore--just no more warnings about coming back either married or in a wooden box.
Follow that MONK!!!
