A Year in Letters

And now, to make up for lost time…

The following is a collection of excerpts from e-mails I have written to my former suitemates throughout the year. Basically, I went through the stack, edited out the personal comments, responses to other e-mails, and information inappropriate for blogging, and posted the rest. What’s left is a more-or-less comprehensive narrative of my experience in Israel, infused with plenty of emotional commentary and an occasional writing prompt. (The four of us issued prompts every so often to encourage more e-mails and to discern less obvious details of each other’s lives.) I hesitated to post these, both because their casual tone often translates to amateur writing quality, and because they reveal a bit more than I’d normally post in a blog. However, I resolved to display them anyway, as I’m indebted to those of you who continue to check back here. And besides, these letters are the most fitting chronicle I possess of my year abroad. It is my hope that you, if you’ve the patience and will to read them, will use these letters as inspiration to write me some of your own. Yalla!

5/8/08

As for ignoring people on a sidewalk, I did something comparable just
yesterday. In the hotel where I'm living now, I walked into the lobby
and saw John, the counselor from my Birthright Israel trip three years
ago. Coincidentally, that's the second time I've seen him since I
came this year. He and I were buddies on the trip, but my automatic
instinct was to avert my eyes and pretend I didn't see him. He
probably would have appreciated it if I said hi. Oh well.

The most recent additions to my daily vocabulary are: "B'teavon"
("Enjoy your meal." It's not something I
just learned, but recently we've been starting to use it as a reply to
most everything, like "go right ahead.") Also, "Tov yalla bye"
(Literally, "Good, lets go, bye." Tactfully put, it can be an ending
to a phone conversation, but we just smush 'em all together and use it
any time we say bye.)
Today I wore: a bathing suit, a white skirt, and a blue shirt
because: it's Israel's Independence Day, we spent the day at the
beach, and you're supposed to dress up like the flag!
Next year, I want to be: all-around happier. Or at least striving for something concrete.
Kale: sounds like Kaylee, which is a cute name.

Independence Day activities were fun this morning. Went to an air and
water show on the beach in Tel Aviv. Ginormous crowd. For the
finale, the army helecopters dispensed about 20 paratroopers that flew
through the sky and landed right in the crowd. Unfortunately, landing
with a parachute is not the most graceful of activities, and one guy
mauled about 10 people on his way down and they all went to the
emergency room. I love Israel.

5/4/08

My work at my internship was at a lull, but it's getting better
now. I've moved on to a new project, and am working on designing a
conceptual agenda for the new public committee on coexistence
education in the Knesset. I enjoy the words "conceptual agenda."
They're liberating.

Shabbat just ended a few minutes ago, and there is currently a big
group of kids outside my window dancing and singing Havdalah.
Nationally mandated raucous public singing is a wonderful social
construct.

4/28/08

The trip to Istanbul was nice. I feel bad about using such a bland
adjective, but I think it hits the spot. My mother and I saw all of
the heavily-touristed sites together, and my dad alternated between
joining us and sleeping. The history of that city is unparalleled in
grandiosity, and I delightedly gobbled up fact upon fact about the
Ottoman dynasty. Jointly, we were heckled to buy a carpet 4,681
times. While I have the tendency to become perpetually grumpy in my
parents' company, it was a relief to have them there while my stomach
issues were at their worst. It is strange to acknowledge the aging
process of your parents. After eight months of not seeing them, they
looked significantly older and feebler than I remember.

After my parents left, I spent my last three days in Istanbul with
Salim Saglam (a friend from Midd). As soon as I met up with him, I
felt my Middlebury personality pop back into gear, and it startled me
that I had changed so much since that was the norm. He took me to an
island with his friends, where I realized that every existing
stereotype about Turks is absolutely true. My roommate was a large,
boisterous, hairy, smoking Turk with an unpronounceable name, and
there was enough raki consumed at dinner to effectively poison a small
village.

The moment of greatest contentment accompanied my lone visit to the
archaeological museum. Seeing a span of works from the Anatolian side
of things added a satisfying completeness to my concept of Aegean art.
The place was nearly empty, so I picked out a few statues to really
stare down and gain a mutual understanding with. Art is best when
it is conversable.

4/17/08

My parents are here for the week, and it's been okay. We've been
trucking around with a tour guide, which was not my ideal vacation,
but my mom seems happy enough. Tomorrow we're going to Turkey, and I
have high aspirations for that.

Remember when we used to do bests/worsts of the week? I liked those.
Instead, I'm going to do something similar:

Things I like right now:
1. Noticing someone smiling to themselves without meaning to
2. Being able to drink coffee without feeling sick
3. Re-discovering writing poetry after a 6-year hiatus

Things I hate right now:
1. Marijuana. And the way people get when they're talking
about/buying/smoking it.
2. Socialist healthcare
3. Feeling compelled to lower my standards

4/13/08

Things here are mostly good. I went to Tzfat again this weekend for a
lil reunion hike, good food, and kabbalah talks. Kabbalah is a very
interesting approach to spirituality, and reminds me in a strange way
of Frost and Plato. Definitely something I want to read more about.

Coming back to Jerusalem last night, I ended up on the religious bus.
I got on early and grabbed a seat up front by the window amongst the
black hat/bearded crowd. One of them asked me to move to the back of
the bus, and I politely refused, remarking in poor Hebrew that I get
sick on buses. I was rather proud of myself for championing western
liberalism and asserting in my own way that I had just as much right
to be there as any of the nose-picking yeshiva boys. Later though,
another guy came up and asked me again in English, explaining that
there were two vacant seats next to women and that he and his friend
have had to sit on the floor because I won't move. He was polite and
I felt bad, so I caved and moved to the back. As soon as I sat down I
became extremely angry at myself for submitting without at least
asking why those other women couldn't move to the front instead of
vice versa. At about the same time, I noted that this was the first
bus I've noticed in Israel that didn't have any armed soldiers on
board, which is most likely because none of those ultra-orthodox
seat-stealing bastards have ever done a day of service in their lives.

My parents arrived last night, so I'll be showing them around this
week and we're gonna go to Turkey for Passover break.

4/6/08

I'm currently at my second day at my internship at the Abraham Fund,
where I'll be working until the end of the program. The organization
spearheads a good portion of the Jewish/Arab coexistence initiatives
in the country, and does a lot of advocacy work as well. I'm working
with the director to research the efficacy of research methods on
coexistence education. In fact, today I decided upon an objective for
my paper: "To give a credible picture of how research and evaluation
works in the field of Jewish/Arab youth coexistence education, and
determine how this research is useful." Next week, we will meet with
the Minister of Education and I'll hopefully be able to sit in as they
try to arrange for the establishment of the first ever committee in
Knesset (Parliament) dedicated solely to the advancement of
coexistence. The plus is that I'm really fascinated by this work and
the research I've done so far. The minus is that it's hard to sit in
one position in an office all day five days a week.

This weekend, I attended a Hasbara (Israel advocacy) workshop. It was
my least favorite out of the workshops I've been to so far. As Sol
appropriately put it, "This workshop is the spitting image of what
people must imagine who believe in the 'Jewish Conspiracy.'" While I
am, on a whole, a huge proponent of Israel advocacy, this particular
workshop was light on the information and heavy on the brainwashing.
But at least I got lots of free meals.

3/25/08

It was a pretty crazy weekend. By some wonderful stroke of luck, my
birthday this year coincided with Purim and Good Friday, so I took
full advantage of both. My friends Jen and Arielle and I went to
Jerusalem on Thursday night for the Megilla reading (the Torah story
of Esther where everyone comes in costume and screams and shakes
noisemakers when Haman's name is mentioned), then went out to a club.
I drank a bit too much and felt quite sick the next morning, but we
went to the Old City anyway because it was the anniversary of Jesus'
last walk down the Via Dolorosa. It was PACKED, and the procession
was very cool. They had representatives from every sect of
Christianity and devotees from all over the world.

That afternoon, we met up with Sol and headed to a Kibbutz in the
desert on the West Bank. There was a couchsurfing party there that
night, and I used my birthday pull to convince people to take the leap
of faith and come with me. It turned out to be a very memorable
adventure. The settlement was a small commune in the middle of
nowhere inhabited by nobody over the age of 40, and they gave us our
own half-built house to crash in for the night. The party host was an
artist who had essentially made her own house from scratch, and the
entire house was covered in paintings and mosaics and made me wish I
was capable of being that hard-core. A bunch of other people were
staying over, so we met a bunch of Americans studying abroad and
Germans doing national service. The party itself was incredible, and
everyone was fully costumed and very into it. The whole night verged
on perfection until I started feeling sick again.

I was very sick the next morning and spent virtually the whole day in
bed. That evening we were supposed to be in Tel Aviv so I could have
a birthday party on the beach, but we discovered that because of
Shabbat, we wouldn't be able to get there until at least an hour after
the time I had specified in the invitations. A big, uncomfortable
scramble followed, and we finally made it there an hour and a half
after the scheduled time. I was still too sick/out of it to care, so
I hung out briefly with the people who were still around and got my
ass into bed.

3/16/08

This weekend I walked around the beach and hung out with too many French people. It was fancy.

3/8/08

Sorry for the lapse of update. I was in Tzfat during the suicide bombing in Jerusalem, so other than the obvious national implications, I was not directly affected. I don't know how closely you've been following the news, but it's become clear recently that when the Gazans stormed the border of Egypt a couple weeks ago (because they were "starving," reports claimed at the time) they decided to forego food and return with missiles instead. A ketyusha missile was fired at Ashkelon last week, and local qassams are still pummeling Sderot and surrounding moshavs. We couldn't get security clearance to volunteer in Sderot, which is very frustrating. They also canceled my regular volunteering at the senior citizen's center because it's now within missile range. It's highly annoying because they didn't let us go and say goodbye, and we spent a good portion of last week sitting around doing absolutely nothing. Such regular interruptions in schedule make me increasingly skeptical about the futility of volunteering at all.

My week, however, went rather smoothly. Last weekend's Shabbat gathering turned out to be every bit as much fun as I had hoped, and even included a rousing outbreak of song by candlelight after dinner (complete with copious pot-and-pan banging) and a picnic the following day. It magically turned to summer this past week, and I'm treasuring it now before it gets unbearably hot. Two days ago I visited the Livnot program in Tzfat and went hiking with their Kabbalah group. It was very hippie-ish but fun, and it was nice to get outside and see waterfalls. I'm feeling a bit of a fever coming on, so I'm hoping to chase it away before our big Otzma Galilee trip tomorrow.

A couple of friends read the e-mail I sent to you guys about all the catastrophes that happened the weekend I was in Kiryat Shmona, and they think I'm a tool because I made it sound way more dire than it is, and the earthquake really wasn't a big deal. I hold firm to my theory that exaggeration makes life more interesting.

Things that have been on my mind:

1. How can you find spirituality in secularism? Is it truly possible to live a contemplated, meaningful life without some common connection to text or tradition?

2. Last weekend, I was told I think too often about heavy subjects and try to turn conversations into deep personal interrogations. Have I always been like that?

2/29/08

I'm having my favorite people on the program over for the weekend. It was a bitch to plan with people cancelling and waiting 'til last minute and all, but now that it's here, I think it's going to be wonderful. It's sunny and warm outside, we're gonna cook up a feast, and it's the perfect combination of personalities. I'm trying to brace myself already though for the let-down that I know is going to follow, because come Sunday, I usually get swept up in the anxiety of not knowing where I'm going to go next year/lamenting aspects of my relationships. It’s a shitty cycle, and I know I'm a little crazy, but I'm dealing with it.

What else... Last night I went to a concert, but we left early because the crowd behind us stormed our front-row seats. Later, I went to a nargila bar with some people I don't normally hang out with, and had a fun argument with some kids on their study-abroad year about the culture of cigarette smokers.

2/19/08

If I could climb any tree, I would climb: a poplar tree, even though I don't know what that is
My firstborn child will be named: Ariel, Zara, or Yael. I promised myself as a kid when my bunny died that I would name my first child after her. Of course, it will be a girl.
I believe that tomorrow: the sun will come out. All puns aside.
The last time I felt light and joyous was: this weekend, making stew
Right now: I should be volunteering, but it got canceled, so I'm couching for a day!
but I want to: be having a great adventure
and the frost poem that most accurately reflects my life now is: For Once, Then Something

2/16/08

I realize I haven't given you guys an update for a while, and it's been a pretty crazy week all around. I don't know how closely you've been paying attention to the news, but Israel's been a hot item recently. Last week, there was a suicide bombing (the first in over a year) in Dimona, the town where I taught English last track. Meanwhile, protests have been ongoing at Knesset to take bigger action to stop the barrage of qassam attacks in Sderot, 20 minutes from my house. I finally succeeded in spearheading an initiative to organize a volunteer trip there, which I'm thrilled about. However, too many people wanted to help organize it, and the first meeting showed me that the coordination is going to be an annoying battle of egos. Still, I'm thankful that it's coming along, and I don't mind other people taking credit as long as the event works out. This weekend, I decided to take a trip to visit friends in Qiryat Shmona, the northernmost town in Israel. The same day I came up, one of the leaders of Hezbollah was assassinated, and though the responsible party is not known, they naturally swore immediate revenge on Israel. Conveniently, Qiryat Shmona is located right on the Lebanese border and was the primary target of attacks during the last Lebanese War. To add to that irony, this morning we had an earthquake here that hit 5.3 on the rictor scale and shook all the way through Lebanon and Syria. It's really exciting being in the center of so much action, especially since I can boast about it and sound all hard-core without actually being directly negatively affected by it.

I felt really good this weekend, which has been a great change from the mild contentment that has comprised the last few weeks. I made chocolate chip orange scones for Valentine's Day and we lounged around lazily doing nothing at all. We had an awesome dance party last night involving costumes, silliness, and police visits, and it was the first time since college that I've attended a party so giddily fun. This morning, the federation took us on a drive around the region. We stopped at a memorial site for two army helicopters that collided in mid-air, took a short hike to a waterfall, and saw snow-covered mountains (the only snow I've seen all year!). Then we stopped for hand-made labaneh at a Druze village, and went to the Shouting Valley, where Arabs in Israel and Syria can stand and shout news to each other over the border. Sol and I cooked a killer vegetable stew this evening, and the crowd was joined for dinner by two neighboring Israelis and a 6'6" gorgeous black guy from Detroit who plays basketball for one of Israel's big teams. Afterwards, he took us to his pimped out condo, bought us all booze, and let us dorky little Jewish kids play his Wii as he regailed us alarmingly modestly about his modeling stints around Europe and upcoming NBA tryouts. It was a totally random and fun evening, and I left at just the right moment. So I wanted to share that bit of happiness with you before it scimpers away and the hum-drum of weekly volunteering seeps back into the agenda. I hope you had a tasty Valentine's Day (Sara, how did your chocolate date go???) and a frivolous romp-about in the snow!

My friend Jen would like you to know that she also cooked the bomb-ass stew. And she suffered a brutal wound. Please take note.

2/3/08

The best thing I ate recently was: canafe from an Arab bakery. Yuuummmm.
My most recent purchase was: a nasty veggie pita from a shwarma stand in Haifa
Yesterday, I was worried about: missing my train.
I woke up this morning when: I woke up naturally. At 10:37. Hooray for Sundays.
The first thing I thought was: probably not enough time for yoga this morning
The scariest thing I did this week was: took a cab to a freezing highway junction so I could get picked up by a guy I had only met once and go to a karaoke bar
I'm most proud of: having surpassed my peers in Hebrew
Peanut butter and honey is: something I wish Sara would make me
My stripper name is (pet's first name plus street you were born on): Caramel Roslyn (that was the street my house was on, does that count?)

12/14/07

I'm in the West Bank again! Much different than last time. I'm staying on a settlement with a friend I made last week. Her family's religious, which means I'll be well-fed this Shabbat. We just made cookies, and I started thinking about how maybe I could bring about world peace if we shared some with the Palestinian village a five-minute walk away. My friend did not agree. Guess it's back to the drawing board...

12/10/07

This week's good news: This program still rocks my socks off. The hiking is gorgeous/fun, I'm learning good new stuff about Judaism, and Tzfat is just plain awesome. This trip has dispelled a lot of my prejudices about religious people, and I've made some unlikely friends. Our trip leader is a sagely, huge-bearded, guitar-strumming hippie-type who looks like he could be one of Sara's friends.

Bad news: Passed out again. Oof. Another bathroom episode. I felt it coming and tried to get to the ground, but didn't make it in time. Woke up nauseous on the shower floor with a big ol' bump on my head and a broken tooth. Really ruined the weekend.

More good news: After months of laziness, I finally updated my blog. Huzzah!

12/7/07

I hope you do something wonderful/eat something tasty/find something meaningful even if you don't celebrate the holiday. Life in the past four days has been a dream. We've been going on long hikes every day, volunteering on really interesting projects, and just plain soaking up the wonderfulness of Tzfat. On a whim yesterday, we all decided to go skinnydipping in a river we passed. Very cold, but definitely worth it! Today I spoke with a Kabbalist and learned a little bit about Jewish meditation. Don't worry, I'm not turning religious. But it was very cool. My mind has been going all over the place, but always returns to you. I hope we'll be sharing special times together again soon.

12/2/07

It seems like all of us (except maybe Al) are approaching the end of something. I love it when our lives parallel each other unintentionally. I just finished Track 1, and am moving on to Track 1.5 of the program. Yesterday I packed up my life and moved out of the desert for good. It's a much-needed change. I think it was a worthy experience, but I'm absolutely ready to leave. Tomorrow I will head off to Tzfat for the next three weeks to do a spirituality program. I'm SUPER excited. Tzfat is one of my favorite places. It's one of the holiest places in the world, an old medieval city in the mountains (how I miss mountains!) up north. I just got the program schedule, and it seems we'll be hiking in the Golan almost every day as well as volunteering locally and doing spirituality/educational seminars. Maybe it'll help me get my head on straight. Besides, there are only 12 of us doing it, which will be refreshing because the big group atmosphere was getting a bit tense and suffocating. I'll be sure to send updates. In the meantime, I was tickled pink to get a postcard from Shary-lou, postcard #3 from Sara, and two messages from Al! You three make my life sunshine.

11/12/07

It's been a bit of a downer of a week. My one big volunteer project (tutoring English to high schoolers twice a week) fell through, because three times in a row we made the 3-hour commute and nobody showed up. Hebrew-learning in ulpan is almost at a standstill, because we learn about 4 new words per day in 4.5 hours of class. Being in my apartment is like constantly walking on ice because everybody's fed up with each other. We only have two weeks left in Be'er Sheva, but I'm not sure I'm looking forward to the 3-week spiritual education program in Tzfat. I'm starting to question if what I'm doing here is actually of any use to anyone, and if there's any purpose behind it. And when I'm not thinking about those things, I'm thinking again and again of Taylor Crane, which still seems like a giant void of a memory. Of course none of these problems is catastrophic, but I don't really have a confidant here with whom to talk about them and sort them out, so the effect is magnifying and isolating. Sorry to leave such a poop of a message.

In better news, I'm going to be spending this Shabbat in the West Bank. I'm really excited to go and get a feel of what life in the settlements is like, and I get strangely exhilarated in potentially “dangerous” environments. I'll try to write about it next week.

11/5/07

Today I took a little trip with my future housemates to visit the village and house where we'll be living from January-March. Compared to the absorption center where we currently are, the house is paradise. It has a TV, 2 toilets, full-sized beds, a microwave, a laundry machine, and a beautiful yard filled with exotic-looking palm tree thingers. Thank goodness for the Chicago federation.

The volunteer opportunities over there look pretty good, too. My dream would be to start an intensive theatre seminar for high schoolers, so I'm going to look into that. That is, if they ever get back to school. (Sara, you think American education has problems? The teacher strike here has lasted months, so students haven't yet started school this year!) There's also an old folks home on a beautiful kibbutz where I might like to teach yoga or help in their greenhouse. Luckily, there's still time to figure things out.

Lou, ulpan=Hebrew class=sucky.

11/1/07

Halloween sucked. It doesn't exist in Israel. Nonetheless, I decided to stand up for the proud, secular pagan ritual of my homeland and come to ulpan class in full costume. That morning, I dressed in black from head to toe, brushed my face white with dark circles under the eyes, tied a toilet paper bandage around my head with lipstick blood, and created a hanging crucifix around my neck with two knives and a couple of hairbands. I decided to protest Israel's Halloween apathy by parading around as a disappointed member of the uncelebrated dead. Unfortunately, my brilliant idea was not met with delighted responses as I had hoped. My teacher was bitterly unamused, as she had never heard of Halloween and my attire was inappropriate for class. Everyone stared at me with some mixture of confusion and horror wherever I went. I was asked by numerous people what was wrong or if I needed help. Except for a handful of American comrades, nobody had a clue why the hell I looked like a bleeding wreck laden with kitchen utensils. I was, literally, the ONLY person I encountered with any trace of a Halloween costume that day.

10/29/07

The weekend was a bucketful of happiness. Eilat, a mere 3 hours south, was a soothing desert paradise with a healthy dose of well-meaning tourists. We spent most of the day admiring the sandy mountains of Jordan and Egypt on either side, then rented snorkels and swam around beautiful reefs filled with fish of every color and size. It put my mind at peace. And I got a postcard from Pakistan, which put me in a good mood all afternoon.

10/25/07

I tried to send this yesterday, but my internet flaked out mid-letter:

My work is, in a word, __exhausting__________
The last time I danced was __last night, but I stopped after a minute 'cause my roommates didn't want to join___________
The last person I kissed was ___Michel_________
The last time I cried was ____can't remember__________
The word rime means ___whatever Sara said_______
The nearest person to me right now is __Jess (I think she's sleeping in the next room)___
The last music I heard was __Flight of the Concords (the robot music video on the TV show)_______
Right now, I am satisfied with/that/by __my progress in free-reading (another book finished, Shary-lou!)______
I am __also___ excited about __AB's adventure race____
My most recent purchase was __three oranges at the fruit stand____

Things have been pretty good on a whole. This afternoon I went to a nearby Bedouin village and taught English to third graders. Hot damn are those kids hard to control. Still, they were adorable, and by the end of the session they had mastered head, shoulders, knees, and toes. This weekend, I'm going to go down to Eilat for some relaxing and swimming in the Red Sea. The heat in Be'er Sheva is still in the 80's, and I'm planning on moving to the north for 3 weeks in December 'cause I miss cold weather and mountains.

10/16/07

Sorry it's been so long. But I don't feel TOO bad, 'cause you all have been almost as bad. Things have been crazy busy lately. Every day, there's 5 hours of ulpan, 4ish hours of volunteering, meetings, groceries/cooking dinner, homework, and a lil bit of socializing/reading/internet time.

I can't even remember if I told you guys about my Sukkot break. It was very eventful all around. The best part was definitely volunteering in Sderot and seeing for a few days what it's like to live in missile-land. Did I tell you guys about that yet?

Schedules are getting more regular, which is good. I went to a meeting today to figure out what I'm going to do for my English tutoring. I and three other girls will be working twice a week in the development town of Dimona, helping 11th and 12th graders with English so they can pass exams and get into college. I'm excited to put my silly game knowledge to work.

Speaking of tutoring though, it's harder than I thought. A really sweet Indian girl who lives down the hall from me just stopped by my apartment for a half an hour, asking me for help on her project. She's in 12th grade, and was reviewing an article about Yitzhak Shimon. As I went over her project with her, it became evident to me that she had never written a proper essay before. I tried with great difficulty to explain to her words that I usually take for granted, like introduction and summary. The conversation would go something like this:

Me: Okay. So you underlined all the main points in the article. Now in the summary, you just have to put them all together in your own words.

(She starts copying the sentences onto a new sheet of paper)

Me: Oh, but you can't write exactly what's written in the article. You have to say it a little bit differently, so it's coming from you. Try to capture the point of what the article is trying to say.

Her: But that's what I want to say. Why do I have to write it differently than it already says?

Me: Eh... 'cause that's just how you do it. I don't know.

Tonight we're making pasta with tomato-vodka sauce for dinner. My stomach is a-rumblin'. If any of you get inspired enough to Skype, let me know, 'cause I haven't actually chatted with you in way too long.

9/26/07

I'm headed off on Sukkot break tomorrow. I'll be spending the first three days with my host family (the girls are adorable), then going to Sderot to volunteer painting rocket shields on the roads. After, I'm gonna head north and meet some friends in Haifa, where we can hopefully catch some of the film festival and the theatre festival in the nearby crusader town of Akko. It will be my first time in Haifa, and I'm very excited.

9/23/07

I just spent Yom Kippur in Jerusalem, and it was a pretty cool experience, minus the starvation and all. After the evening service, even the busiest streets of the city were totally empty, so everyone just poured into the streets and danced/rode bikes/chilled out. I went to the Western Wall this afternoon and bumped into a friend from middle school. Things have been mostly very nice lately. I've been hanging out a lot with the Parisians, who are really fun, but I wish it wasn't mostly guys 'cause that always leads to strange romantic tension. We have Sukkot vacation at the end of this week, and I think I'm going to spend the week volunteering with Israeli students in Sderot, a small town not far from here that gets hit by a lot of Qassam rockets from Gaza. Hopefully I'll meet some new friends!

9/7/07

I've had a really good weekend. It was our first free time, and almost all of our group headed off to Tel Aviv, but I and a couple others stayed in Be'er Sheva to explore our new home. It's SO nice to be away from the big group. There are a lot of nice people, but on a whole the group energy is really immature and I can only take so much exposure to so many Jews. Since we've been on our own, I've met some of the coolest people. This absorption center is nuts. Everyone comes from somewhere different with their own unique reasons for leaving their homelands, and most of the people I've encountered speak four to six languages. We stayed up 'til 3am last night arguing politics with two guys from Russia and Uruguay, and today got lectured about why all of our ulpan teachers will be unqualified. Israel is such a vibrant place because everyone is an immigrant in one way or another, and everyone disagrees with each other. As the guy today said, "Don't believe anything you hear. They're all liars."

9/2/07

Back to the subject of rootedness though... This past week has been anything but. We're still enmeshed in the rush of orientation so things are a bit jumbling, but I'm having some trouble sorting out in my mind where this year is going and what part I'm going to play in this group. We've been packing up and shifting location almost daily (hostel, tent, hostel, apartment...) and the nature of orientation has made me feel rather like an exhausted 6th-grader being dragged through her first out-of-country mega tour. I'm not usually one to get homesick, but occasional queaziness and the strange rhythm of things has left me feeling a bit distant. I'm not sure I like the aspects of my personality that have arisen in this group atmosphere. The other participants are nice, but I haven't had any true bonding moments with anyone yet. Others appear to consider me the silent nice girl, which as you know is not my normal persona. I know it takes time, but after a week of constant interaction, I'm slightly worried that these aren't the type of people I usually become close to. Perhaps that's pompous of me. Or perhaps not everyone's as wonderful as you guys.

On a whole, the cultural adventures have been exciting. We went on two day-hikes through the desert which would have been perfect except that jet-lag had left me awake 60 continuous hours before the first which, as you might imagine, made it difficult to appreciate. I went to an awesome club in Jerusalem last night and made more Israeli friends in an evening than I had Greeks during my entire semester abroad. I also met some very cute raucous guys from Manchester, and we had a terrific time dancing and drinking. We move into our apartments in Be'er Sheva tomorrow morning, and my current concern is that I will not be able to acclimate to the (surprise!) ridiculously hot desert days without A/C... Am I usually this nervous about everything?

Israeli Schools vs. Israeli Education

Not long after I arrived in Israel, the secondary school teachers and University professors declared a strike. During the period I and my friends conducted English lessons for accelerated students in Dimona, the high school halls were dark and empty. I knew that in some parts, wealthier students were able to hire tutors to prepare them for the upcoming bagrut (the mandatory standardized test), but for students in that lower-income Negev town, TV filled the unexpected time gap. To the kids I tutored, my semi-weekly class was the only academic diversion as they waited for classes to resume. I imagined the strike might last a week or two. Four months later, the union signed an agreement with the government, and school hallways filled up with life again.

The strike was my first introduction to the faults of Israel’s educational system, but I soon discovered it was merely an indication of a much more permanent phenomenon. I am convinced the educational system is among the most bizarre dualities in Israel: The formal education system is dramatically flawed, yet Israelis are some of the most intuitive, well-spoken people I’ve ever encountered.

Recently, I helped an Ethiopian girl named Bhatiya with her English homework. We discussed the present progressive tense in Hebrew because my three months of Hebrew ulpan had earned me a greater command of the language than her four years in English classes. She caught onto the concepts alarmingly quickly. I drew her a simple chart, and within three homework problems she had mastered the concept without trouble. “See? You got it!” I insisted. “How long have you been studying this in school?”
Bhatiya shrugged. “It’s hard to hear the teacher.”
“How many students are in your English class?”
“45.”
My mouth dropped.

The education system in Israel's periphery towns follows an inescapable cycle of dysfunction. Like many public institutions, it begins in the government, and trickles down to every level involved. At the start, education is not properly funded, largely since defense calls for such a high quotient of government spending. As a result, teachers cannot be properly compensated for their skills, so potential teachers often seek work in other professions instead. Many of the educators who accept the low wages are under-qualified for the job. (Yesterday, while helping a kid with his English homework, I noticed the teacher assigned him the question, “Dose the man has a tructor?”)

The qualified teachers who continue to pursue their career are generous idealists. The Israelis call them “friars”, a term most accurately translated as “suckers”. The friars soon become lost in the logistics of school politics, where even the most inspired teachers can not penetrate an over-packed room of students persuaded that their education is not a high priority.

I became acquainted with one such teacher when I began to volunteer in an Israeli high school. I, a rule-loving American, felt surprised and a little vulnerable when on the first day she called some students out, sent them away with me, and told me I could teach them whatever I wanted. Following the lesson, she led me into the staff lounge where she collapsed on a chair. “What a horrible class!” she said, “These kids know they can get away with anything. They yell in class, they threaten you, they talk on their cell phones, and what can you do? The Principal’s office doesn’t want them, and we’re not permitted to kick them out of school.”

It seems as though a lasting improvement would require a dramatic change in the way the country visualizes the role of education. But for the time being, Israel works. Conventional education is flawed, but Israel is not a conventional place. Perhaps it’s the attention to experiential learning, innate Jewish bookishness, or the intense life-skills gained in their mandatory military service, but despite shortcomings in the school system, Israelis are knowledgeable, politically aware, and irrefutably opinionated. Regardless of what happens inside the classroom, there exists in the Israeli mind an indecipherable spirit and determination that has shot this country to the top of global innovation. A British immigrant recently told our group an anecdote which I believe perfectly encapsulates the Israeli approach to learning: He and his wife had taken their first ever ski trip to the Alps, where they ran into a group of Israeli tourists who had likewise never been on skis. “The first day, as my wife and I joined the beginner’s class and slid around the bunny hills, the Israelis headed straight up to the top of the mountain. ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’ I cautioned. ‘It’s fine!’ they said, ‘We saw it on TV!’ The next day, when my wife and I again approached the bunny hills, the Israelis, banged up from the day before, were ready to join us in square one. But you know something? Their initial effort had given them an advantage we didn’t have, and by the third day, as we advanced towards the next tier of difficulty, they were already prepared to ride to the challenging slopes and glide confidently down.”

So, all my volunteering got canceled today. Of course, I took this opportunity of unexpected free-time to embrace a journey of exploration, self-enrichment, and world betterment. Below is a carefully articulated list of all my lofty daily accomplishments.

1. Travel the world
Translation: Get addicted to facebook.com's Travel IQ Challenge. Holy crap that game is addictive. I can sleep soundly at night knowing that I can now locate Maldives on a map.

2. Alarming feats of endurance
Translation: Remain in a semi-upright position for at least six hours, checking e-mail every ten minutes lest it tries to sneak one in on me

3. Discover the deep recesses of the mind
Translation: Four-hour nap

4. Experimentation with mental telepathy
Translation: Staring at my laundry for an extended period of time, hoping it would fold itself

5. Write an anthology of my life
Translation: This lame-ass blog entry

There you have it. Life in Qiryat Gat has never been more fascinating and I feel as though I'm on the brink of universal enlightment. I can sense it lurking... World peace? Political reform? Another nap? Only the next fifteen minutes will tell.

Holiday Leftovers

This has been quite a couple weeks, so this will be quite an entry. It began when, on a hike in the middle of the Golan, I ran (almost head-on) into TJ, my best friend from high school. (He was on a Birthright trip, unbeknownst to me.) I flew into his arms, since he was the first person I had seen from home in months and I longed very much to see someone with whom I shared a common history. Soon after, my group moved to Jerusalem for the last leg of the 3-week hiking/volunteering program. I had the good fortune of running into Nate Marcus in the Livnot center, which was another unexpected treat. The nature of the program was overall very introspective and meditative, which was a good and a bad thing for me. I appreciated gaining new angles on spiritual topics and getting to sit back and reflect, but as someone who already thinks too much, the exercises sometimes left me inexplicably sad. Every new thought seems to breed a new philosophy, and I have so many by now that they all run into each other and rarely actually reflect what's really there.

I was all set to come stay in my new house in Qiryat Gat for a week of solitary boredom, when I thought, "Damnit Jackie, when did you become so submissive? Stop sulking, get off your ass, and go have an adventure." So I packed up a backpack, headed to the bus station, and caught the last bus to Nazareth.

Actually, getting there was an adventure in itself. Contrary to what the website had told me, the last bus to Nazareth from Jerusalem had already gone. After arguing with a number of people, I learned that if I caught the next bus to Tel Aviv, I'd have a chance of making the last bus from there to Nazareth. I didn't have a back-up plan, but I figured I wouldn't die if I didn't make it, so I went anyway. I just made it, but realized towards the end of the journey that I didn't actually know where I was going. I had been told the hostel was in the middle of an Arab shuk, but when I asked the driver to drop me off at the shuk, he dropped me at an empty stall in the middle of the highway. It seemed the only thing to do from there was walk, so I followed the highway until I could see buildings on a hill and fireworks in the distance. (It was Christmas eve!) I will admit walking through Arab alleyways in the middle of the night does, despite my openmindedness, instill me with a healthy amount of fear. Thankfully, these were dispelled once I reached the hostel, which was set in the ruins of a gorgeous Ottoman mansion. I had my own room with a Narnia-esque wardrobe and a ceiling twice as high as normal, and went to bed hearing fireworks inside and out. The next morning, I met some of the other guests, and together we took a tour of the Old City. My future companions were to be a Brazilian, a French guy, four Israelis, and an American who had been living in Lebanon for the past year and a half. We took to each other instantly, and the new impromptu society proved to be refreshing. Over those two days, I rediscovered an idea that seems to me infallible. Traveling by yourself brings about two great treasures: An acute awareness of small things and kindness in places you never expected to find it. It was a holiday polished by beautiful walks, intent conversations, and intoxicating spice markets.

The evening before I left, I had no idea where I was going. The following morning, one of the Israelis I met the previous day said they were driving south and invited me along. I agreed, took 5 minutes to get dressed and pack, and was out the door. In the car on the way down, I asked the guy who invited me, Evia, if he had ever been to the United States. He said he had been there once. "Just to travel?" I asked. "No, my uncle plays the violin and he invited me to come watch him play." "Sweet," I replied, "What's his name?" "Itzhak Perlman." I nearly died.

Once in Tel Aviv, I sauntered over to the beach and sat until sunset enjoying the warm sky and actively observing the mannerisms of others: I saw a group of American teenage girls trying to shallowly impress some Israeli guys, a gay couple forging a romantic aura by laying their hands in the seawater as the sun set, and a lady with a towel around her waist urinating on the sand thinking no one could tell. My friend Yann agreed to host me at a minute's notice, so the day was rounded with good French company and a comfy repose. Left again directionless the next day, I decided to sit and let providence take control. Indeed, it did. I had not been on my bench for fifteen minutes before my cousin Elizabeth, only just arrived, happened to pass with her Birthright group. The encounter yielded a delicious lunch and some inspired ponderings on the apparent reliability of chance. These were again affirmed when, a few hours later, I ran into yet another friend on the street and got in some good coffee and riddling before the ride to Jerusalem.

The rest of the vacation proceeded amicably. I toured Ein Karem (the birthplace of John the Baptist) with my 8th grade penpal, ate with Evia's family on their Moshav (sort of like an isolated agricultural community), and finally began to have some days of mental peace. I spent a night with Eli Berman, and we consoled one another about the crazy mindfuck that happens the year after college when you have to redefine yourself and feel isolated and start to question things you had taken for granted. For New Years, I attended a fancy Jerusalem event with my friend Jon from back home. He was there on a mission trip with his family and about 70 other people from the North Shore, so it was a familiar and fun evening that reminded me graciously of American cultural differences. The party eerily resembled a Bar Mitzvah, complete with a juggling room, open bar, and pre-teens booty dancing with their dads. Yum.

Which brings me to where I am now. I just officially moved into my house in Qiryat Gat, a periphery town where I will be volunteering for the next three months. I'm excited about the nice accomodations and volunteer options, and am nervous about living in a town with one restaurant and no nightlife. Still, I am happy to report that my mind is further at ease now than it has been for a time. I just had a most cherished chat with Shary-lou, who is a greater comfort than she knows. I'm confident that little spurts of magnificence can be found most anywhere if I only allow myself to seek them out. I wish the same to each of you this week. Find time to crack the routine, go get lost, and listen as deliberately as you can. You might surprise yourself.