Tenara Grapples with the Unknown, and then Realizes It Is Not That Bad

There is something intimately mystifying about traveling alone.  You kind of almost don't exist.  There is no one there to remind you that you matter to someone.  Of course you know you do, but when you're up 35,000 feet in the sky, phones off, trapped into sitting with and sleeping next to some weird people you don't know, it becomes very difficult to feel connected to something stable somewhere else.

There were no major glitches with the flights.  From CMH to EWR was boooooooring.  The plane was filled with business men and women in suits, clicking on their blackberries as soon as the plane's wheel touched the ground.  Those guys are even more addicted to technology than the teenagers who LIVE in the digital age.

As I sat in the Newark airport and talked to my parents, Maria, and my friend Becca who went to Israel with me last time, I realized that, where the traveling was concerned, I wasn't scared.  I was just bored.

I managed to scrape up a couple of hours of sleep on the flight over.  It was a strange flight.  The majority of the clients were elderly Christians making it to the Holy Land before their time came.  Behind me sat two Hassidic Jews yammering away in Yiddish.  Peppered in between were only a couple secular Israelis.

When I arrived in Tel Aviv, I met my parent's friend Alon at the exit of the airport.  Outside, the weather was a balmy, hazy seventy-degrees.  Despite of that, I found myself shivering a lot.  Alon and I yammered away in the car as we drove to Alon's apartment in Ramat Gan, a neighborhood of Tel Aviv.  Alon shares his apartment with his partner, Udi, or should I say Udi shares the apartment with Alon, since it's really Udi's apartment in the first place.

Udi's apartment is on the ground floor of a pretty standard-looking Israeli building.  The bookshelves upon entrance or riddled with Carl Jung books, as Udi is a Jungan psychologist.  Udi and Alon have a modest kitchen, a small table, one bathroom, a sitting room, and a bedroom.  I am taking up the sitting room.  The futon in the corner (futons are terribly popular in Israel for some reason) is lying on the ground underneath this enormous windows.  Udi and Alon's adorable and UN-YIPPY chihauhua, Bambina, is curled up next to me.  She will sleep with me in the bed tonight.

Everything that I imagined would happen didn't, and everything I didn't think of did.  Exhibit A: I thought I would get no sleep from Tuesday night to Thursday.  False.  I slept like a freaking rock on Tuesday night, and I did manage to get reasonable sleep on the flight on Wednesday.  Exhibit B: I thought I'd be clawing at the walls of my house by the end of the first walkabout, ready to escape to Israel.  False.  I was actually really sad to go.  Maybe it's because the first walkabout with the theater went so freakishly well, or maybe it's because I am a nostalgic person in senior year, or maybe it's because everything was suddenly falling into place, but all of the sudden a part of me wanted to stay.


Exhibit C: that I would weep from the moment I got off the plane through the first week and finally stopping once I'd gathered my bearings.  I tend to be a notoriously bad traveler when it comes to culture shock and disconcertedness.  Though it is only the first night, I'm not sobbing into my hands (WIN!).  I am nervous.  THIS BRINGS ME TO EXHIBIT D, WHAT I HAD EXPECTED TO HAPPEN AND WHAT CERTAINLY IS HAPPENING:


I am fearing the unknown.  When am I going to make the move from Udi's to my mom's cousin's Micha's place?  When am I going to be able to use my cell phone with the Israeli SIM card as an Israeli phone?  Which bus do I take to get to La Escuelita?  HOW DO I BUY THE BUSS PASS?  Just typing out these questions is actually starting to freak me out.


I have a plan, however.  Tomorrow, after I sleep in, I'm going to take a walk.  Udi and Alon will be working in the morning, and so they will leave a key with me and I will take it upon myself to familiarize myself with the neighborhood.  I remember from years past that there was a small market somewhere around their place, and so I'll slip in there and buy batteries for my dead camera.  I'll take pictures and then walk back, have some lunch, and by that time Udi and Alon will be home.  I am going to call first my Uncle Micha and then my cousin Matan, who is also my mentor for La Escuelita.  They're having a party on Saturday afternoon for Matan and his cousin Elinor's birthdays, and they've invited me to come.  It makes sense that I would bring a load of my stuff over there that day, since I'll be staying with Elinor's family.  I will smooth out the details tomorrow when I speak to Micha.


The slightest thing will set me off, and it's so weird.  Like this mess with the Israeli SIM card.  I don't exactly NEED a phone with me in Israel, but it'd be lovely to have one, and also really freaking convenient.  Everything about Israel right now is exactly the same and also completely different.  Same: that the water in the shower kind of smells like ocean and you have to use a squeegy thing to push the water from the floor down the shower drain.  Different: that I was shivering as I got out of the shower, because it is in the low 60s now.  Same: the sounds.  Different: the smells.  Same: the air.  Different: the foliage - everything's green!  Same: Israel.  Different: me.