Camera Party III

Pictures of Jerusalem!!!

Today I took the train from Moda'in back to Tel Aviv.  Sitting across the ailse from me was a German, a Dane, and a Swede.  They were all speaking to each other in English.  From what I gathered, they were in some seminary program, but they mostly talked about how much Dutch people suck.  When we reached my stop, one of them said "Do you think we'll be the first ones there?" and the German said "No, we'll have to wait at least another hour for all the Italians."

Bahahahahahahaha.

Today I went to Yafo to meet with my mentor from my second (third) Walkabout here in Israel.  On my way, I had the most tremendous bus failure of my life!  It was the best, and when I say the best, I mean I have never felt more foolish.

To get to Yafo, I take the number 40 from Azrieli Center, a main bus stop in Tel Aviv.  I got onto the number 40 in what I thought was the right direction, but after ten minutes of driving, I realized that I was NOT in fact going in the right direction.  After a panic attack of epic proportions (it was all nicely folded inside my chest), I got of the bus.  Luckily, the ten minutes were mostly due to traffic, and I had only gone three stops in the wrong direction.  I caught the bus in the other direction.


Twenty minutes after being on the bus, I was getting panicky again, because we had not yet reached Yafo, and it shouldn't have taken us that long.  Yafo is a city where Jews and Arabs live together, and it was built long before Jews began to arrive in what is now present day Israel.  It has a very distinct look to it, especially the old city, which I love more than anything.


Anyway, I walked up to the bus driver and asked if the route 40 bus was going to Jerusalem street in Yafo.  He said "Yes, but the other side."


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!


The bus driver printed out a receipt for a ticket for the bus going in the other direction (the previous and right direction), unaware that I had a free day pass.  On the receipt I wrote out what happened as a reminder that sometimes we all have fails.  I didn't know whether to laugh really loudly and creepily, or burst into tears.  I ended up doing something in between the two.


When I finally arrived in Yafo (after getting off the bus three blocks too far and a good hour and a half late), I found Sadaka-Reut's office.  It's a really nice building off of a central road in Yafo.  I met with my mentor, Hana.  What Sadaka-Reut wants me to do is basically observe and take part in all the activities so that I can write a newsletter for the organization.  I also met the volunteers who live in the commune where I may be staying for a bit.  Apparently, it's just four guys living there now.  I met three - Yotam, Ro'ee and Mahmoud.  After I finished my meeting with Hana, Yotam, Ro'ee and Mahmoud invited me back to the commune to have lunch with them.


The commune is about two seconds away from the offices.  It's a very old, traditional Yafo apartment (the front doors are actually two enormous and tall salon doors, there are two balconies, every door is long and tall).  It's also very dirty.  Very dirty.  I mean, what can you expect from four young men?  The first thing I saw upon entering was an enormous flag of Che Guevara spread across the back wall.  Aaah.


Mahmoud, Yotam, Ro'ee and I sat in the kitchen as they made pasta with fried mushrooms, garlic, and onions and salad (I helped stir the mushrooms, garlic, and onions).  I asked them questions about how they got involved with Sadaka-Reut and what their favorite part about being year-long volunteers, etc.  Mahmoud went to sleep as soon as lunch was ready, so I ate with Yotam and Ro'ee.  All three of them were really nice.  I'm not sure yet if I'll be staying with them yet, but I do know that there are weekly things to do for them.  I also just got news that there's an opportunity to help teach English in Kfar Saba, the city I was staying in last time I was in Israel.  What may end up happening is that I teach English Sundays and Mondays, come back to Tel Aviv for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday Sadaka-Reut activities.  It looks like my seemingly leisurely weeks just EXPLODED into activity.

Drake and Josh is Lame

Apparently, when it rains in Israel, life pretty much comes to a screeching halt.  Yesterday it rained on and off all day (and when I say all day, I mean beginning at twelve when I lept out of bed after realizing I had slept in to an ungodly hour of the day), and because of this, the Kagan family and I did not go to Jerusalem as planned.  Instead, everyone pretty much curled up in blankets and watched TV/played Wii/slept.  It was as if there was a snowday.  I took a walk around three in the afternoon, knowing that if I didn't I wouldn't leave the house all day.  As I walked around in the light drizzle (about forty degrees Farenheit), where I usually saw streets busy with activity (not unlike the row houses of UK), instead I saw and heard absolutely no one.

Today, however, I set my alarm for nine-thirty in the morning, and the sun was shining.  The boys of the Kagan family were snoring and did not want to wake up, so Amira, Avi, and Roni and I climbed into the car to drive to Jerusalem.

There is something so indescribable about Jerusalem, but I'm going to try to do it anyway.  The first thing that struck me was the smell of the trees.  I don't know if there were any eucalyptis trees around (I wasn't looking), but that was definitely the smell that struck me.  The second thing is the people.  Avi drove the car into a Muslim part of the city and we parked.  We weaved in and out of people selling things, buying things, walking.  There was virtually no Hebrew on any of the signs in this part of the city, and very little English.  Amira had told me about the bread in Jerusalem - a speciality of Jerusalem.  They are called Bageleh in Hebrew and Ka'ak in Arabic.  It's almost as if someone stretched out a bagel.  You eat the bread with za'atar, a Middle Eastern spice.  It is the best thing in the world.

Amira, Avi, Roni, and I sat on the steps of the Yafo gate of the Old City eating the bageleh.  Small Muslim children were coming out of the Old City with backpacks on.  While the Israeli workweek begins on a Sunday and ends on a Friday afternoon, the Muslim workweek in Israel begins on a Saturday and ends on a Thursday afternoon, as Fridays are the holy days for Muslims.

When we entered the old city, the Hebrew word "balagan" entered my mind.  "Balagan" means both a mess and craziness.  It was packed.  Everywhere around us people were shouting out in Arabic and in Hebrew about the goods they were selling which was everything from strawberries to purses to phones to eggplants to watches to spices.  We weaved in and out of people, men shoving around carts of stuff that almost hit Roni several times, animals, rotten vegetables on the pathway, everything.  It's a very fascinating anthropological place to be.  It was interesting to see the way different Arabs dressed.  Some were dressed very religiously, and others were not.  I saw many girls wearing tight dresses with leggings, knee-high leather boots, provocative make-up, and sparkling hijabs.  Other girls wore all black.  Some men wore heavy religious robes, others dressed like many of the Israeli men I see - tight jeans, sports shirts, Puma shoes.

When we got through the main market, we reached the smaller avenues with shops.  Here it was much quieter (and smelled nicer).  I bought several chamsas (the hand shaped pendants, some of them with the eyes in the palm) for myself and for my friends, and an Armenian kiddush cup.  All around me I heard an plethora amount of languages, from Portuguese (there were a lot of Brazilians there) to Russian to Arabic to English to French.  I also SUCCESFULLY BARGAINED.  I bargained!  Me!  ME!  I hate bargaining so much.  SO. MUCH.  I always feel really terrible.  But this one guy just made it easy - he said he was selling the chamsa (the teeny tiny chamsa, might I add) for fifteen shekels.  I put it down and said no thank you, I wasn't interested.  I wasn't at that point.  Then he offered it for less money.  I asked him how much.  He said thirteen.  I said no thank you.  He said ten.  I said thank you.  MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Avi, Amira, and Roni and I also went to the Cotel, the Wailing Wall.  I had a note to put in the wall from my Hebrew class that I taught (it was the most adorable note I've ever read).  The last time I was in the Cotel, I was overwhelmed with the incredible spirit in the place.  It was two and a half years ago, and my group had arrived just as the sun was setting, so we didn't have a lot of time to be there before getting back on our bus and getting out of the Old City as the sun went down.  When I reached the Cotel, I put my note in the wall and just put my head up against the wall.  It was really warm from the sun.  I just kept my forehead there for a while.  I was really moved then.

Today, however, I didn't really feel the same way.  I found myself more moved by watching all the women around me praying, having their spiritual moments.  Maybe it's my teenage skepticism or maybe I've just changed, but I found myself more moved by a piece of jewelry with a prayer inscribed on it than I did with my own personal moment at the Wall.  It seems to me that I am more moved spiritually by people, and not by religion.

After the Cotel, we ate in a great and crowded falafel restaurant and then drove home.  I was really happy, as I had done something that day.  I feel that even though I'm technically doing work for La Escuelita, I'm not really doing a whole lot.  I also feel as if this is the calm before not having a spare moment to myself living in the commune with Sadaka-Reut.

Now I am sitting in the Kagan's livingroom as Roni and her friend are playing Wii (at the beginning of this blogpost Roni was watching Drake and Josh).  Tomorrow I am taking the train back to Tel Aviv and meeting with Hana, my mentor for Sadaka-Reut, to discuss what my internship with them is going to look like.  I am excited for getting up at an hour that is not twelve thirty or one and feeling like a productive member of society!  I am still struggling with how I feel about being alone for such a large majority of my Walkabout, but I realize that this is good learning experience.  In a lame kind of way, I figure this is building character or something equally as corny.

Pictures of Jerusalem tomorrow when I get back to my computer!

Life Slows Down

When Eileen famously said "You don't get what you want out of Walkabout, you get what you need," I had wondered what it was that I needed that I would eventually learn or understand after Walkabout.  Now, I know.

I like being suuuuuper busy all the time.  This past semester was the most ridiculous thing in the world - I had a crap load of work all the time taking four Graham classes and two OSU classes.  My workload slowed down significantly after Walkabout started in that I had less to do, but what I was doing took a lot out of me.  I'd come home from rehearsal every day exhausted.

Now, I'm spending the majority of my time alone, doing work that is definitely significant for the organization, but I still feel like I'm wasting time.  Matan has me working on the website (which is looking really cool still, but I won't disclose the address because it's not finished yet), the translating, and we're both almost finished with the grant writing.  After I'm finished with this workload, what next?

I have a meeting next week on Sunday with Hana, my mentor from Sadaka-Reut, the Israeli-Palestinian youth group.  We're going to discuss what my role with the organization will be.  Sadaka-Reut is a more established group than La Escuelita, and I have a feeling like I will have more to do with them.

The thing that I'm realizing is that it's good to maybe take two months to have everything come to a grinding halt in order to figure yourself out.  I pride myself on being a pretty self-aware person, but right now I'm surprising myself.  For example: in situations where I could possibly be lost, or when I'm confused about something and my stress level is rising, my heart is beating, and I'm sweating?  It's almost easier to use Hebrew then.  When I'm just walking into a cafe and the woman asks me if I want to sit in the smoking section or the non-smoking section (remember those, Columbus?), I stutter and become completely flustered.  Maybe that shows that under pressure, I have a better knack of switching into auto-pilot, switching to the mode that gets crap done quickly.  When I'm in leisure, I'm lazy?  Or maybe it's just that I have more time to overthink everything.  Like right now.  (I'm lying on my back on Udi and Alon's bed as they're holding a workshop in the living room about Carl Jung, listening to Jim Gaffigan/writing this blog.)

So what is it that I NEED that I'm getting out of Walkabout?  Well, I've only been here about a week and a half, and so this is probably going to change, but I feel like I'm learning how to be by myself.  I don't like it.  At all.  It gets very lonely just sort of wandering around Tel Aviv by yourself.  But then I do things/see things/hear things that make me proud of myself, things I wouldn't have been able to do with other people (example: I'm learning the bus routes.  I made a decision today as to which bus to take WITHOUT AN ISRAELI HELPING ME).

I'm a very weird person - at home, there are days where I really don't want to do anything/be with anyone and so I'll just go back to my house and be alone.  I think the thing is that I like being alone, but I don't really know how to do it properly.  I hope that this will teach me how to be alone properly - how to be my own company, my own entertainment, my own friend.  That way, when I am traveling alone again, or find myself in another country or outside of my comfort zone, I can relax and be alone and feel comfortable about it without getting too panicked or crazy.  I'm not saying I want to learn how to not have friends.  In some ways, I think being apart from my friends right now has strengthened the friendships.  I just think it's important for me to learn how to just BE without anything else.  Maybe that's the biggest thing I NEED out of Walkabout.  To learn how to be without structure.

Today I met up with Matan at Tel Aviv University.  It's a really nice place, and it had rained that morning, so the air was cool and there was a wonderful breeze.  I met Matan in the Social Sciences building, and we went down to the cafe to discuss what further work we needed to accomplish for this grant and for the website.  In the end, because my computer's internet was being finnicky (my computer does not like Israel's connections), we went upstairs to one of the building's computer labs and went online.  I showed him the progress on the website.  At the end of our meeting, he did a very Israeli handshake (I have Israeli slang in a deep voice running through my head right now, but none of you know what "hey!  Achi!" means, so never mind) and told me he was really impressed with my level of commitment and everything that I had completed so far.  He said, "We're going to run out of things to give you to do!"  I said I hoped that would be the case, because I'd rather have helped in every possible way I can to La Escuelita than sat on my butt on a computer sort of futzing around with a website only to find at the end of two months that there were a bazillion other things to do that I totally missed out on, either because communication was weird or because I was lazy.  My biggest Walkabout fear as of right now is wasting time.

The thing is, for the people who work at La Escuelita, it's not their primary job, so they have a lot of other stuff to do.  I, who have nothing else to do but go to the beach and write poetry or something ridiculous, am seeing a lull in the speed of my life.  Maybe that's a good thing?  I don't know.  Regardless, tomorrow my day is looking pretty great: I'm gunna go to the beach, come home in the afternoon and do some more website work, then make Udi and Alon tacos for dinner.  On Thursday, Avi is picking me up and his family and I are going to Jerusalem over the weekend!!!  I'm really excited.  We're going to do the ISRAEL THING, which is to do a 'ti'ul', or a day trip - pack lunch, get in the car, drive to wherever it is we're going, have a picnic, take a hike.  I think we're probably going to go to the Wall again, which is exciting.  I loved going the last time, which was over two years ago.  I'm excited to see it again.

So much has happened to me in two years, I've just realized.  So much has happened to me just in the past year, and while we're at it, let's narrow down again: SO. MUCH. HAS. HAPPENED. TO. ME. OVER. WALKABOUT.  Not just Israel - CCT included.  I had no idea how all-consuming this was going to be, how much of myself I was going to pore into all of this.  All I have to say is Thank God I have street smarts - Tel Aviv is certainly not exempt of it's fair share of Creepy People, People Who Want to Swindle You, or People Who Are Just Mean.  Should I thank my mother more than God that I have those smarts?  Who knows.

Reality Gets Better, Always

This is one very isolated glimpse of the New Central Bus Station. Imagine that in every direction, along with thousands of people, stands with purses, scarves, every kind of electronic imaginable, as well as every kind of stench imaginable.  The three rooms for La Escuelita are located on the mezzanine of the fifth floor.

Reality as it stands thus far: La Escuelita is full to the brim with volunteers and teachers.  What it really needs is money and help with administrative stuff.  I told Matan, my mentor, that I was anxious to get started.  On Saturday night, I found he had sent me three emails with stuff to do - he had attached the application form for a British grant he wanted La Escuelita to apply to, as well as several things in Spanish that needed translated to English for fundraising purposes.  The last email was about the website that I am in charge of now.

The website was ridiculously complicated, especially for my non-techy fingers.  At first, I was under the impression that I needed to download all new software in order to create this website.  I downloaded one program that wouldn't let me open any of the files.  It was about this time last night that I was sitting at my computer while Udi rubbed my back comfortingly as I stared at the screen in tears.

Today I took a bus around midday to a very hoity-toity part of Tel Aviv - close to the beach.  Alon had told me about a coffee shop on the corner of King George street called The Streets.  When I arrived, I went to the second floor of the shop where there were thousands of plugs for people to work on their homework, etc.  The shop was mainly filled with students from the university, so they were all about 25 or 26 (university starts after the army for Israelis).  I ordered a black coffee and turned on my laptop.  Because my internet wasn't working, I turned to the translation.

I sat in The Streets for four hours, and by that time, only three of the ten pages to translate were finished.  It is slow, tedious work.  It's the first time I've ever really done translation.  I now have a new found appreciation for the industry, especially for interpreters who translate for diplomats on the spot.  It takes a moment for your brain to switch from one language to another, especially when you're doing it over and over again.

After The Streets, I went to the beach again - a short ten minute walk from the coffee shop.  I think I want to make it an official routine that I go to the beach every Sunday, if not more times during the week.

I was somewhat thankful that I couldn't work on the website during the day.  When I got home and revisited the issues, I felt myself panic again.  My dad had even downloaded it to walk me through the steps (he's a bit of a techie) - but then I realized that the website Matan had sent me to to start our website was wrong!  Instead of WordPress.com, he had sent me to WordPress.org.  They're both from the same company, but WordPress.com is more of a blog center.  The cool thing about WordPress.com is that you can condition the blog page to look like a website.  I was so happy.  My dad told me it was lucky, because WordPress.org required something like a PHP reader and a MySQL platform!  WHAT DO THOSE MEAN?  My dad translated it to ultra-techno jumbo that wouldn't stand a chance on my poor little lap top.

WordPress.com is far simpler to use, and actually will be kind of fun.  I will get an introduction to web design, even if it's dragging one box to another box, which is how WordPress.com works.  What I need now is some basic information to actually put on the website.  This is stuff that I have - in Spanish - that needs translating.  Everything else I'll be able to ask Matan via email.  I do need to actually go to more classes in order to take pictures for the website, but concering my participation with the classes, I'm really not needed.  When I sat in on Friday, I felt very useless, only because it was hard for me to jump in in Spanish (I had to have this Colombian woman repeat about five times the simple question of -de donde eres) as they were speaking like Spanish speakers and it was intensely fast.  The other two classes there was nothing for me to do - with the kids there are about a million kids and about a million volunteers, and the last class is an intermediate Hebrew class with four adult students and Matan as the teacher.

I am also, as a side project that kind of ties in with Sadaka Reut, going to be interviewing Israelis and (hopefully once I make some connections with Sadaka Reut) Palestinians about their thoughts of the conflict.  I will record these interviews on my computer, then type them up and put them together as a sort of collection.  Maybe I can have people leaf through it during my symposium.  The questions include something like this:

1.      Can you explain to me the difference between being a Jew and being an Israeli?  Is there a difference?  What is the difference between patriotism in Israel and patriotism in other countries?  Is there a grander sense of ‘nationalism’ here in Israel because of the ties to religion?

 

Something like that.  My first interview is tomorrow - my mother's cousin Tali, who's actually Matan's aunt.  It's kind of a big side of the family.

I also wrote a poem when I was sitting on the beach.  I've never really written a whole lot of poetry before, but you're kind of required to be contemplative when you're on the beach, right?

Let me describe to you what I see.

Let me describe to you the laughter I smell in the waves, the faces I hear.

Let me describe to you the wind I taste and the salt I see.

Let me describe to you the sand that cakes my toes like sugar.

Have you been to the beyond?  Have you seen it's nothingness?

Have you quaked in fear at the thought of slipping off the edge and then come to realize that the "edge" is a myth?

Have you seen the reflection of my face in the water as I saw yours?

Have you stayed until only you and the sun were left, twinkling slightly off-key?

Have you gone dizzy at the sunset?  I have.  I saw you in the last rays, but you couldn't see me.  I wasn't there.

I was in the beyond, unafraid.  I'd dive into the wave and lie on top of the sky to be unafraid.

Have you been rendered speachless by the power of faith?  Or is it tradition?  I forget which one.  Whichever it is, it can be breathless.

 Have you fallen through the looking glass?  When I got there, it really wasn't all that bad.

Camera Party II

I have 98 pictures from this past week.  Great.  

From top to bottom - a picture of some flowers in Moda'in, flowers in a yard of an apartment building in Moda'in, Roni, the six year old in Moda'in, Avi, her father, the view of Moda'in from the top of a hill, the view of Tel Aviv from the window of a La Escuelita classroom in the central bus station, my friend and ally Ortal from my program two years ago, and finally Ortal, Daniel, and Adi at the Deli Cream Ice Cream store.

Lamity

As I often create words, I have created yet another: lamity.  Lamity: something that is full of lame, slightly pathetic, a little obnoxious.  As in: my week was full of lamity.

For the past two days I have been in Moda'in with family friends of mine.  Here is my impression of Moda'in: it's kind of like Oakton, Virginia (where my cousins live): there's a mall, there's a pool, there's a cinema, and there are parks, but it's full of big apartments full of people that work OUTSIDE of Moda'in.  Like Avi, for example.  He works in Tel Aviv.

On Wednesday, I slept really late and then when the kids came home from school (may I reiterate that Israeli kids get out of school at 1:00-1:30), we (that is, the kids and their mother Amira and I) went to a falafel place.  After falafel, Roni, who is six, did her homework at the kitchen table with her mother and then she and I went to a park where I took pictures and she played.  We came home, and then we all had dinner (save Yoav, who was out at a friend's house).  Then, as a family, we watched the Israeli version of Big Brother, which is huge here.  It was actually really funny.

Yesterday I pretty much wasted away the morning online/reading.  After lunch, I walked down to the mall and bought a pair of pants for myself from Fox, a pretty standard Israeli store.  (Did you know that Fox is being sued by Abercrombie and Fitch for stealing their designs?  Hopefully the pants I bought don't look TOO American...)  After my purchase, I explored around the neighborhood of Moda'in.  Moda'in is pretty much on a thousand enormous hills, so you think after you've climbed to the crest of a hill you have the down-wards to look forward to - no.  After about two seconds of a downwards decline, you have yet another incline to pant through.

While all of this is nice and domestic and uncomplicated, I am incredibly bored.  I think it was good for me to come to the Kagan household, as I feel very comfortable around them and it gave me a chance to do some things that I haven't done in a while - hang out with kids that are semi my age (the oldest is 13), see a movie (The King's Speech with Amira - very good), etc., etc. - but in general I was so bored.  I was contacted by mentor about a possible project for me with the internship - translating Spanish into English for promotional materials.  I sent him back: awesome, let's start right away.  He wrote back: what's the rush?  The rush?  THE RUSH IS THAT I AM DYING FOR SOME ACTIVITY.

I wrote to the woman I'll be working with that I'm anxious to get started and so she should email me/call me at her earliest convenience.  I figure that if it ends up that I don't have a terrible amount of stuff to do for La Escuelita, I'll talk to my mentor from Sadaka-Reut and see what I can possibly do for her in addition to La Escuelita.

Today is different - I woke up early to go to a festival at Roni's school (MEMORIES. OF. MY. CHILDHOOD. DEAR. LORD.) and now Avi is taking me back to Tel Aviv.  I'm stopping by to say hello to Udi and Alon, drop off some stuff and pick up some new stuff.  I'll go to La Escuelita for the Friday evening classes, and then a friend of mine from the program I was in two summers ago is picking me up from Tel Aviv and we are going back to Kfar Saba, her home town.  Tomorrow I am seeing everyone from that program.  It feels good to get up and do something instead of get up, laze around, and then go online (THE ONLY REASON I AM ONLINE RIGHT NOW IS BECAUSE AVI, RONI, TWO OF RONI'S FRIENDS, AND ORI ARE PLAYING A LOUD GAME OF MARIO KART ON THE WII).

I am frustrated that I don't have a lot to do but I realize that that is in my hands as something I can change.  Tonight I will talk with my mentor about when I can start on the translating project.

I did take a crap load of pictures of Moda'in (there are some really weird/interesting/ugly apartment buildings here), and so I will upload a Camera Party blogpost soon.  Until then, I will wallow in my own boredom.

In Moda'in

Yesterday I went to my internship for the first time.  It turns out that La Escuelita only has classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, even though the Israeli work week starts on Sunday and ends on Friday afternoon.  The classes are two hours long in the evening.  I went to the school on Monday evening.  La Escuelita was given space by the Tel Aviv city hall in Tachana Mercazit, which is the Tel Aviv bus station.  That place is a MESS.  It is like a labyrinth and seriously the most incredible anthropoligical study I have ever laid my eyes on.  There's an entire floor that's full of food, another floor that's full of clothes and bags, etc..  Only about three floors are devoted to actual BUSSES.  I was told to go to Gate 48.  I got SO.  LOST.  When I FINALLY found Gate 48, I had to call my mentor - not Matan, but another mentor named Liat, and she had to come and get me.  When she found me, we walked up a flight of stairs, through a door I hadn't noticed until she opened it (talk about Harry Potter esque), up another flight of stairs, and finally to what was kind of like a mezanine.  Three rooms were devoted to La Escuelita.  It is seriously in the worst place imaginable.  I don't know how the people they help even find the place.

There were about seven or eight kids there that day, all between the ages of six and twelve.  I met the teachers - two of whom I do not know their names.  One teacher introduced himself as Or, another Ofer, and then Liat.  There were five teachers altogether, and I get the impression that sometimes there are a lot more kids and very few teachers.  What I saw of the kids is mostly that they were born in Israel of Latin American parents, speak Hebrew and Spanish, but are forgetting their Spanish.  It reminds me of myself when I was their age, coming to America - I only wanted to speak English, I completely wanted to forget my Hebrew.  I told some of the kids that I only wanted to speak to them in Spanish so they didn't forget.  One of them - Michal - she was a little punk and told me she couldn't understand my Spanish and that I wasn't speaking real Spanish.  THEN SHE MADE FUN OF MY HEBREW.  What a punk.

I feel better now that I'm actually involved with my internship.  I touched base with Liat after the class was over.  I won't be back until Friday.  Liat is going to find more things for me to do - there are plenty of things to do, so I'm not concerned and neither is Liat.  It looks like I'll have stuff to do, but not on consistent days.  I might touch base with Sadaka Reut and see if there's anything I can do for them while I'm not working for La Escuelita.

Now I'm in Moda'in, which is basically a suburb twenty minutes away from Tel Aviv.  I'm staying with friends of mine from Columbus - the father was the Israeli representative for the Columbus Jewish community.  While he and his family were in Columbus, my family grew very close to them.  I am currently lying on their couch in their livingroom, typing on Ori's computer.  Amira, Avi's wife, and I have a plan to go see The King's Speach tomorrow.  When Ori and Yoav, Amira and Avi's sons, get home from school (at like, 1:30 pm, Israeli kids get out of school ridiculously early), Ori, Yoav, and Roni, Avi and Amira's one daughter, are going to get falafel at this particularly great falafel stand.

I realized that part of the reason why I felt so disconnected and homesick was because I was operating under this idea that being here meant being completely cut off from people in Columbus.  Obviously, that's such a lie.  Israeli kids get on Facebook just as much as American kids.  Reading my friend's blogs as well from Austria, Jordan, and soon Japan, that makes me feel better, knowing that they are feeling the same things as me.  I now am realizing that I can be here and do stuff here - by myself (LIKE GETTING AROUND TACHANA MERCAZIT ON MY OWN - A FEAT FOR WHICH I SHOULD GET A MEDAL), and with other people I don't really know - and then be able to talk to friends at home when I can.  This whole thing of me not freaking out anymore allows me to meet people in Israel and speak to them in Hebrew, you know - actually make connections?  Yesterday I spoke with Ofer in Hebrew until he started speaking in English so the kids couldn't understand us talking about them.  I was proud of myself that I could speak to him in Hebrew until we didn't anymore.

As I was walking from La Escuelita to the platform where bus number 34 was leaving, I bought "toast" - which was basically an enormous bagel with pizza sauce, cheese, eggs, olives, pickles, onions pressed in this small grill.  As I was talking to the guy who was making my "toast", he asked me what I was doing here (we talked half in English and half in Hebrew, so he knew I was American) and I told him I was volunteering in a school that teachers Hebrew and Spanish, and he gave me a free pastry!  He said "for you, a humble soul, anything."  I was so touched.  Way better than the guys on the beach!!!

Now I'm watching the Israeli version of Beauty and the Geek (called Ha Yafa veh Ha Chafnun) with Avi, Amira and Ori.  I feel warm and happy.