Yesterday, Tel Aviv--Tomorrow, Hebron

I am finally, after seven weeks in Jerusalem, starting to get out and about a bit.

Yesterday I went with Debby to Beth Hatefutsoth, the museum of the diaspora, on the campus of Tel Aviv University to meet the delegation of Israeli teachers that are leaving for San Francisco next Thursday to go visit my very own BHDS...what an intense experience. I had heard about many of these people from my colleagues who came to Israel this past summer and met them in person, and now here they all were right before my eyes. It was very strange and quite school-sick provoking to hear about Brandeis through the lens of those organizing the trip as they explained about the school I know so very well to this group of people who are almost totally unfamiliar with it. And, much to my surprise, it made me long for San Francisco and for my school and for my classroom and for my colleagues in a way that I have not yet been lonely for home in the time that I've spent on my journey so far...to the point that I got on orbitz last night to see how much a ticket would be for me to join them. $1,000 on Lufthansa? Almost unheard of to get round-trip airfare from the Middle East to the West Coast and back again for such a low price-- my ticket here for this year was almost twice that! Alas, I do not have an extra $1,000 right now and so I will remain here while they go there, me in their home while they travel to mine.

Tomorrow I am getting on an armored bus at 8:30 in the morning (got to love the armored buses) and traveling with a group of educators to Hebron, a city in the West Bank. We will participate in a program led by former Israeli soldiers of a variety of backgrounds who were stationed in Hebron during their service in the army. I have heard it can be a very powerful experience and actually on the last tour some educators attended, one of the group's guides was arrested.

We will be home by 3:00. I will report back on what I can only predict will be a fascinating experience.

My Yard

The other day I got email from a friend I haven't seen in quite some time. When I met her she lived in San Francisco but now she lives here in Israel, about a 45-minute bus ride from my house in Jerusalem. I have not seen her since I've been here. She and I are almost exactly the same age but our lives could hardly be more different.

She is married and has two-point-five kids. She owns a home and a car. She does two loads of laundry, minimum, a day. She drives preschool carpool. She goes shopping for diapers.

I am mysteriously, profoundly single and don't even have houseplants anymore. I have a legal mailing address in the States at a place where I have never lived except for the times I've slept over on the couch because I was too lonely to stay in my own apartment by myself. I have not had a car for nine months now and either take the bus everywhere or walk. Tonight before bed I washed out some clothes in the sink and hung them on the radiator. I go shopping for toilet paper, but only when I remember.

In a recent email conversation she and I were talking about traveling. Right now she is in the States visiting family and I am living here in Israel. They arrived in the Midwest with suitcases and baby seats and all the accessories of family life. I have one bag full of books and art supplies and a portable suction-cup-ended clothesline which has remained packed almost the entire time I've been here, and a massive backpack from REI. Her kids are messy and go through three changes of clothing a day. Here with me in this hemisphere, I have only five pairs of pants.

"I am so jealous of you right now..." she e-sighed the other day in one of our conversations. The expression "the grass is always greener" came to mind, as it also did when reading about Rebecca's Thanksgiving/birthday weekend back east or Aaron's amazing co-op household in Providence or Matt's potential plans for his upcoming free choice time or Laura's pie-baking escapades. And then I thought more about it, and remembered that even though it is hard or scary or confusing or sad sometimes I am actually doing, right this very instant, what I said for years that I wanted to do--leave my home to live in the world. Can I do that and at the same time want to buy cans of sweetened condensed milk and visit the deYoung and climb under the covers to read bedtime stories to a toddler all at the same time? Yes. Is the grass always greener? I am not sure that is fair, or helpful, to say. Maybe it is more true to say that we each just have our own yards, complete with flowers and weeds and stone paths and hammocks and goldfish ponds. Seeing someone else's yard can help you get ideas for your own but at the end of the day it is our own life to which we come home. I am learning about how to make my yard a place that is just right for me. I suppose perhaps we all are and I understand now why some people take such delight in gardening, because making my life the way I want it to be is really a pretty satisfying process when I stop mowing the lawn long enough to think about it.

Surreality

Three unusual things happened today:

1) I had a playdate at 3:30 with Judy, my ulpan chevruta (Hebrew class study partner), in the library at HUC on King David Street--somewhere that brings up a variety of very mixed feelings for me in the first place. While waiting for her in the commonly, famously known "comfortable chairs" at the back of the first floor behind the staircase I looked up for no reason at all and saw, seated directly in front of me, Aeli--my amazing housemate from last summer. I went and sat down with him and I don't know who was more disoriented when he looked up from the practice LSAT he was taking--him or me. We spoke only briefly because Judy and Nancy arrived, but for long enough that he explained why he is here in Jerusalem and not Nepal as he was planning to be for the exact dates I was to be in Israel and I explained what I've been doing for the past six and a half weeks. We might go have coffee sometime, I don't know. I have walked past his, our, apartment countless times since I have been here. I adore him. It is an understatement to say that this encounter with him significantly shifts my relationship to the time I am spending here. Really.

2) Walking home from ulpan I found Keren HaYesod, the large main street leading downtown, blocked by countless officers with automatic weapons. This is not entirely uncommon here but I could tell from their uniforms that these men were not police but rather were in the army which seemed somewhat unusual. I made my way through the makeshift checkpoint in the road and towards Paris Square, the enormous traffic circle a stone's throw from the Prime Minister's residence where Keren HaYesod, Azza, Gershon Agron, Rambam, and King George all meet. The streets were closed in every direction and full to overflowing with people holding signs and placards, listening to a man on a stage whose image was being projected on a massive screen above the square. Being only in Kitah Alef Ploos, I felt very embarrassed in my confusion and inability to understand what this massive assembly of people represented. I tried to read every banner I passed as I pressed on through the crowd towards Rambam Street but could only identify one word, and only that because Ido taught it to me when we saw it writ large as graffiti on a trash bin while out for a walk one night: OLMERT. Annapolis is far away, but close to everyone's hearts here right now.

3) Finally making the 15-minute walk home in just under half an hour, I unlocked the door to the apartment to find the oven turned up full blast and the Vampires in the kitchen hard at work on their latest magnificent concoction, all the while conversing passionately in a language it took me a moment to even realize I could not immediately identify. Seeing the look of confusion on my face as she raced past into the bedroom to consult a cookbook, Eva offered this as explanation: "Nous parlons Francais dans notre maison cette semaine!" We are speaking French in our house this week. Of course we are. As the common Hebrew expression asks, "Lama lo?" Why not?

"Horef" Means Winter

Regardless of what month the calendar says it is or when the solstice will be arriving, it became winter in Jerusalem last Wednesday. Morning dawned somewhat innocently, with sprinkles at the bus stop and a stiff wind on the walk to school. Lunchtime offered a tease in the form of only partly cloudy skies and even a brief appearance by the sun.

As the sun set in the late afternoon, though, the rain began to pour down with the darkness--that heavy, driving rain that really looks to the eye as if a thousand someones are standing on the rooftops with buckets and hoses. Everyone in Kitah Alef Ploos, my ulpan class, was miserable because it was very cold in our classroom and the skirt-wearing Orthodox women really felt the most entitled to complain.

During our mid-class break the need to learn two new vocabulary words became very apparent: brachim and ra'amim, lightnings (as they say in Hebrew) and thunders. Walking home from class I got a chance to see much lightnings and thunders up close and personal, something I definitely miss from my growing-up days in the Midwest. The sideways rain continued and all four of my shirts--layers, friends, in Jerusalem just as in San Francisco-were soaked through. Puddle-jumping went from something to be avoided to a fun game and I was reminded why wool has for quite some time been and ever will be my favorite fiber: it insulates while wet. I knew I packed these hiking socks from REI for a reason!

Twenty minutes later I arrived at our apartment to find a river flowing across our *indoor* patio and a pile of sopping shoes on the plastic deck chair next to the door. Dripping my way inside, I made it no further than the dining room before peeling off everything I was wearing and spreading it out across the floor in front of the salon. Fortunately I made it into my room and into my robe before any of my housemates caught me undressed but no matter because ten minutes later when Eva came home from class the scene repeated itself, all of standing right there in the hallway trying to get the radiator to work. You know those French girls--they're not embarrassed about anything like that! The pile of wet clothes on the floor doubled in size.

So today I was out walking and came upon the ONE, the ONLY recycled clothing store in Jerusalem (how am I getting dressed every morning in conditions like this? I actually bought a pair of pants at--gasp!--the MALL for the first time in what, probably seven or eight years?). Draw inside like a moth to a flame it took only moments for me to find a pair of brand-new, olive green leather Italian boots in my size. It was that or the black 3/4 length Doc Martens, a tough call until I realized the green ones were lined and the black ones--too big anyway--were not. I was nervous about spending the money since I have not yet gotten paid for the teaching work I've been doing and the groceries for yesterday's Thanksgiving dinner were kind of expensive, but I channeled my mother and knew she would not want me walking around with cold, wet feet. Sold, for 100 shekels.

Dining With The Vampires

I have lived at my new house for one week now with Chanah and the Vampires (sounds like a retro 50's band!). Chanah is the Polish niece of the French woman, Aya, who is living overseas this year and renting out her flat as a result. Chanah is a full-time university student with five part-time jobs so we see little of her but what we do see is very sweet and generous. She is also our household manager so in addition to studying and working she helps with things such as the heat not being turned on when the landlord says it will be and the like. The Vampires, introduced to me as such by one of their own on my very first trip here, are Kenneth the journalist and writer from Norway and his partner Eva the human rights legal consultant from France. The Vampires are awesome, very friendly, and like to go on field trips so we all run around and see new things a lot. Another hallmark of the Vampires is that they love to cook--for them, for others, for everyone. Twice since I've been here I've come home at the end of a long day to find these things waiting for me: leek quiche with Arabic salad salty broccoli cheese crepe with empty crepes and chocolate sauce for dessert Yes, my pants still fit...but not for long is my prediction.

Garlic

Two of my housemates are sick. Not just stuffy head, runny nose sick but hacking cough, up-all-night-fever kind of sick.

I refuse to get sick. Refuse. I am not going to do it. This is the first time in twelve years that I am not getting coughed and sneezed and breathed on constantly by every sick kid in my class, this is the one opportunity I have to be free of the bacteria-smeared papers my students turn in to me and the virus-ridden doorhandles in my classroom. No no, no siree. I am not getting sick this year.

Plus my health insurance here is really terrible, but don't tell my parents or my grandmother because they will all get sick themselves, with worry though.

So how am I avoiding illness? Every single way I can think of:

*Airborne, grapefruit flavor
*Berroca (imported from Australia by Sharon-thanks mate!)
*Emergen-C that Debby wisely brought
*Rebecca's herbal Wellness preparation
*liters and liters of orange juice

and, most pleasant for those around me...

*garlic. So much garlic. Like, entire cloves at a time, just eaten raw. Hey, I've gotten pneumonia four of the past seven winters so I am not taking any chances. I remember once, when I was recovering from pneumonia #3, Batshir told me that I should take garlic as it is a very powerful anti-infective so at the first signs of heaviness in my chest two nights ago, after my housemates had been sick in bed all weekend, I marched right into the kitchen and peeled a clove of garlic and stood over the sink and ate the whole thing. It was not pleasant but strangely I could feel it working right away, a warm expanding energy in my lungs as the bulb overpowered the bacteria.

Two nights later, the housemates are still sick and I am still stinky--but illness free, for now anyway.

Learning

Two nights a week I go to Hebrew class in an ulpan at the Jerusalem campus of Hebrew Union College, the Reform movement's institution for training clergy and Jewish educators. I am in Kitah Alef Ploos, First Grade Plus, not Kitah Alef where they are still practicing the alphabet and just got their textbooks last week and not Kitah Gimel where they have to accurately read and animatedly discuss long texts. I am right in the middle.

My teacher's name is Leah and she is wonderful. The class had already been meeting for a few weeks when I joined and in the first session one of the students, now a friend of mine, had a very bad cold so Leah was instructing us on what to say when someone sneezes. It is not what most people do say because it seems that what most people do say is grammatically incorrect and so Leah was teaching us the correct construction. "But what you're teaching us sounds wrong. NO ONE says it that way," a woman in the class complained.

"What? The whole world is wrong. That means I have to be like them?!" Leah asked in disbelief. What a fabulously teacher-y thing to say. I fell in love with her immediately.

Teaching

In response to the often-asked question, yes--I am still teaching. Two days a week I work as an English teacher in East Jerusalem's French Hill neighborhood at the Frankel School, a member of the TALI schools movement. My students are in grades four, five, and six. I do not teach the kids who are native speakers of English but I do not teach the kids who know only Hebrew and no English at all. I teach the kids in the middle.

I myself am only in First Grade Plus when it comes to speaking Hebrew (further explanation forthcoming). So how does it work for me to teach Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Grade you might ask? Patience, picture-drawing, pantomime, and frequent use of the Hebrew-English dictionary.

My students like me because I let them use art and actions to explain what they mean instead of yelling at them that they should already know these things by now, like some of the other English teachers do. They like me because we play games and read about cool places like London and interesting people like The Simpsons. For the most part, when they are not yelling at each other or at me, I like my students too.

It is not like teaching at Brandeis, that is for sure.

Fun Size

For being an adult, I am not very big. I will spare you the details of height and weight but suffice it to say that I have on more than one occasion gotten dressed in items from the BHDS lost and found, the original owners of which are 14 at the oldest. Many people find this information about my size surprising, since I talk a lot and have a very energetic personality, but it is true. I am, as someone I loved very much used to call me, Fun Size...you know, like the little candy bars you get on Halloween. Not the entire Snickers, just two bites or maybe three, enough to let you know you had a special treat.

Much is happening in real life, little is getting written so I bring this up as a segue into a new style I'm going to try implementing here. Gone for now are the epic narrative posts that take 45 minutes to compose and almost as long to read. Making their debut are little post-ettes, snacks instead of banquets, waves instead of oceans. You know, Fun Size posts.

School

Someone who reads this blog sent me email the other day, asking "Why don't you ever write about *school*? You are still teaching, aren't you?"

Yes, yes I am...in a very different place and a very different way than I have been the past six or even twelve years. And as I look back over what I have written here I see that I have not said much about it, which does not mean there isn't much to say. Quite the opposite, actually. So tomorrow as I am eating a bowl of miso soup and drinking a cup of chai tea and tying my adorable haircut back with new hairties and moisturizing my skin while protecting it from the sun with all the amazing things Matt sent in the supplies drop, which arrived today, I will write to you about school in greater detail.

In case you were wondering what I was doing all summer...

I drank too much chai tea at Shabbat dinner tonight which meant that even though it was late when I got home, I couldn't sleep. I decided to wander around the Internet in an attempt to cure my insomnia and while doing so found this picture of Yossi and I leading services at Camp Tawonga last July. Yes, this is one of the many reasons I abandoned my urban-hipster life to go live in the woods for ten weeks.

Looking California, Feeling Minnesota

That is the state of affairs here right now. A reference to the song by Soundgarden, the expression describes a time when someone looks fabulous on the outside, fresh and free-range and organic like California, but feels awful on the inside, humid and mosquito-ridden or cold and slushy like variations on the theme of Minnesota.

The past day or so have been just like this for me. Abandoning as I have the light, loose, layer-y wardrobe of I've worn so far in Israel due to the sudden cold snap (!) the past two days have been very California from a fashion standpoint: a cozy-yet-modern parade of North Face fleece and Gap turtlenecks and Benetton cardigans and Banana Republic jeans and REI wool socks and Keens from Rabat on 24th Street. Rounding out the look has been the Timbuk2 bag and the single most resounding proof that I'm from the States--the aforementioned iBook, a complete anomaly here. So my cover is blown, no matter how Jerusalem I've tried to be in appearance it is very clear from my look that no matter how hard I try to hide it, I am 100% from California.

At the same time I have been sick with what feels like some torture-inducing Middle Eastern version of the Ebola virus, eating only toast with salted butter and drinking only tea for the past three days, never really hungry and always kind of floppy and feeling very Minnesota indeed. A field trip to the roof of the university with Ido yesterday to view the entire expanse of landscape, from Gilo to the desert and the Mount of Olives almost to Tel Aviv, rallied my spirits but otherwise it has been an underwhelming few days.

On The Move

I am packing, again, like all the others times I've packed and unpacked and repacked lately. I packed in June and moved out of my apartment on Judah Street, putting most of my things into storage and taking three bags of clothes and a few boxes of books to camp. I packed in August, twice, making two trips from camp back to the East Bay and moving more stuff into storage while at the same time moving myself into the extra bedroom at Mark and Rebecca's (bless them). I packed and unpacked and repacked, things to stay in Alameda all year and things to come with me to Africa in February and things to come to New Hampshire for the wedding and things to come with me to Israel, and I left Berkeley with two bags and a daypack. I unpacked everything again in Waterville Valley, all over the extra bed in my bedroom at Rebecca's family's home there, and I left a bag of things behind to be brought back to Berkeley at some point. All that was left I packed into my suitcase and my REI backpack, weighed it with the help of Ido, prepared to pay the overweight baggage fee, and left for Israel.

I have been in Jerusalem exactly five weeks. Tonight as I get off the bus to go to ulpan it will be the same time of evening that I got off the sherut (shared van from the airport) and piled my bags onto the curb of HaHaganah Street and called Debby and Tal to come down from the apartment and get me. And, tonight, I am packing again.

Tomorrow I am leaving for my own apartment, the one I will share with Hana from Poland and Kenneth from Norway and Eva from France from now until either February if I do go to Africa and May if I don't (which is starting to look like a very disappointing possibility...another post for another time, that subject). Tonight I will sleep here with my view of the bluffs of Jordan and my view of the Dead Sea, with my bags packed and ready to move once again in the morning.

I spent the first seventeen years of my life living in exactly the same house--the same bedroom for most of the time, even, interrupted only by the arrival of my brother Nathan and the need to move down the hall to make room for our new baby. Same address, same phone number, same quiet dead end suburban street. Since then I have moved countless times: Iowa, back to Illinois, Iowa again, southern California, the south Bay, Fell Street, Geary Boulevard, Judah Street and on from there from June until now. While hanging up the laundry today I realized that my blue-striped robe, flapping in the Jerusalem breeze, was purchased ten years ago when I was living in Rancho Cucamonga--ten! I stopped to think of all the places I've lived since, most of which I could not begin to even imagine at that time, and then of course I wondered where I will live as the next decade unfolds. I think it is fair to predict that I will be on the move. Maybe my semi-nomadic existence can be attributed to the fact that I was almost a gypsy girl--have you heard the story of my father being nearly kidnapped as a very young boy by a gypsy woman who tried to take him on a bus until my grandfather knocked her onto the sidewalk, grabbed my dad, and ran all the way home? No? Ah, it's a good one. Maybe once I settle in at my newest new house I'll tell you all about it.

How do you say "I'm growing it out" in Arabic?

Last week, for Shabbat, we all decided to get our hair cut. Debby and Tal went on Thursday night and I went on Friday morning and by sundown Erev Shabbat we all looked fabulous.

The salon, Venus, is right across the street and the three Arab men who cut hair there are all brothers. Tabeht, my stylist, does not speak English. I speak no Arabic at all and the Hebrew I do know does not include "Just a trim, please." So, Debby went with me and an entire conversation took place between she and Tabeht which involved lots of pointing at my head. Satisfied that she had communicated her point, Debby sat down with her coffee and I sat down at the shampoo bowl. If this year is about letting go of control, among other things, my haircut was about to be a hallmark experience. The long-ish pieces falling to the floor were alarming at first but Debby, catching sight of my worried face in the mirror, laughed and reminded Tabeht that I still wanted to be able to pull it all back. He nodded and continued slicing away.

Thirty minutes and some vigorous blow-drying later, I paid my 150 shekels and we were on our way to run a few final errands before Shabbat that night. The first store in which we stopped, a funky boutique full of the famous ultra-wide-leg Israeli pants and the wrap-around ballet-style shrug sweaters made famous at BHDS by Ms. Hineman, was full of stylish women shopping and as soon as we walked in I got a compliment on my hair. Had Tabeht and this shopkeeper planned it?! Or, was my hair just fabulous? I prefer to think the latter. I now have a great style which, in keeping with the directions, can be pulled back into the shortest ponytail the world has ever seen. Let's hear it for Arab-Israeli relations, right here on my head.

Falling Behind, Catching On

It has been a few days since I have written with news of my adventure and anyone who checks in with any regularity knows that means I am falling behind.

In truth I think I am writing this post not to tell you that I am catching up but rather that I am catching on...catching on to real life in Jerusalem, to setting up a schedule for myself, to doing ulpan homework and making enormous delicious salads for Motzai Shabbat dinner and lying in a hammock as the sun sets watching bare branches make shadowed patterns against the pale November sky.

So yes: I have stories of supplies request lists submitted to be airlifted from Walgreens to East Jerusalem, of non-verbal Arab haircuts, of the amazing Keshet School I went to see today, of Jerusalem's first autumn rainstorm, of going halfway around the world to eat the oh-so-American Ben and Jerry's with a not-so-new Israeli friend...but for now there is Hebrew homework to be done and laundry to be hung up on the new fold-out indoor drying rack and dinner to be had at the home of family down the street. Falling behind in writing, catching on in life. I'll catch up here soon enough.

Zohar Sweet Zohar, or There's No Place Like Home

Breathe with me a sigh of relief--I have found my apartment here in Jerusalem. For the past month now (I arrived four weeks ago, a totally incomprehensible concept to me) I have had an amazing, albeit temporary, housing situation with a family I know who is also here for the year from San Francisco. We have all had fun and it's been so, so great to be with people I know and I am so glad I've had a chance to help them out at least a little bit I hope. And, all that said, it has not been very fun to spend so much time now that I am actually here running around town on the bus looking at various rooms for rent throughout the city.

So, last week when I received email from a woman named Aya in response to a post I had placed advertising my need for a furnished room to rent I was somewhat doubtful that this, like any other place I'd gone to see, would pan out...but her words were so charming: "I read that you are looking for a place to live for awhile. Perhaps you would like to come join our apartment?"...as if it were a mah-jong club or yoga class. Intrigued, I went to see it and could hardly believe what I had found. How did I know it was the one for me?

I met Hana, the landlord's niece and resident of the office, and Kenneth and Eva, the other two housemates who are partners and live in the actual bedroom, and also Artur who thanks to his departure has made the salon available for me to rent. I saw the fully-equipped kitchen, the warm common dining room, the vine-draped porch and the tiny yet lovely garden, and then we went on a tour of everyone's rooms.

We peeked into the first two but stepped all the way into the third, into the room where Artur was packing up and making things ready for the next renter and as I looked around I was intrgued by the moss green velvet sofa-slash-fold out bed and the upright piano in the corner. "It's really lovely," I began to say as I turned to Hana and Kenneth who were standing in the doorway, but the words left my mouth and I found myself standing agape at something I had not been able to see when just peeking in from the hall. Lining the wall was an entire floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcase full of, well, everything...and as if everything were not enough, right in front of me at eye level was the entire 23-volume set of the Zohar. "You have the Zohar, the whole thing," I stammered. "Ah, yes!" Hana exclaimed delighted, "unusual, no?"

I agreed to take the room right then and there.

What You Think You See Isn't Always What You Get

More so than any other time in the past that I've lived here, that I've lived anywhere in the world, I am acutely aware of what others think of me. Not in that middle-school, "Does she think I look fat? Does he think I look cute?" kind of way but just in the projection of self into perception of other kind of way.

There are all kinds of cultural cues here which I do not even begin to understand. Secular Israelis are pretty sure I'm one of them, spotting me as they do in my daily tank top, yet are confused by either the watermelon kippah (!) or the long-sleeve shirts I wear to school every day in keeping with the modesty of teachers here despite the still-scorching heat. Religious Jews observe my signature skirt-over-pants approach to fashion, hipster as it is in San Francisco and Orthodox as it is here, and are almost certain they've found one of their own until they find the other clues that instantly and with certainty prove them wrong.

So there are the attributes of myself and my personality and my choices that I try to express to the world around me using this intricate system of mysterious cues, most of which I do not understand, and then there are the attributes which others assign to me based on elements of my appearance or actions which I don't even know communicate information within this culture, any of which may or may not be true.

*sigh*

It is enough to say the least so one day every week I give myself permission to completely embrace my true identity and express myself as 100% "Amerikai", a term my students use to describe me...or maybe not even 100% Amerikai, which would imply red-white-and-blue tshirts and a Star Spangled Banner ringtone (overheard on the #19 bus the other day) but more like 100% Myself. My Myself day this week was Sunday, and I wrote the following entry in my journal describing a snapshot of my experiences. The new undictionary word that I've coined at the end of the entry describes my six-year-old laptop that moves at dinosaur speed most of the time....

i am sitting on the deck of the "aroma" coffee shop in east jerusalem just outside the gate of the university...doing my homework and drinking espresso and still kind of marvelling at the fully-garbed muslim women sitting on one side of me and the israeli soldiers in full uniform carrying
automatic weapons sitting on the other side. "yesh li neshek?" the guard who searched my bag before i came in asked me. "do you have a gun?" because it is fully allowed and for people who are still completing their army service, even if they are not on active duty, it is required..."lo, lo ha yom," i replied. no, not today.

the song _crazy_ by gnarles barkley is playing over the sound system and i am thinking so much about home and my friends, wondering how and where they are and hoping they are okay and just adoring and missing so much of the life i've left behind for now

and as a total aside, as if the chacos and rei backpack and timex sports watch and h&m jeans and forever 21 sunglasses and and and don't give me away as american, the ibook totally does...no one uses macs here except americans, they are neither sold nor tech-supported so i get a lot of weird looks when using the ibookasaurus. who ever thought that everything about me would be foreign in the way that it is now, here in a place where so many people feel at home?

Authentic Language Instruction, Media-Style

Last week I decided to invest a significant amount of my budget for the Israel component of my year-long adventure in a twelve-week ulpan, or Hebrew language immersion course. I have done ulpan once before, last summer in a very intense program at Hebrew University, and came away with what Rebecca called a very Buddhist knowledge of Hebrew: I knew only the present tense of every verb, so I was only able to talk about what was happening now. Enlightened, but not always so helpful...

Over this past year, as bilingual as I want to be in Third Grade, I have used my Hebrew less than I hoped and as a result came to Jerusalem three weeks ago having forgotten much of all I toiled to learn in summer school. Realizing my day-to-day interactions with the woman behind the cheese counter at the grocery store across the street or the men who own the falafel restaurant down the road were not going to significantly boost my literacy I decided to join the evening ulpan at Hebrew Union College, and now every Monday and Wednesday I am a student in Kitah Alef-Ploos, not just First Grade as I was in before but First Grade PLUS this time--mitzuyan!!

Yesterday, however, the single most significant boost to my language acquisition came when Debby's mom Roz installed a set of 1950's-era rabbit ears in our living room. Now I can learn Hebrew the way visitors and new immigrants across the globe acquire language: from television. Of course one of the only things on this evening was a press conference with Ehud Olmert, Tony Blair, and Condoleeza Rice in which after the Israeli spoke ever-poetic Hebrew and the Brit addressed the assembly in the Queen's English, the diplomat from Washington apologized via a translator for "speaking American." Sigh.

Quote of the Day

Yesterday morning Edan was sitting on the couch, putting on his Air Jordans and getting ready for school. "Sarah?" he asked, pointing to my black Dansko clogs that had been left by the door instead of put away when I got home late Thursday night. "Are those your shoes?"



"They are," I admitted, sheepish at having gotten caught being messy when I am the one in our household constantly encouraging others to pick up after themselves. "I will put them away before I go to school."

Unconcerned about my tidiness and now totally distracted from the process of putting his own shoes on, Edan was thinking about something else entiretly. "Those shoes look like the perfect teacher shoes--so comfortable. Are they?"

"Totally comfortable," I affirmed.

Nodding with satisfaction that his perception had been correct, Edan returned to lacing up his sneakers. "That's so nice that they let you keep your teacher shoes and bring them here to Israel even though you're not working at Brandeis this year," he said. And I quote...

As if somehow Danskos are school-issued to teachers, like textbooks or laptops or soccer uniforms are to students. Great idea, actually, if you ask me.

Halloween, Israeli-Style

Last night at ulpan (my registration for and participation in which is another story entirely) I was sitting next to my study partner for the night, David, and during a break in the action he passed me his digital camera. "Want to see the world's worst Halloween costume?" he whispered.

David and his wife Rina got here to Jerusalem the day before I did, exactly three weeks ago, also from San Francisco. She is an attorney at the office of the United States consulate and he is a house-husband as he says and they are here for two years, but not like me--here for real. They shipped their household goods and their car (with California license plates!) and they are living in the house provided for them as a benefit of her position. Such grown-ups. Although while they might be here for real, with all their own bedsheets and books and board games and bathroom stuff I do feel more local and savvy than they are in one way: they are Not Allowed To Take The Bus, while I take it all the time. Yes.

All that aside, there is one more person in their family who is here with them--their seventeen-month-old son, who spent his second Halloween trick-or-treating from office to office at the consulate dressed as...well...

"He looks like a member of the KKK," Anne who was sitting on the other side of David remarked under her breath. "What kind of get-up is that, what is he supposed to be?"

As anyone who knows me--me who has been kicked out of yoga class for laughing too loudly--at all might guess, that was enough to get me started and our cover of discussing verb conjugations was blown by the teacher insisting everyone get to see the photo. Yes, the teacher echoed, what is that outfit anyway?

"We kind of forgot it was Halloween at all without the pumpkins for sale at the gas station and the selection of shlocky costumes available at the grocery store," David confessed sheepishly, "so we put a pillowcase over his head and pinned the corners together, then cut holes so he could see and breathe."

"Oh! He's supposed to be a ghost, not a Klansman!" Seth exclaimed proudly. "Did you guys get some good candy, at least?"

"i dreamed last night that sarah came back..."

A recent email quote from my life in Berkeley and the second dream in two days, in fact. This one came today from Mark via Rebecca and yesterday's came via Facebook from Sharon.

I have been dreaming quite a bit myself lately, something I notice always happens in Israel so much more vividly than it does in the States. Not about going back, not about anything really. Kind of like real life.

One of Those Days

Today was one of those days. You know, Those Days. Those

"I don't have an apartment still after three weeks of looking, and...

I haven't found my friends or community here yet, and...

I got yelled at by not only my students but also another teacher at school today, and...

How much money do I have left for this whole adventure anyway? and...

My head hurts and my back is sore and my belly aches and my nose is runny, and...

I am hungry for miso soup and getting sick of humus, and..."

kind of days.

Even if you have never had *this* day specifically, you probably understand what I mean. So what did I do? The most productive, efficient, reasonable thing I could think of given the circumstance: I went up to the roof, sat down on the ground and cried.

Where is the adventure, the romance, the beauty, the insight that comes from being on a journey? That is what authors describe and movies depict, a completely revelatory experience...which I am sure I would be having right now if I were not spending hours each day on the bus going to see apartments halfway across town that are either completely out of my price range or a million miles from everything. I just want to amaze myself with all the new things I'm doing--like Rebecca with her writing and her ballet slippers and her sewing machine and her fire-dancing--but I've ridden the bus countless times before in San Francisco, I didn't need to come halfway around the world to experience the delight that is public transit. Did I really risk almost everything to find my way here, only to sit on my roof and cry?

Actually, maybe, yes. Some do say that there are clues everywhere, you know. I recognize that traveling can be exhausting sometimes, in every sense of the word, and today was just very tiring for me. If I could only get one of these things under control--housing, work, community, finances, love life, health, appetite--I would feel much more powerful right now.

Did I mention the recent unrest in Gaza? No, I don't think I did. Because that is not a factor in any of this at all.

*sigh*

Lailah tov m'Yerushalayim, kulam...good night from Jerusalem, everybody. As Bob used to say, "everything changes with the passage of time." Will everything get fixed overnight? Maybe not, but likely things will improve sooner than I think. That is what I am telling myself, anyway.