Friday, August 5, 2011

I finally saw the West Bank from my window tonight! I knew it was right over the ridge outside my window, but it's always too hazy to see at all during the day. But there's no haze at night, and I could see all the lights. I was actually quite surprised how many there were!

The Madrichim (literally "guides," they're vaguely akin to RAs but not really) organized a "practical Jerusalem tour" that we went on, just showing us the different neighborhoods, how to get there and what buses to take, where to find good restaurants or bars or markets or concerts or cheap movies or the Old City, etc. It was very useful, plus it was my first time really going into town! It made me feel much more oriented and prepared to explore the city more on my own (or with some friends, really).

One frustrating thing about moving and settling into the K'far (student village) is that we don't even know who to talk to about things or ask questions. How does the bus system work? What if our gas gets stuck on? How do we get the water to work? Where is it safe to go running? Is there a shook (outdoor market) within walking distance? Can you recycle here? Where would you buy a power converter? A building meeting of sorts would not go amiss! As an RA this past year, we gave residents a bunch of information and resources when they moved in about living in the community and such, and made ourselves available as resources to answer any questions. As it is here, in almost every regard they wait till you ask; but there are only 3 madrichim (who aren't always available anyway) for the entire K'far (which houses some 1,600 students). And as for going directly to different offices (maintenance, internet services, etc.) we don't really know where things are, signs are entirely in Hebrew and we don't have any kind of campus map, we don't know when things close here and there are always long lines at offices and departments. Our phones have been very glitchy or just nonfunctional this first week (which is right when we need all the help getting oriented, set up, and settled in), plus sometimes you don't know what question to ask in the first place, and you often don't know who you'd for a given issue. What do students do who are shy or don't know Hebrew or English? There is NO concept of customer service here.

My classmates in Ulpan include priests, monks, a diplomat, local Arabs who only know Arabic, older adults who got work here and need to learn the language, Mechina students (young adults who have decided to immigrate permanently to Israel and need to learn about Israeli society, Hebrew, etc.), and peers studying here for anywhere from one Ulpan session to 4 years. It really is quite a melting pot, which is so fascinating!

I hopped up to level Bet in Ulpan, but I'm nervous about the upcoming Aleph level exam that all Bet 1 students have to take to make sure we're actually qualified to be in Bet (especially since I placed into Aleph originally).

Some interesting things that I saw/that happened at/on the way to the shook (outdoor market) today:

• Went around with Sapir to buy everything for my first ever Shabbat dinner tonight!
• An Israeli woman helped us catch the right bus, haggle with a cab driver, advised the Jewish girls to cover up more, told us that we can get back for free within the hour on the same bus ticket, etc. It was just neat. I feel like talking to strangers is so much more common when you're a foreigner (or maybe just outside of the U.S. in general).
• God bless him, the bus driver gave me right change despite my cluelessness. That is: I handed him the 50 shekel bill that I'd gotten from the ATM, and he handed me a handful of coins in change. This was my very first time ever handling Israeli money and I wasn't about to stand there examining it to figure out how much change I'd gotten, plus I didn't know how much the bus fare was anyway, so I just said "todah" (thank you) and started walking away. Then behind me I heard "slicha" (excuse me) from the bus driver. I turned around and walked back, and he handed me a pair of 20 shekel bills. I felt so ignorant, but grateful! Be contrast, the cab driver that drove us back from the shook after shopping ripped us off; we didn't realize he'd given us improper change till he was driving away.
• What do you do when you almost collide with an older orthodox man, who's not even allowed to touch women except his wife for any reason?
• The meat vendor shouted in my face for accidentally asking how much something cost (instead of how much it weighed) thrice in a row. I already don't respond well to shouting or high-pressure situations. But I felt especially bad, though, because I really did understand that I was interrupting things. I was holding up the line, wasting his valuable time blundering around trying to figure out how to just buy some ground beef. I felt very much like a foreigner.
• There were hella Chasidim (orthodox Jews) in and around the shook. I was most especially struck by the Chasidic children: little girls in long skirts, tights, and sweaters, and little boys with tzitzit, side curls, kippot (yarmulkes), sometimes even the long black coats
• There were soldiers strolling through the shook shopping with machine guns hanging from their shoulders like it was the most natural thing in the world. Nobody batted an eyelash at this.
• The exchange rate is very hard to keep track of, plus there's transaction fees, I don't know how much the ATM fee is, and I don't know what a reasonable price is here. I think I'm already bad at handling finances and purchases, or at least I'm still struggling to figure out how to do so for myself for the first time ever.
• Bad choices: buying 30 pita and a full kilo of hummus, and NOT BUYING HALVAH!?!?!?!?! >:-{OK, here's the back story: halvah is this delicious, to-die-for crumbly almond-based dessert, very sweet and one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted. I tried it for the first time on my second night in Israel, when Sapir had some crumbled over her ice cream and let me taste it. I've been hankering for it again ever since, and there was a booth selling it by the kilo at the shook. But I didn't see it until right before we finished, so I only had enough money left to either buy some halvah or some pita. Under the pressure (the exchange rate both of money and of kilos was confusing and we had people waiting for us and had to catch a bus), I made a snap decision to buy pita instead of halvah, and as I was walking away I realized that I had bought a ton of pita already earlier and really had wanted the halvah and when will I ever get to eat halvah once I get back home to California? I should have taken advantage of the opportunity! For some reason, it really, really got under my skin that I hadn't gotten the halvah. And, for some reason, the whole experience made me the most homesick I've been yet since coming here. It was a rough evening.

But when we got home, Sapir and our neighbors set to making the Shabbat dinner, and that cheered me up for a while. It was so fun; we said traditional prayers, lit the Shabbat candles, and sang songs in Hebrew at the beginning of the meal not long after sundown. There was homemade schnitzel, challah bread, wine, potatoes, pita, hummus, Israeli salad, and so forth. We all had a great time and the festivities went on very late into the night, though I went to bed first because the homesickness flared up again and I wasn't feeling as festive by the end of the evening. But it was still a really neat supper.