It's a wonderful life

Inspired by an e-mail from my aunt (helllooooooooo Texas!!) I have decided to post on some things I may otherwise have thought un-post worthy, or at least put off until it was really too late. I am sorry that there have not been many posts in the past few days, but I have been working on a long post covering all of the birthright trip, and that has been consuming my blogging time. Also, to be honest, I have spent more time living than sitting in front of a computer lately. Oops. My bad.

Living in a house with 7 people: Let me preface this by saying I really like my roommates, and(I hope) they are quickly becoming close friends. However, our situation is increasingly growing difficult. I have lived with a large number of people before. 15, in fact. But when I lived in a sorority house, I knew the people I was living with in advance. Now, I am getting to know people AS I am learning to live with them, deal with their odd habits, disgusting or obsessive behavior (and let's be honest, them learning to deal with my oddities) and on top of it all, we are the only people we know in this town, and for the most part, the only people we can communicate with, so, we're pretty much our entire social circle. Spending 24/7 with the same 7 people you just met gets difficult. It's no surprise that 3 weeks in we're getting frustrated with each other over petty things. This dish isn't washed. You left the front door unlocked. There was no hot water and now I'm angry at everyone. In general, I think we're all simply frustrated about everything, so our general states of being are out of whack, and it's just plum difficult. I wish I had a magical switch to make everything be peachy...

The projects: We STILL haven't really started volunteering. A few of us have started going to the Ethiopian center (called the Tabage center from now on, cause that's it's name, folks) and just hanging out with the kids there until our actual projects get started, but meanwhile, it increasingly feels like we're wasting our time because we're not beginning yet. We just go to Ulpan every day and then hang out with kids. And is hanging out with kids really making a difference? I guess you could say yes because these kids are in troubled areas and being able to spend 2 hours with an American once or twice a week is probably an amazing thing to them. But it's not exactly why I traveled halfway around the world, you know?We're really only on hold because we haven't had a chance to sit down with Chava and work out the schedules (such is the way Israelis work) but we're starting to question WHEN this is going to happen because it keeps getting put off and it is frustrating. HOWEVER, the time I have spent hanging out at Tabage has been amazing. I went there yesterday for about an hour and a half during the kid's homework time and then today to help set up for a Tu B'shevat party, and the kids were just great. It's also great for me to test my Hebrew. I love just talking to them, and now that they know me a little bit, they will speak a little English, whatever they know: "How are you?" "How old?" "My name is". Kind of like when we start out in Hebrew.

Speaking of starting out in Hebrew: If anything is a ray of light it is Ulpan. I can positively tell a difference in my Hebrew. I mean, with four hours every morning for 2 weeks of Ulpan, it would be hard not to pick something up, but still. My class is entirely Russian immigrants, and I am the only one who speaks English, so if I want to talk to them, I have to speak Hebrew. At the end of the day, the teacher had me go up and the class asked me questions, such as where i came from, what i did there, why i was here. Apparently they normally do this with new students but when i first came i wasn't good enough. Anyway, so we had a question and answer session for a good 5-10 minutes and I understood everything, and could answer. I had to ask the teacher for a few words, but otherwise, I was fine. And afterwords, walking out of the class, I had an ACTUAL conversation with one of the girls in the class, not just "i live in this city" but something with substance. I am really starting to feel like I am getting this. Of course, every time I start to feel that, I learn some new rule of Hebrew that totally throws off my equilibrium (it is a kooky language), so we'll see how it all works out.

Shabbat: This past shabbat, the group went to a seminar on the different sects of Judaism in Jerusalem. We get there, and right away we go on a tour of one of the Charedi communities in Jerusalem. Charedi is ultra ULTRA orthodox, the people who live in closed off communities that devote their whole lives to study. in a lot of ways they keep media out, not like the Amish (shout out to Mally D, you Amish fiend) just because they don't want the outside world to corrupt them. We did not go into Mehah Shearim which is the most extreme of these communities, but we went to a community on the border of it. Essentially, we turned these people's lives into a tour. Granted, I did this with the Amish when I visited Mal and didn't feel as bad, but something about this just made me realize how much we were turning PEOPLE into a museum exhibit, rather than a location. Not to mention that we were improperly dressed. The girls were wearing pants, some were wearing tank tops. It's bad enough that people tour these places, but the least they ask is that you respect them and dress in a way that is appropriate to them, and we weren't. Essentially, I felt very VERY wrong about this tour altogether. After the tour, we prepared for the shabbat location of our choosing. There were a bunch of Yeshiva boys on this seminar who were going with their Rabbi to the Kotel (Western Wall), and I decided to go with them. Three other ISCers, Jon, Jessica and Angie came with, and Jess, Angie, and I were the only girls in the group. However, the Rabbi was EXTREMELY conscious of us and very welcoming and accommodating and made a point of making sure we were included. In case you weren't aware, in orthodox Judaism, men and women have to be separated in synagogues and such, and at the Kotel, the holiest place to pray in the Jewish world, there is a Mechitzah, or divider for the men's and women's side. But the Rabbi told us where they were going to be, and although most men gather in the center of the area on Friday nights, he gathered his group right next to the Mechitzah so we could be a part of it. It was really nice. The service was the most spiritually engaging one I could ever imagine. They sang with such fervor. When the prayers ended in words, they continued the tunes in "la la's" and danced in circles (we were too few and too tightly closed in around random people to dance ourselves, but watching them was nice). Since it is preferable for men to pray near the center, they were the only group joyously or loudly praying near the women, and they ended up pretty much leading the women's side. At first the women's side looked around as if to say "how dare they interrupt us?" but pretty soon everyone was joining in and singing with more feeling than you will find in any synagogue. In Israel, you see people PRAY. They do not say the words they read from a book, but rather, they PRAY. You can see their hearts coming out of their mouths, their eyes. It is actual prayer, and it is beautiful. At one point during the service, and I am totally serious, I saw a white dove fly down and land on the center of the wall. It was one of the most perfect and beautiful moments I could have imagined.

Walking back to our hotel from the Kotel, we walk uphill to be able to pass through the "Zion" gate of the old city. On the way, we run into a group of about 15-20 school children, no older than 8 years old, being led by one adult. They are singing Shabbat songs or whatever else, and the Yeshiva boys join in and start singing with them, and then start dancing. They grab hands and shoulders and walk backwards up the street to dance and sing and enjoy the shabbat. They are not worried if they will look weird holding onto a guy. They are just there. In the moment. It is the Sabbath and it is a celebration and that is all there is to it. Along with the children, we all sing "B'shanah H'bahah B'Yerusalim" (Next year in Jerusalem) and I almost cry with the realization that the last time I sang that, I was speaking the truth, and now I am here. I cannot believe I am walking the streets of the old city, singing with children welcoming the Shabbat. Is this really my life?

Tu B'Shavat: This Sunday is the Jewish/Israeli Holiday of Tu B'Shevat. It is a celebration of the trees and fruit and nature. Tu B'Shevat is the name of the holiday, but it is also the actual date (easy to remember...) Hebrew dates are counted by letter, so the date of the Holiday is the letter "tet", the letter "vav" (put together makes the "tu" sound) and then "in the month of Shevat". In celebration, you eat a lot of fruit and nuts, spend time outdoors, and the best part, plant trees! It's really amazing that in Israel, there is a whole holiday (that is widely celebrated. Arbor Day, anyone? anyone? No? Didn't think so.) devoted to beautifying the country, to planting trees, to being at one with nature for even a little bit of time. On Tu B'Shevat, we are all a little more green.
For Tu B'Shevat, I have learned, apparently you eat dried fruit. For the past week and a half every store or market you pass by has tons of dried fruit of every variety front and center. Today in Ulpan we had a Tu B'Shevat Mesibah, or party. Our teacher brought this delicious Ugaht Tahpuchim (Apple cake), and then there were plates full of dried fruits, nuts, apples, oranges, grapes...It was really great and we all sat around talking. It was here that I found out that I am not the only one in the class who doesn't speak Russian, but rather the really quiet girl who never speaks is actually from France. Everything's clear now...
After the party, the housemates and I went over to Chava's office. Across from her is one of many apartment complexes in Ramle that pretty much look like poop. They are run down, have laundry hanging all the time, the grounds are unkempt to say the least, and just everything about it screams Buford Highway complex (werd up J2! but for you non-atlantans, basically it's just very very...poor.) And a lot of the kids who live there are the Ethiopians who I work with at the Tabage center. For Tu B'Shevat, one of the projects someone came up with was to plant trees in the yard of one of the complexes here to make it a little nicer for the kids. So we all walk over and help them plant (I planted a tree in Israel!!! And that's kinda a big deal.)
After we were done planting, everyone was sitting around, talking, playing soccer with the kids, just hanging out. Suddenly, the organizer of the planting comes up to 2 of my housemates and I and says "You, English! Come here!" And we follow her. We have no idea what is happening, but after a series of events, there are posters plopped in front of us, a box of markers, and through broken Hebrew and English, we are told to write posters in protest. In protest of what you ask? Well, that's the million dollar question. Apparently there was an event happening at the center where Chava works that evening (it's a municipal building) and the building itself was supposed to have a tower of some sort put up that the neighborhood wanted to protest because they didn't want the "radioactive waves" in their neighborhood, because it would be dangerous. Because of the event, it was a perfect time to protest the tower! They thought TV stations might be coming and they wanted to have posters in the universal language, so they recruited us to write them, but we still had no idea what was going on (bear in mind, this has all been transmitted through minimal broken English, what little Hebrew the three of us could gather, and some Israelis who translated what they could.) Anyway, so we write these posters. The organizer, still trying to explain, says "Like Chernobyl!" At this point, we start to get the idea and one poster even says "Prevent Chernobyl 2". We go back out with our posters and resume our spot sitting on a wall, having no idea what is going on. After a minute or so I look on "the other side" and I turn to my house mate Juli: "Hey, quick question," I say, "isn't that the lady who OWNS OUR HOUSE?!". Quick confirmation from Juli makes us realize that we are on the WRONG SIDE of the "picket line" (OK, you can't call it a picket line because it was like 7 children half-heartedly holding up signs and every now and then chanting some stuff. We're pretty sure they just wanted the chance to be on TV. So we call Chava, who is inside the building with Erez, our program director, and ask them, A) where should we be? b) is it bad that we're over here and they're over there? and c) HELP!! So we hand our signs off to some kids (no evidence) and then Erez comes and talks to us, and we go to "the other side" (again, not really. But I did say I felt really weird about it. Especially after all my union talks in Stage Management and Production Management. But apparently protests here aren't as big of deal as in America.
Once we're with Erez and Chava, we find out the story:
An ambassador from the American Embassy is coming to the building to check it out and see what they do, so the town Mayer and some other big wigs are coming in as well, and there are newspaper cameras and such for the event. It happens. It's a town of 70,000 people. What else are they gonna do? But because of the higher ups, the neighbors wanted to protest the "radioactive" antenna that is supposed to go up in a few days.
And what is this problematic tower, causing all this ruckus and a "protest"?
A cell tower. A harmless, non radioactive, no risk of "Chernobyl" cell phone tower.
I love this country!