4 Aleph!

Yesterday was one of the most frustrating days since we've been here (which is surprising considering how frustrating move-in day was) but it was also one of the most rewarding.

I started the day feeling homesick and exhausted- not a great way to feel at 8am on my walk to Ulpan. But class was pretty good- there's something I'm starting to really like about being surrounded in Hebrew 5 hours a day, or at least I find comfort in it somehow. The one problem with class yesterday was that I managed to run into people from the ortho house (It's kind of a long story, but on friday night we were dragged to this Jewish student center house for kiddush and dinner and then guilted into going for dinner the next night. The people who run the center love to guilt trip and are quite religious so we fondly refer to the place as the ortho house) every time I left my classroom. They are nice but pushy, and I can't deal with pushy people.

Highlight of Ulpan: we talked about the fake debate over whether or not to make the word for computer male or female (in Hebrew all nounse have a gender). The female side of the argument wanted the word to be male and the first fake reason in the fake debate is roughly translated as: "the word for computer should be male because in order to get to its heart/ to get it to do what you want, you have to turn it on." Oh, Israelis....

After Ulpan I finally got to take care of some things- I sent postcards, set up my computer account on campus, bought my textbooks, and got some snacks. Samantha introduced me to this chocolate with pop rock type stuff inside- as if pop rocks weren't trippy enough by themselves, and it's pretty delicious too. Then I went to the dorms and finally got my internet set up- probably the most exciting part of my day- so find me online or on skype- I want to talk!

Since we were feeling so accomplished- we decided to make out way to Malkha Mall- the biggest mall in Israel (where we went last week) to get things we still needed. We knew what line we needed to take to get there and we thought we knew what side of the road to catch the bus on. We waited for about a half an hour for the bus to come and got very excited for our trip.(My apartment-mates waiting for the bus the first time- when we were still optimistic and liked each other)

About 5 minutes later we found ourselves in the main building of Hebrew U with the bus driver telling us we had to get off. We went around to the other side of the bus terminal at Hebrew U and waited another 30 minutes for the bus to come back going the other way. By that time it was rush hour in Jerusalem and we spent an hour and a half or so getting to the mall. It was an interesting ride at first because we rode through some really religious neighborhoods and I people watched, but it soon got long and frustrating. We finally got to the mall with less than 2 hours until closing and we were already exhausted. We did quick runs into office depot and a home depot-esq store and then had dinner and were back at the bus stop. We waited another half hour for our bus home and when it still didn't come, 3 of us decided to take a cab back. The ride was only 15 minutes! The two that took the bus back finally got home an hour after us.

Remind me never to experiment on public transportation again.

Tonight I'm going to Tel Aviv! Very exciting!

Pictures!

Me and my apartment-mates (left to right): Amelia, Me, Kira (who looks really happy), Erica, and Samantha.

View of the old city on our walk to Shabbat Services.

My room! It's a lot messier at this moment, but this is it at it's best. Highlights: my cool Israeli bedding, wall of pictures, and, of course, Chilo.

My desk area- with my homemade calendar and favorite pictures!

My first Shabbat in Israel was pretty uneventful. I slept until noon, but could have slept much later. I spent the rest of the day making my room beautiful. I put up pictures, cleaned, and made my very handy calendar. It was a good day, but in general I don’t really like sleeping in that late because it makes me feel like I have lost a whole day.

(pretend that there is a picture of me and my roommates here, I've tried to upload it 3 times, but I think I need a stronger internet connection to do that... oy)

I suppose now that pictures are here it is a good time to talk about my apartment-mates. First there’s Kira- she’s the slightly short one with long dirty blond hair. Kira was the first person I met on this trip, she stood in front of us while we were in line to check in. Pretty exciting. She’s quiet but very sarcastic, and she’s a junior studying international relations at the University of the Pacific in California. Next there’s Erika, the one with short blond hair, who I also met in the airport before we left for Israel. Erica is from Tokyo, and everyone here gives her this really weird look when she tell them that, like it never would have crossed their mind that though she’s obviously not ethnically Japanese, she or her parents have lived there for some amount of time, she goes to school there, and thus she is from Japan. I’m surprised she puts up with it so well. Erica is taking a gap year between high school and starting College at Oberlin next fall. My third apartment-mate is Samantha- she has long brown hair and bangs. Samantha is originally from California but lives in North Carolina now and is going to be a junior at Syracuse. Fun fact: me and Samantha have the same Hebrew name, Shimona! Lastly there’s Amelia- she joined our apartment late, but we’ve been getting along well. Amelia is from New Jersey, she spent last spring’s semester on another program in Israel, and she’ll start at Brandeis for second semester this year.

I like my apartment-mates a lot because their very chill and we have a lot of fun together. They are all very sweet, and also have their specific quirks, which keeps things interesting.

So I’m sitting alone in my room unsure of what to do with my Saturday night. To be honest, there’s not much to do tonight, because right as Shabbat ended, Te’sha be’av started. I’m not incredibly familiar with Te’sha be’av, but from what I’ve figured out it’s the day that marks the destruction of the second temple. A group of people were going down to the kotel (western wall) tonight to welcome Te’sha be’av in, but Samantha and I decided to skip that activity. I know it’s a holiday that religious Jews take very seriously, but it’s not one I grew up with and don’t really feel a connection to it.

Tonight we went to dinner at the Jewish Student Activity center place and one of the adults there gave a d’var Torah (commentary on the weekly Torah portion). He ended his talk with a comment about the day the messiah will come, which he hopes will be very soon. This interested me, because I feel like I practice a form of Judaism that rarely if ever mentions the coming of the messiah. I understand the concept, and know that as Jews we are still waiting for the coming of the Messiah (unlike Christians, for example), but it is not a thought that ever really enters my mind, nor do I remember talking much about it at Schechter. I don’t think I even fully understand the concept of the messiah. Will he/she come when the world is at it’s lowest, or when we’ve “proven” that we deserve his/her arrival? Why would anyone come to save humanity now, when we are so undeserving- or is that the point exactly?

Chiri biri biri biri bom

Shabbat Shalom!

I'm exceptionally excited that wireless is working by the playground now. Especiallly since the psycho internet man refuses to call me back or set up my internet... booooo.

Shabbat in Israel is such an interesting experience, and it's not even saturday yet. Today in Ulpan we had a Shabbat song sing-a-long. I felt like I was in camp again. I had forgotten how much I love singing Jewish songs, though I felt bad for the non-jewish students (and there are quite a few), there's no way they would have known all 11 songs we sang today. Through everything I learned in Schechter and in the Hebrew program at Carleton, I got the impression that most Israeli's, with the exception of the Hasidic Jews, were relatively secular. I even remember learning a word for secular in Hebrew, though of course, it evades me now. However, Israel takes Shabbat very seriously. The buses stop running 2 hours before the start of Shabbat and all stores close by then and do not re-open until saturday nights, maybe. It feels both incredibly restricting and relaxing at the same time. I know that right now me and my roommates are incredibly thankful for Shabbat and the chance to clean our apartment, sleep in, make pancakes, and watch the second half of Aladdin (we were too tired to finish it tonight).

Today, in preparation for Shabbat we took the bus into the main part of Jerusalem to go to the Shuk- the market. It was a really cool experience, and one I definitely want to repeat. The market was full of people getting food for Shabbat and there were vendors lining both sides of the path selling fruits, vegetables, candies, meats, olives, fish, breads, pastries, everything. I bought a strange combination of candy, figs, olives, and breads, and I got to practice my Hebrew (though the Israeli's can pretty much see through me before I can say 'shalom'.

Speaking of Hebrew, hearing it is becoming completely natural now. I don't have to watch my ulpan teacher anymore to understand everything she is saying, and I barely consciously translate anything she's saying unless it's new vocabulary. I'm also getting much more brave when it comes to asking anyone anything in Hebrew. I'm sure part of that is the Ulpan, and the other part is that I'm the designated one among my friends to talk in Hebrew since I supposedly know the most. It's worked out relatively well so far.

Back to Shabbat. We attempted to be really good Jews today and went to a Shabbat service we had heard about. The problem: it was an orthodox service, and women were sent to the back of the room. It was horrible. We couldn't hear anything and hardly any of the women participated in any of the prayers. We just sat there behind a screen watching and listening to the men pray and trying to catch something to tell us what prayer we were on. Women in incredibly restricting sects of most religions often claim that it feels safe, respectful, even holy- I just felt neglected.

After the service we got stuck in some awkward situations with these two orthodox women trying to get us to come to shabbat dinner, and finally made it home to our apartment where we sang shabbat songs really loudly and made dinner, said all of the appropriate blessings, and watched part of Aladdin.

I'm excited for the chance to perfect my room tomorrow, upload the pictures I've taken so far, and post pictures of the apartment here, hopefully!

I miss you! Shabbat Shalom!

Mail!

I've been asked about my mailing address and secretly want tons of mail- so here it is.

This will be my address until the end of september- I'll write to update you on my new one after that.

Abigail Malis
c/o Ulpan
Rothberg International School
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Boyar Building, Mount Scopus
91905 Jerusalem, ISRAEL


excitement.

Money Money Money Money, Money!

Until now, I never realized how little money I spend when I'm at Carleton. Honestly, we rarely go out to eat, I go to the grocery store to buy breakfast food and a few snacks once a week, and everything else I need is included in simply being there.

Here I kind of feel like if I'm not in class learning Hebrew for multiple hours or in my room doing hours of homework for hebrew, I'm spending money. At the gym, for a membership, at the store, for groceries and other necessities, for dinner and snacks and office supplies. oy. I take too much for granted.

Thus I have decided that we need an apartment meeting this weekend- I'm going to make a reminder on a post it and put it on our fridge. I already promised my roommates we could have a snack and color during our meeting- study break, anyone? I think we're going to talk about making meals and budgeting, and, of course, traveling.

I'm on some kind of high right now- it might be the endorphins or the fact that I am online, both of which I don't think I've experienced for a few days. Also, have I mentioned that I can see the old city on my walk to class every day?

Expect another post tomorrow- and pictures this weekend!

Finally! Internet!

The internet situation has not really settled itself out here yet, thus the delay in any sort of communication with anyone.

So this post will probably be much less detailed than I wanted it to be. But once we actually get the internet connected in our apartment I will try to write daily so there won't be, as trent says, "massive unreadable posts."

If you guys want to get in touch with me, I will probably love you forever. E-mail is the very best, Skype will also be good, once I get internet in my room. The phone also works- and it definitely won't charge you for the international call, just a local one. The number is 443-992-4835. For every communication, just remember that the time difference is 7 hours from the east coast, 8 from minnesota, you know the drill.

Anyways, Israel has been a whirlwind so far. We got in yesterday morning and experienced what felt like the longest day ever. Housing here is incredibly unorganized and we were all basically sat down in a courtyard and told to find people to room with or go in by ourselves. This also included waiting for 2 hours while group by group filled out forms and housing contracts. It was kind of ridiculous, but did allow me to find my roommates! I'm living with 4 other girls: Kira, Samantha, Erika, and Amelia. They are all really sweet- and we're excited to decorate our apartment and watch disney movies and chick flicks together! It's been a while since I had a core group of girl friends (ok...well maybe not, I guess that's what I have at home, but not really at school).

Crazy story starts now: So we're sitting in the big courtyard waiting for housing when I turn around to find a seat and who do I see? Dan Curme- from Carleton! He was in my Hebrew 101 class. We both kind of looked at each other like 'what are you doing here??' Very exciting. It was calming to see someone I recognized, someone I could talk to about carleton stuff, and basically someone I didn't have to repeat the same 4 questions with (name, hometown, school, year, etc).

Today our ulpan started and it will probably be the most intense academic experience I will every have. Basically 5-6 hours solely in Hebrew for 8 weeks. Today was mostly an overview and one of my teachers said we could have up to 4 hours of homework a night. Basically, I might forget how to speak English with all of this Hebrew every day. I'm so excited to get close to fluent, though, and I know it will be incredibly helpful for my job as a TA in the winter.

There is a ton more I would like to write, but I haven't had dinner or started my homework, so that will have to wait.

Topics to discuss in a future post: prayer on planes, Shabbat, my apartment.

Please comment or e-mail or whatever. I miss you all to death! (and hopefully our internet will be up before shabbat starts and I can do some major catching up then)

Packing

"Carries a lot of suitcases
but all of them are empty
because she's expecting
to completely fill them
with life by the end of this trip

& then she'll come home
& sort everything out
& do it all again"

- Veteran Traveller from Traveling Light by Brian Andreas

Alright, so this is not exactly the case for me. I'm not bringing anything close to an empty suitcase, and I'm definitely not traveling light, but I still liked this quote.

I hate packing- I'm a stuff person. Stuff people and Airline luggage restrictions do not go together well. But I'll be fine.

Jill just came over to say goodbye and told me about the questioning she went through when she went to Israel for birthright. Turns out I need to know my Rabbi's name, my bat mitzvah Torah portion, and what the most recent Jewish Holiday was... hm.

I'll use this blog in the beginning to give lots of information on how to get in touch with me, should you be so inclined. I'll also try to post some interesting stories from Israel once I get there.

Stay tuned!