Whew! What a week, or week and a half, I should say. (Warning: this post is going to be on the longer side!) I landed at the Ben Gurion International Airport on Friday, December 10 after a very long flight, where the guy sitting next to me was coughing the ENTIRE flight. I was very glad to be off that plane and being greeted by my uncle Ilan, uncle David, and cousin, Rinat. I spent the weekend at Ilan and Efrat's home in Even Yehuda. That very first night was a very large table filled with a lot of family (Gal, Meital, Doron, Roey, Michal, Mika, Daniel, Efrat, & Ilan), and even more food!!
The first few days, there were terrible rain storms in Israel. Rain was coming down hard, fast, sideways, and sometimes mixed with hail. It was very strange. I had never experienced rain at all before in Israel and now it was coming down in buckets! This actually suited me just fine as I had jetlag and just wanted to sleep. Monday morning, there was a break in the rain, and my friend, Sivan, (we met at Kent State University) came to pick me up and take me to my new apartment. Armed with lots of luggage and LOTS of food from Efrat, we were on our way.
Monday was a bit hectic. We were supposed to meet Orly, the city coordinator for Oranim (that's the program I'm doing), at 10am. Sivan and I were 20 minutes late due to traffic. There is ALWAYS traffic in and around Tel Aviv. Only one other person from my program, Michael, was waiting for Orly. She ended up coming closer to 11am. She was super busy that morning, running around from building to building to situate people. I didn't mind, I was just anxious to see my room and meet my roommate. If you're in Israel, you must get used to everybody being late, and not just a few minutes late... really late. Half an hour is not surprising in the lateness. Onto my room: I lucked out! There are three buildings that have people on our programs: Tsidon 1, Dizzengoff 89, and Ben Yehuda (I don't know the number to that one). I am in Tsidon 1. All of the other buildings have studio apartments, where two people share a tiny bedroom, kitchenette, and bathroom. In my apartment, there are two larger bedrooms! Not all of Tsidon 1 is like this, it just happened to be that my apartment is. Orly kind of laughed and said, "Maybe at your age, you would like your own room." Ha! Yes, it's the joke that I'm the old lady in the program. Ages range from 21-27, mostly 24 and 25 year olds.
The rest of this day, Sivan showed me around the area by foot. Thank goodness for Sivan!!!! She provided me with some color in my room by letting me borrow sheets, duvet cover, and towels. (Everything we were provided was white). As we wandered around, we got rained on heavily! We had sushi at a restaurant called Japanika. Who would have thought that my first meal on the streets of Tel Aviv would have been sushi?!
Back to my apartment: I met my roommate, Arielle, that evening. She's from El Paso, Texas. She has no accent, by the way. She says that people from El Paso don't have a southern accent because they're so far west. When I think of El Paso, I think of salsa, not Jews, but I'm glad to see that we're just about everywhere. :) Anyway, she's super nice, studies and works out a lot. We'll get along just fine!
Many of our group didn't arrive in Israel until Monday, so Oranim decided it was best for us to rest and meet with the group on Tuesday. There are 19 of us: Maria, Marsha, Sveta, & Irina from Russia, Aviva from Mumbai, India (there are about 5000 Jews in the entire country of India), Tammy from Johannesburg, South Africa, Jesse from Toronto, Canada, and everyone else from the US: Becky, Ben, Bari, and Aaron (all from California), Michael from Oregon, Leah from Maryland, Dan from New York, Danny from North Carolina, Jim and Laura, who are engaged and are from New Jersey, and David and myself, both from Cleveland, Ohio. Most of the group lives over at Dizzengoff 89, which is a 20-30 minute walk from Tsidon. Becky and Michael are obviously the two I became friends with quickly because they live over at Tsidon too. And they're great! So it's really nice to already have friends. Honestly, I like everyone in the group and I'm slowly getting to know everyone else better.
Tuesday night, I went to a bar called "Morty & Helen," named after Jerry Seinfeld's parents on the show. I went there to meet my friend, Russell, and his wife, Na'ama. Interesting story about Russell: we both grew up in South Euclid, Ohio, but he went to the South Euclid school district and I went to the Cleveland Heights-University Heights school district. He later moved to Chicago and lived in Wrigleyville, just a few streets away from my brother. His mother lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, and my dad lives very close to there in Boca Raton, Florida. But we never met until four summers ago, when we both ended up on the same Taglit Birthright trip to Israel! He made aliyah and met Na'ama. So life is definitely good for him! Anyway, this was a great bar that was packed with people on a Tuesday night. 25 shekels for women, all you can drink of well drinks, beer, or wine. That's around $7. In Tel Aviv, you can hardly get one cocktail for $7, so that is a steal.
Wednesday was one of my favorite days so far. A bunch of us from the group walked to the beach from Tsidon (it takes five minutes), and then walked down it for nearly two hours. That's where the photo was taken above. It was just such a great day! And we all got to know each other much better.
On Thursday, I met with Maya, the internship coordinator. I feel pretty confident in her abilities to find me a worthwhile internship. She had two already lined up that both sounded pretty great for me-- Doctors for Human Rights, and Tel Aviv University in their Foreign Relations department. That was pretty much it for the day with Oranim, so I just relaxed. Thursday night, a lot of our group wanted to go out. It ended up that it was just me with all of the boys. I have no idea where the girls were! We had a great time at Club Octopus, which is a five minute walk from here, right by the port.
During the day on Friday, Becky and I went to the beach, determined to get in the water. It was a bit too windy for that, but we decided to just relax on the beach. We walked right into the orthodox area, which normally the beach in that area is just a regular beach, but on Fridays, they make this one particular area only for men. No women allowed. A couple of guys yelled at us. Then I said, in hebrew, that I did not understand Hebrew, they calmed down, and someone nearby told us in English. Oops! Sorry! But it made quite a story! Rookie mistake!! haha.
I was really looking forward to Friday. It was very strange to be in Israel for an entire week without seeing my aunt Miriam. My uncle David came to pick me up and take me to Miriam's home for Shabbat dinner. This was again a packed table with people and food! (Reco, Miriam, Avraham, Sharon, Selly, Moshe, Anat, and 6 kids-- not all of the names I have figured out yet!) As we approached Miriam's, nearing Beriacov, I felt an emptiness, where my grandmother should be, but is not. This is the first time I've been to Israel since my grandmother (from here) passed away. But being with Miriam helped fill that. She's the eldest of my aunts and uncles, and was always with my grandmother when I would come to visit. She certainly fed me as much as my grandmother would! :)
I spent the evening in Rehovot at David's, where my cousin, Shemi, came to visit. We played Guitar Hero. In the living room, David and his friends were playing on real guitars and singing until 1:30am. The next day, David and I went back to Miriam's. Almost all of my uncles from my dad's side came: Moti, David, Reco, Eli, and Zazu. There were more visits with family-- a couple of aunts, a few cousins, and even my dad's best friend, Ezra. Then back to Tel Aviv, where Shemi came to take me to a new "hot" club here, Markiid. This is Saturday evening, which is basically a Sunday evening to us. In Israel, the work week starts on Sunday and the weekend is Friday and Saturday. This place was filled with people! Live music and dancing (still not sure how people could even move), but it was a great place. Shemi said the singer was one of the winners from the Israeli Idol.
Sunday. The ulpan started. This is the hebrew class. I had been waiting for this to start! It is very difficult to be in a country where you do not know the language, or in my case, where you know some words, but have no idea how to express them. My teacher's name is Tali and she is great. I've only had 3 classes, but I've enjoyed it tremendously. It has really helped! After one class, I am reading Hebrew again, both in print and cursive! I've liked everything about the class except for the strange games we play towards the end. I know why we're playing the games, to get a different perspective on how to study and learn the words, but for me, it's a little awkward. One of the days, we had to stand in a circle and say the name of an animal and overannunciate the syllables, but while doing that, we needed to create a movement to represent the animal. This movement cannot be an outline of the animal (ex: you cannot wave your arms for the elephant's ears or nose), but it must be a movement that you "feel from your soul." The only movement I was feeling at that moment was wanting to get a tissue for my stuffy nose. Oh yes! I forgot to mention, I do have a cold. But other than the weird circle movements and for my cold, I'm having a great time! Tomorrow is a Welcome Party for us that Oranim put together. There might just be 19 of us on this program, but they have over 100 people here in Israel at the same time on different programs. Anyone in Tel Aviv is invited. It should be interesting...
Sorry this was SO long! Other posts should not be a day-by-day like this one. Here is a picture of the view from my bedroom window. Yes, that's the ocean. :)
