holy. fuck.

Um, so you know how I WANTED to do the army but i thought that since i wouldn't be israeli until after i was 20, i wouldn't have to do it?

Um, turns out I was wrong. they calculate your date of arrival NOT from the time you get citizenship but from the time you enter israel. i entered israel at the age of 19. meaning, even if i get my citizenship after june 28 of this year (my birthday), i STILL am obligated to do the army. hell, i could even leave the country, but i have to wait to come back for like 2 years to get citizenship if i dont want to be obligated to do the army.

this is both thrilling AND frightening.

please do not tell my mother.

Country Music Shabbat just got a little classic

It’s Shabbat, and so it’s time for your weekly education! (For all two of you reading this….) Today’s country music experience? “The Gambler,” by Kenny Rogers. It’s classic. But why this weekend?

Because my new roommate needs to learn to “know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run.”




Also, the “House Mom” just yelled at me for what happened between her and my roommate. So that’s fun….

My roommate's crazy. She has this theory that one of "The Americans" took her jeans to piss her off. So she slashed the screen on their window. Fucking A........
She told me that if anyone asks me, I have to say she didn't do it. But I'm not sure I can do that. She also wants me to use my connection to "The Americans" (I'm friends with a boy who lives with some of them) to find out the laundry numbers of "The Americans" so she can destroy their clothing when she folds it during work. I'm also not sure I can do that. Actually, I'm pretty sure I CAN'T do that.

Oh shit son.

Behold! I present to you a Bad News Sandwich on Good News Bread!

So good news? I’m 99% positive I have my first appointment with the citizenship place on Tuesday. Holy shit.

Also good? I’m listening to “Oh What a Night!” That song NEVER fails to cheer me up. Whenever I’m sad, I play it. And also whenever I’m happy, I play it. A celebration isn’t a celebration without that song. The worst though is when it comes on in the supermarket and you want to dance so badly. Every single part of you wants to dance, and you want every single person in the supermarket to join you in a dance of celebration. You want to zoom down the aisles on a cart, and you want to pop open all the champagne in the market to form some kind of spectacular fountain/fireworks, and you want people to juggle cans of soup to celebrate the joy that is that song. You want to open packages of toilet paper and throw rolls into the air as streamers, and you want to dance on the deli counter and fling slabs of salami to the beat of this disco hit. It could be Armageddon outside, but in THIS supermarket, in THIS supermarket where you are hearing “Oh What a Night” on the loudspeaker, it is a fucking party of cosmic proportions. It’s a party bigger than Jesus Christ’s Bar Mitzvah. And, holy fuck, are you going to celebrate with this song in this supermarket!

But you know you can’t. So instead you are stuck just singing the words in your head or softly humming along. Maybe things are different in Israel though…

Bad news?

I never thought I would regret knowing English and a bit of French and Hebrew. I never thought it would be a burden.

Today I got pulled out of class to translate because shit happened to my French friend that we had to explain to the ulpan director. Both sides were angry, so it was pretty heated. But since both sides were talking through me, I got to experience the awfulness of both sides looking at me and talking to me with absolute hate in their eyes and voices. And I don’t blame them, because the two sides can’t understand each other. They only understand what comes out of my mouth in their native language, and so they end up hating me.

It was horrible telling the ulpan director, “You don’t care about anything but making the ulpanists work like slaves” or “This place is horrible, you are horrible people, and you don’t care about anything.”

My friend told the “House Mom” in mangled English that no one on this kibbutz is normal. The “House Mom” of ulpan responded by sarcastically saying something in Hebrew that I understood, and my friend obviously demanded to know what she said. It was rather mean, so I didn’t want to translate it, so I made up something less mean and told her in French. And my friend didn’t believe me, and angrily demanded to know what the “House Mom” had said. So I told her in French:
“She said, ‘That’s right, [girl’s name], NO ONE is normal….except for you. You’re the only one who’s normal.’”

Which is a horrible thing to have to say to a friend. I know you’re thinking, “But you said, ‘She said,’ so surely your friend knows it wasn’t you saying it.” Let me just tell you that by the end of any sentence you forget what was at the beginning, especially when it’s a sentence that pisses you off. It doesn’t matter that I said SHE SAID, what matters to my friend is that something mean came out of MY mouth. And it’s an absolutely horrible feeling for me. It’s a terrible feeling to have to say horrible things to people you care about, or to people who you don’t want to piss off (like the ulpan director). I talked to both sides after class today separately and explained that I was simply translating, and anything mean or rude that came out of my mouth was just me passing on a message. Which I think they understand on a rational level, but which I think they do not understand at all on an emotional level.

During class today, after I came back from translation duty, we were on a tiyul to explore the 2000 year old buildings on the kibbutz. The boy I hit came up to me and demanded to know why my French friend accused him of being involved in the thing that pissed her off. So I had to call her up and ask for an explanation in French, and she got upset with me because she thought I PERSONALLY wanted to know rather than the boy himself, then I had to translate what she said to my former friend who then felt angry at me even though I was just telling him what she was telling me….. Oh goodness, it was a mess.

While walking around on our tiyul though, my friend that I hit calmed down a bit and we had a conversation about basically everything I’m writing about here. No, I didn’t get into the fact that I have a blog that I write on constantly with updates about the bitches that I work with. I meant, I told him about all this translation stress. And his response was, “Look, just don’t even get involved with all this translation shit, it’s just a mess for you.” Don’t get involved? But the two sides can’t fucking understand each other, and they’ve both separately asked me for help in translating. So how the hell can I just abandon people when there are clearly issues here that need to be resolved?

It’s the same thing as when I told him I was upset with how he was treating other ulpanists. He said, “If you have a problem with how I treat people, then you can look away.” Well, how does that solve ANYTHING? I mean, looking away is great for me because then I don’t have to do anything. But all that is is the easy road, not the correct one.

Up until this point I thought, wow, this translating shit is fun! I hope maybe I can make a job out of it. But now I’m beginning to wonder if I can handle being the bearer of bad news. Or in this case, the bearer or insults. People don’t know how not to shoot the messenger…

Also, my roommate is cray cray.

I opened with good news and I want to close with more good news: I saw the music video for “Big Girl (You are Beautiful)” by Mika on Mtv just now. Oh my goodness. I didn’t know it was possible to love that song more than I already did….. It was so empowering to see just a bunch of fat broads jumping around. The good news is, whatever happens here in Israel, whatever happens with all these languages, and whatever happens with all my friends and friends I’ve hit, I can still always fall back on a career as a fat girl in a Mika music video. And I find that strangely comforting.

Oh, and the ultimate good news? Shabbat Shalom, motherfuckers!

Oh yes, that's right. Costa Rica was accepted into The Union in 1867.

Today the Women of the Wash were looking for the name of a U.S. state.

Charades Bitch said, "So and so and So and so are going to a U.S. state this summer to go touring. I forgot the name of the state. I know it made me think of Corsica...."

So, being the Token American, I tried to help. "Colorado?" I ventured.

"No no no," she said. She then demanded the name of another state that sounded like Corsica. Started with a K noise, she said.

"Well, tell me more about where they're going, maybe that will help," I said.

"Okay, it's a state. It's in the middle of the United States. (I wan't you to note that she CLEARLY said the United States, and not "America." okay?)"

"Hmmm...a C state in the middle of the country....?" And I started to panic, because I couldn't think of one besides Colorado. And I thought, "Oh my goodness, is my knowledge of American geography this bad?"


At this point all the women in the room started to laugh at me because they thought I didn't know my own country. I got desperate. "Okay, tell me more about what you know about the state, maybe that will help."

So Charades Bitch said, "Okay, it's a state in the middle of the UNITED STATES, and it starts with a K noise, and you can go there and you can see wild animals everywhere. You can go and it's a jungle and you can see all the animals in the jungle."

This appalled me. I wasted 2 years of my life in the middle of the fucking United States and some neighboring state whose existence I was oblivious to had a jungle all along????

All the women started mocking my knowledge of my own country, and I just wanted to go die in a corner somewhere. In my head I kept singing a song I knew with all 50 states' names....but I still couldn't think of what the hell this woman was talking about.

Finally the women got tired of mocking me and Charades Bitch called her friends that were going on the vacation to this mystery state. She called, asked, then put down the phone. "Costa Rica!" she spat at me with all the haughtiness she could muster. And all the women laughed at me.

"What???" I said. "Costa Rica???"

"Yes, Costa Rica, why did you not think of it??? Do you not learn about your country in American schools? Why didn't you tell me Costa Rica???" And all the women started cackling in my face.

Finally I got a hold of myself and yelled back,

"MAYBE BECAUSE COSTA RICA ISN'T A FUCKING AMERICAN STATE!" ("Fucking" was in English....)

I mean, is it even on the same continent??? It's in Central America. The U.S. is in North America.

The Women of the Wash continued to laugh saying how stupid I was, saying that when they said it was a state in the middle of The United States, I still should have been able to tell them "Costa Rica."

I mean, Jesus, when someone says to me, "I'm looking for the name of a state in the middle of the United States", I think Christians, apple pie and--above everything else--I think of a fucking AMERICAN state! I don't think fucking jungles and Costa Rica!

I just saw the most spectacular sight ever.

The boy I hit? Remember him?

Yeah, he just slammed a hotel employee against the wall. And started screaming. In the middle of the hotel lobby.

Why? They were arguing, and then as a joke the employee (who is in his early 20's...same age as the guy I hit) held a lighter to the guy's head. It didn't touch the guy, but the guy thought it did. So he flipped out.

I saw it all, and I moved to a different part of the lobby afterwards. And the guy I hit came up to me.

"I don't want you to think I'm a lunatic."

"Okay."

"No, seriously, i'm not a lunatic. you don't understand. This guy kept bothering me and bothering me, and he uses the n word."

"You use the n word, too."

"Yeah, but that's different."

"Whatever."

"No, and he held a lighter to my head and it scared me, so of course I--"

"No no, I completely understand. I remember this one time I freaked out and hit someone because he was a horrible person to other people and then he created a huge fireball by my foot. So yeah, i can understand hitting a guy who uses the n word like you do and pretends to hold a lighter near your head."

"Oh.....yeah....."



oh it was glorious.

indiana jones and the last ditch effort to find a fucking movie theater....

Also, I really just wanna fucking see Indiana Jones in Jerusalem on Shabbat. How the hell do I accomplish this?

fuck it, i think im just gonna go to tel aviv for hte weekend and just stay in the fucking movie theater all day and watch everything i need to watch.

Nice Ass!

Today I had one of those proud “only in Israel” moments.

Yes, I was mooned by a guy wearing a kippa.

I know you’re probably thinking something very similar to what I what thinking. What was I thinking? “No way. That guy wearing a kippa, surrounded by his kippa wearing friends, is NOT pressing his bare ass cheeks against the windows of that car stopped at the light.”

But I assure you—it DID happen.

You know, I would have thought it physically impossible for a guy wearing a kippa to moon a girl of approximately the same age standing at an abandoned bus stop not too far from Jerusalem. But this is what living in a new country is all about—you learn new things every single day.


So anyway, last night was my first night in my new room (as I write this, I am in my old room though…and I plan to spend most of my time here). I was in my old room until very late watching a movie in French with a few people, including this bizarre French immigrant who works in the hotel, and when I finally was ready to go to bed, I braved the thought of having to have an interaction with The Frog. By the way, I think I should tell you that the only words The Frog said to me yesterday were something like, “WHO DECIDED FOR YOU TO LIVE WITH US???? WAS IT THE ULPAN DIRECTOR????” Just that. Just angry French, not even a “bonjour!”

So she was clearly pissed off, and I was a little nervous to go to my new room. I cautiously opened the door…..and found her asleep in bed with the French TV channel on. Which is great, because I find it difficult to fall asleep without a bit of noise. So I crept into bed and left the TV on.

It was actually really awesome falling asleep with the TV on in French. Because then my other new roommate came in like an hour or so later and accidentally woke me up—and then she started blabbering away in French and it was AWESOME because I didn’t even have to try to understand. Shit son, I’m gonna come out of this fucking ulpan with French (no Hebrew though…)

The same cannot be said for the morning. In the morning I can’t even understand English—I’m only fluent in the language of moans and groans--so it was a little appalling to wake up and immediately have someone blabbering away at me in French.

I’m sick and congested right now, so I hope my new roommates enjoyed the massive snores I was almost certainly producing last night…

It’s gonna be really difficult because my new roommate (the one that isn’t a bitch) is a huge neat freak….and my old Aussie roommate has christened me, “The dehtiest beetch evah.” (“The Dirtiest Bitch Ever,” for those of you out there that aren’t familiar with the ritual language desecration that occurs in that country down under….). So, um, this should be interesting.

Ohhhhh, and today I had my first real “conversation” (beyond just single questions here and there) with an Israeli in Hebrew that was 1) not on the kibbutz, where they know to speak slow, and 2) did not end in English. Yes, I ordered at McDonald’s in Hebrew. I know, you can laugh. Yes, I realize that ordering at a fast food restaurant is not a “conversation,” and yes, I realize that I shouldn’t have flown 8000 miles away to eat at McDonald’s. And yes, above all, I realize that “Chicken McNuggets” is not Hebrew. But get this—the guy taking my order asked me questions and I could fucking respond!!!!! Holy shit!!!! Things were going very smoothly. Except for when he asked me what kind of sauces I wanted, at which point I completely panicked. I absolutely could not understand what the hell he was talking about because I don’t know the word for sauces and so I didn’t know what I was being asked.

If you’re in Israel as a foreigner, you have to come up with a system to deal with all the times that you’re not going to be able to understand what the fuck you’re being asked. Sometimes when I don’t understand I just blurt out in Hebrew “Yes,” “No,” or some random number. This is probably a really bad system, but I’m tired of asking for the person to repeat the question and then having them respond in English. So from the McDonald’s counter guy’s perspective, he asked, “What sauce do you want with your meal?” or whatever he asked, the girl in front of him responded:

“Four.”

Well, obviously the guy gave me a confused look. And so he repeated the question. Which was futile, because it’s not like I learned the word for “sauces” in the 30 seconds that had passed.

I tried using logic to figure out what he wanted to know, but I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything else he would need to know. I thought, “Shit, this is the point where we’re going to have to switch to English!” In fact, I was surprised that the ordering had gotten this far in Hebrew, because usually if you show even the slightest sign of not being a native Israeli (which I do IMMEDIATELY), the person you’re talking to will switch to English. So I shot the person a panicked and confused look, and braced myself for an English translation. But instead of that, he told me not to worry and then he launched into this whole explanation in Hebrew of what XKJSDHSKJN is (whatever the word for sauces was). It was seriously one of the nicest things to have happened to me in Israel. Which is a little sad…

You can make fun of me all you want for going to a McDonald’s in Israel and actually trying to tell you a story about it. But you know what? When it comes down to it, even ordering at McDonald’s in Israel is a new and exciting experience, because at least back in the US you don’t have to worry about not understanding the people behind the counter…..unless you’re ordering through the drive-through, in which case the people behind the counter could be speaking Icelandic for all we know….

I will say things are definitely improving in terms of getting settled into Israel. Now when random people yell random things at me in Jerusalem, I actually understand them about 50% of the time. I no longer feel like a terribly lost idiotic tourist. I mean, I’m still definitely foreign, and I still FEEL foreign. No doubt about that. But I’m no longer such an idiotic foreigner, which is quite a relief. I was afraid that if I made aliyah I’d spend the rest of my life dodging cars that I was too stupid to notice and drowning out all the talking around me because I couldn’t understand it. So woot!

By the way, my proof of Judaism has arrived. I have in my hands everything I’ll need to be a citizen. Holy Shit. Holy Land.

This American has declared war on The Frog.

“Justice will be served and the battle will rage
This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage
And you’ll be sorry that you messed with the U. S. of AAAAAAAAAAA

‘Cuz we’ll put a boot in your ass,
It’s the American way!”

--Toby Keith

Some things in life can only be solved by Big Fat Americans. I know I’ve been bitching a lot lately about “The Americans,” and you can say whatever you want about us, but sometimes the world’s biggest assholes have the potential to get the greatest results. I say this with the utmost pride.

So a couple days ago my Aussie roommate, Chilean roommate and I were talking about how weird Europeans are. Because, let’s face it, Europeans are weird. And now today I will spend my first night with my two new EUROPEAN roommates. As I explained earlier, I have been placed in this room to protect the nice French girl from the total bitch of a French girl. To distinguish this French bitch from French Bitch (my boss), my new roommate that I hate will be called The Frog. So anyway, The Frog is the biggest bitch in all of ulpan (and I would wager all of Israel), and she’s been making Nice French Girl’s life miserable.

Well, the ulpan director decided this new living arrangement yesterday. And once I actually got the keys to the room I will have to share with The Frog….I freaked out. Because she really is a terrible person. And part of me was like, “Wait, why am I moving out of a rooming situation I like in order to be with a bitch?” This morning the ulpan director sensed that I was getting cold feet (what is this, a marriage?) and so he called me out of work to have this whole talk with me about how I need to be there to protect Nice French Girl from The Frog. Basically, when it came down to it, I felt like he was Princess Leia and I was Old Ben Kenobi, the only hope and all that. And I gotta admit: I felt like a total badass. He’s basically using me to put a stop to this girl’s reign of terror, and he wants me to cut her down to size. Something to do with the brash American personality. This is a uniquely American job that I’m about to have. This is strangely one of those moments where I’m really proud to be American, because only a big fat American can take on a problem like this. I was proud to be an American, taking on some snobby Eurobitch.

Um, maybe this is a cheesy song moment?

I’m not sure this is what Lee Greenwood had in mind….

So I walked out of our meeting, and Nice French Girl met up with me to discuss what happened. And she said, “If you leave the room, [The Frog] gets what she wants. She wins.” Oh man. That did it. Fuck no, I’m sick of the bitches of the world “winning.” I believe there honestly is justice in the world, and if this bitch wins….then I’m wrong. So that’s not happening.


Needless to say, I’m still a bit freaked out about this new living arrangement. First of all, they’re both European, so….. I don’t know. I don’t know what that means. And then there’s the whole “The Frog is a scary, vindictive bitch” issue. I need an ego boost, so while I was folding laundry today I just kept thinking in my head:

“I am a Big. Fat. Badass. American. Bitch.”

It was really empowering. I feel that as a female who is American it is my responsibility to be nice, sociable, and bake brownies for the “Christ the Savior Church” social one Sunday a month. Or something like that. But I also feel that as an American, it is my obligation to be a pushy bitch when it comes to the situation with The Frog.

I’m actually not even sure I have to TRY to put my foot down. She might run away screaming before I even get my bed made. She was disgusted when she found out I was living with her, because I’m like this gross uncultured American. That’s okay, because I’m disgusted to be living with French people (except for Nice French Girl….). Actually, before I got into a fight with the person I hit, we had an argument over who hates the French more: The Americans or The British (he’s British). I would argue that the British and French just hate each other because they’re longtime rivals, whereas the Americans and the French are just DISGUSTED by each other. Regardless of who’s right, I think we can agree that the Americans and the French as a whole don’t like each other.

I’ve discussed this with Nice French Girl, and we decided that our best hope of getting this girl to run away screaming back to Paris is for me to act like as much of a stereotypical American as possible. Which shouldn’t be too difficult, because I’m already a stereotypical American without trying. But there’s always room for improvement. I think I’ll need someone to send me cowboy boots. And a banjo. Actually, if someone wants to ship over to Israel an entire herd of cattle, I think that would help me make a stronger point in front of The Frog.
Feel free to send me more ideas!


All I can say is, I hope The Frog likes country music.



“Brought to you courtesy of The Red, White and Blue.” –Toby Keith




The only thing I’m worried about is the fact that I know in the heat of battle the words “We saved your asses in World War 2!” are going to slip out of my mouth. Or, alternatively, “If it wasn’t for us, you’d all be speaking German!” This is not a personal belief of mine or anything, but this is simply something Americans always feel compelled to say when arguing with Europeans. It’s usually not even that the American WANTS to say it, it’s just that they simply can’t help it. It’s like a gag reflex. There’s probably some scientific formula out there for it: American + European + Argument = “We saved your asses in World War 2!” We say these things regardless of what we’re arguing about. The American could be the most left-wing peace activist the world has ever seen, and he could be in a debate on the street about the pros/cons of some new but basically unimportant Finnish Poll Tax. The Finnish person might defeat the American by cornering him with some great quote in support of the Poll Tax. The debate could have been perfectly civil and interesting until this point, but once cornered the American will ALWAYS blurt out, “We saved your asses in World War 2!” It’s almost like uncontrollable vomiting or explosive diarrhea.
We say these things to all Europeans, regardless of where they are from. They could be German and we still tell them that “If it wasn’t for us, you’d all be speaking German!” because it doesn’t matter to us. We say these things regardless of what their country was doing in World War 2, even if their country was like on vacation at the time, like say…The Isle of Man. We say it regardless of the fact that the person we’re addressing had nothing to do with WW2, regardless of the European’s having been born four decades after the last battle, and we say it regardless of the fact that we personally were not dropping bombs on any Nazis.

Whatever. All I know is that I’m in it for the long haul. This is a war of wills. I know I was thinking of giving up, bailing out, and surrendering to The Frog…..but then I realized: No, SHE’s the French person, that’s HER job.

Giggles

Today I got a mad case of the giggles during class. I kept thinking about the guy in front of me. No no no, it's not what you think.

He's this weird Hungarian guy.....and he looks like a pedophile. I can't really explain it, but he has the face and manner of a pedophile. Like he talks in a kind of quiet voice, but he has these big teeth and a creepy smile, and you think "Shit, that guy's DEFINITELY hiding something....like a sexual attraction to small children." And today I just thought about how creepy his voice and face and clothing and smell and everything about him is, so I burst out laughing in the middle of class. Uncontrolled laughter. I had to run out of the room, but then I fell over and ended up on the floor cackling my ass off.

I am a terrible person.

I am also a person who is STILL giggling.

Like, imagine something terrifying like a clown jumping out of a bush to scare you. You know, painted face, huge nose, frightening eyes...... Now if you could imagine this guy jumping out, you would literally shit yourself.


Anyway, class was fine. I don't think I learned anything....so that's kind of a bummer.

This morning my French friend came to me nearly in tears. She explained that she was feeling really sick and needed to go to the doctor, but that she didn't know English or Hebrew and the doctor doesn't know French. She was really freaked out and frightened (I would be too if I were in that situation!!), and she said that she begged her roommate to help her (her roommate is French but can communicate almost perfectly in Hebrew and English), but her roommate refused because she "didn't feel like it." So I ended up having to go to the doctor with the girl and doing a shit job of translating everything for everyone.

I mean, I'm perfectly happy to help, but why the hell is her roommate so much of a bitch that she can't even be helpful or kind when the nice girl is really ill? The Bitch speaks fluent French (obviously) and can communicate in English/Hebrew extremely well, so she would have been MUCH more useful than me. I'm just so fucking angry that someone could be so heartless.

On a happier note, in a few minutes I have to go the ulpan director and see if I can switch rooms. I'm now fine with my current roommates, but as I explained earlier, the point of switching rooms would be to relieve the problems between the two French girls.

Woot!

Happy Monday!

At Yafa

So it’s Monday. Shit, no it’s not. It’s Sunday. I’m still not used to this whole working on Sunday thing…. So it’s SUNDAY. Time for some Israeli Music. At Yafa by Idan Yaniv



Anyway……

Breaking News: The 80’s are not dead—they’ve just come to this kibbutz.

Also, I realized something today. So many of the Jewish girls in ulpan are crazy for Arab men (I mean, what nice Jewish girl DOESN’T want an Arab man???), and there is SO much tension. The Jewish boys in ulpan are angry because they feel they should get first dibs on the Jewish girls, the Arab boys who work on the kibbutz are angry because they know in the long run they can’t have the Jewish girls, and there is TENSION. When it comes down to it, maybe the conflict between Jews/Arabs is about sexual tension. I think that’ll be my platform when I run for Prime Minister of Israel. That and torching/salting the grounds of this kibbutz.

.I’m prolly not gonna get elected. …

I realized one more thing: if I have to fold one more halter-top meant for a baby/toddler I am going to scream. Seriously, I can’t tell you how many low-cut halter-tops (meant to emphasize cleavage—but what infant has boobage???) I’ve had to fold. Maybe you’ll feed me some bullshit about how “Oh, well, in Israel it’s a hotter climate so babies need to be wearing that sort of thing” or how “Well, you have to respect different cultures.” No. Babies should not be in halter-tops. I’m sorry. It’s weird. It’s really fucking weird.

So today during work I had nothing to do and Crazy Bitch asked me in Hebrew, “Do you want to fold towels?”
Hmmm. Let’s think about it. I can think of thousands of things I want: I want peace. I want a Region 2 DVD player. I want my former friend to stop making fun of me in public. I really want to take a pee right now. I want to not be in this room right now. I want my family to come visit me soon. Want want want, there is so much I want. But no, among all those wants, I do NOT want to fold more fucking towels!!!

But does anybody? Does Crazy Bitch come into work WANTING to fold towels? Does she think to herself, “Aw shit son, I am the luckiest Crazy Bitch on the planet because I get to do what I’ve always wanted to do—fold towels! And not only do I get to do it today, but I’ll get to do it tomorrow and for the rest of my life!!!”


Today all the Women of the Wash had an argument over how to say “Samantha” properly. Yet all of them were wrong. The entire room was consumed with Hebrew shouts of:
“No, it’s ‘SaaaamaaaaaaanTAAAAA.’”
“No, listen, it’s ‘SamonTah!’”
“No, that’s not right, it’s ‘SmanTah,’ like ‘Smadar’”

Most of the arguments settled around the whole issue of vowel pronunciation, and no one even bothered to address the whole “th” issue that’s present in my name…

I let out a weak, “Um, it’s actually ‘Samantha….’” But no one was listening because they were too busy telling me how my own name is pronounced. I wanted to tell them they could call me something easier to pronounce like Sam or Sammy, like my ulpan teacher does (who, ironically, can pronounce “Samantha” just fine), but it’s more fun this way.

You know, when you get Israeli citizenship you get one free name change. I think I’m gonna change my name to something that everyone here will be able to pronounce. Like maybe the letter Shin. My name will simply be: ש.
That’d be so sweet. It’d be like I was Cher or something, except even more pretentious.

I don’t understand the people who don’t take up the government’s offer on a free name change, like the person I hit. Sure, his original name is fine enough, but he could have been anything and anybody! He could have been “Pimp McMacDaddy.”
I mean, how could you throw away an opportunity like that?


You know, the Arabs here don’t have this problem because they have a “th” noise…

I'm going to l'tayel the fuck out of this country.

It's Shabbat (well, for a little while longer anyway), so of course I have to make several updates to this blog.

So I'm looking around at the gorgeous mountains surrounding this kibbutz, and it makes me want to explore this country. Not just explore, but see EVERYTHING. I, Sam/Sammy/SemenTah!, want to l'tayel the fuck out of this country.


Also, I realized that I, Sam/Sammy/SemenTah!, do not have casual friends like most people do. I have the people I'd cross the Andes for, I have the people whose existence I'm completely indifferent to, and then I have the people I absolutely despise. There is no gray area for me. And I'm okay with that.

Also, I few minutes ago my Chilean roomie was making fun of me for studying Hebrew. She first asked if I had a test, and I told her no (though I guess you consider living in Israel a 24/7 Hebrew test...), and then she was basically freaked out when she realized I was studying for the hell of it.
I find that so weird! Most of the people are in this ulpan because they want to stay in Israel for good....so wouldn't it be worth their while to study Hebrew outside of class? I mean, I realize that the vast majority of Hebrew that we'll learn we'll learn from just being exposed to it, but won't studying hasten this process? Am I just being a naive idiot?

Country Music Shabbat in the Land of 1000 Languages!

Well, folks….it’s Shabbat. Time for another moment of country music.

Today’s song? “Just Another Day in Paradise.” Why? Because it reminds me of home. It’s not a very recent song (I think it’s from 99), so I’ve been hearing it over the past few years and it is very familiar to me.

(it’s another one of those capitalist things where you can’t embed but you can post the link)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yakW10rgKX0&feature=related


This week I’ve had too many moments where I’ve felt like too much of an idealist for my own good. I’m thinking I need to watch a good movie which features idealism or dreams or something….”Jesus Christ Superstar?” “Goal! The Dream Begins?” “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat?” “Camelot?” “The Prince of Egypt?” “Liverpool FC: No Heart As Big?” (Yes, I own an official Liverpool FC movie) “Team America?” “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen?” “Monty Python and the Holy Grail?” “Braveheart?”

Have I told y’all lately how much practice I’m getting in French? Seriously, I’m gonna come out of this ulpan with absolutely no Hebrew but with fluent French. And, as I’ve mentioned before, when I come out of here my English will be accented. It’s already starting to sound weird…

It’s been making me wonder what I want to do, what I want to study, etc etc after I get out of here. My immediate plan is to keep learning Hebrew and continue with Arabic, but I’m thinking I want to learn EVERY language. I’d want to continue with French, and I want to learn Italian, Russian, Czech, Welsh, Finnish, Swedish, German, Romanian and basically everything else in between. And shit, I want to continue with Latin!
It is the biggest ego boost in the world to have people be like, “Shit son, you can understand what that French girl is saying???” Today was awesome because I was eating lunch with my French friend and my Chilean roommate. The French girl would say something in French and I would have to translate it into Hebrew for my Chilean roomie. Then my roomie would respond to the French girl in Spanish, and I’d have to repeat it for her in Hebrew/English to make sure I understood what she meant correctly, and then I had to say it in French for the French girl. It was seriously the coolest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. Seriously, I think my entire life was building towards that moment.

What’s especially cool is that I might be swapping rooms. The two French girls (one is a bitch, one is my friend) are fighting a lot and so my friend wants me to move in to create a sort of buffer. (Also, my friend thinks I could get the bitch to leave ulpan if i just play my country music collection non-stop.) How cool would that be? I leave the room and everything is in Hebrew, but I come back to the room and everything is in French, and meanwhile everything in my head is in English! SHIT SON, THAT’D BE FUCKING AWESOME!

I need to remind myself of something. Yes, I may hate folding towels. I may miss my family. I may be in the middle of a war with “The Americans.” But you know what ulpan is? A language lover’s dream! This place is incredible because I get to hear French, Spanish, Russian, German, Hungarian and Hebrew. Every single day is exciting because you get to try to figure out what the hell everyone is saying. I’m especially loving German because it’s basically just accented English. Like, the other day I was in the German boys’ room, and we were talking in English. Then I got bored and started fidgeting with my phone for a while, but the boys continued to talk amongst themselves. They were talking shit about one of the boys here, saying this and that about him, and without looking up I let out a weak, “Hey, that’s not very nice…” And then there was silence. I looked up and found both German boys staring at me. “What?” I said. Then one of them said, “How the hell did you understand what we were saying?!??!?!” Turns out they were shit talking the boy in German. Fuck, isn’t language incredible????

I have to prioritize I guess, since it’s not possible to know everything I want to know. Maybe I’ll start by learning Hebrew, then move on to (in this order) French, Italian, German, Romanian, Czech, Russian, Welsh, Finnish, and Swedish. I know I’ll never know all that, but a girl can dream…

I mean, fuck it, I don’t care if I have the strongest American accent in the world!

P.S. Have I told you how I got back at my Aussie roommate for making fun of my American accent in Hebrew? She makes fun of my accent and then I look for a random object and then I yell in my most ridiculous Australian accent, “THIS is a _____.” Example: “THIS IS A TAYYYYYYYBLE!” Like Crocodile Dundee yelling, “That’s not a knife, THIS is a knife!” And it pisses her off to no end. And she’s pretty much stopped making fun of my accent…

The Soccer Injury Salsa

So of course I watched the soccer game the other night. I watched it projected on a huge screen with the rest of the ulpan and the kibbutz outside in the middle of the kibbutz garden. While watching the Champions League Final I was surprised first at how much of the commentary I actually understood AND I was surprised by the little ads that popped up at the bottom of the screen. You’d be watching the game when suddenly the sound from the game would go out and some advert jingle would come BOOMING through the speakers and there’d be some graphic that took up like half the screen. It was especially funny because on at least one occasion a player would get wiped out, the medics would be on the field…you’d be listening to commentary on what just happened to the player, and you’d be listening to speculation on what was going to happen the player who caused the injury, whether it was an intentional attack or whether it was—DOOT DOOT DOODLE DOO!!!!! And suddenly this ridiculous salsa music comes blaring out of the speakers, drowning out the commentary, and the image of the player on the ground is dwarfed by people in an advertisement dancing to salsa music with a dance-inducing beat.
And you’re torn between wanting to figure out whether or not the player was gonna pull through and wanting to get up off your seat to shake your ass to the salsa music in the middle of the kibbutz garden. Needless to say, it was bizarre.

Also, I talked to the girl who has my job on the days when I have class. She’s French, like our boss, so she sometimes tries to make futile attempts at friendly conversation with our boss in French because the poor French girl is almost entirely alone when it comes to people on this kibbutz she can speak her native language with (besides her roommate), and she knows little English and even less Hebrew. So yesterday she wanted to make friendly conversation, and she told French Bitch, our boss, something like “Yesterday on the tiyul I met a 17 year old Iranian Jew who is in ulpan now and he had to run away from Iran to be here, and he can’t go home even though all his family is in Iran. He had to be smuggled out of the country. And, here is something very interesting: his passport says “The bearer of this passport cannot travel through ‘Occupied Palestine.’”

I find this bit of information pretty interesting. It’s not mind-blowing by any means, but it definitely opens the gates to an interesting discussion. But what did French Bitch say in response to this French girl’s friendly attempt at conversation? What she said in French was basically, “I don’t give a fuck.”

Now you understand what kind of people I work with.



It’s been a rough day of folding towels (though I got out 2 hours early for Shabbat), and right now I’m unwinding by listening to Christian rock music. It’s absolutely appalling my roommates.

Folding laundry is still terrible. Exciting news now though: I can now correctly identify each bitch’s ringtone. So….um….do I get a prize for that or something?

Today a woman came in and was chatting about a vacation in the north. I was laughing my ass off because she was cracking jokes about how she was so close to Lebanon that she could see Lebanese villages and she could see Hizbullah. People were cracking jokes about being in close proximity to Hizbullah, and one of the bitches, I don’t remember which one, was flipping the fuck out. She was yelling, “Why are you all laughing about this??? Don’t you remember what they did to us two years ago?!” And then a fight ensued in which all of the bitches argued whether or not it was appropriate to make jokes about Hizbullah considering everything that has happened. I kind of lost track of the arguments because all the shouting in a foreign language overwhelmed me.

In the afternoon Fat Bitch sat behind me….and holy fuck does that woman have a smoker’s cough. There was like a solid five minute cough she had. Just “HACK HACK HACK HACK KHHAAAA KHAAA HACK HACK!” was all I could hear for like five minutes. I wanted to be like, do you think maybe this is G-d’s way of telling you not to smoke, you dumb Fat Bitch?! You are a walking no smoking ad! Or rather a golf cart riding no smoking ad, because I’ve never seen walk or even stand on your own two feet for that matter….you just zip around the kibbutz on your stupid little golf cart even though the size of the kibbutz doesn’t warrant the use of a vehicle to get around.
Maybe you’ll say I’m not being a good person by talking so horribly about someone. But to that I say: you do not work with me, you do not know how horrible this woman makes my life. If you want to fold towels all fucking day and then NOT say anything bad about this nosey and mean bitch……then you deserve a medal.

Later on an American woman who lives on the kibbutz came in. The woman has been here for many years but still can’t speak Hebrew, and so she just barges into the laundry room and starts blahblahblahing in English. Oh Jesus. Am I going to be that woman? Shit. I better be able to speak Hebrew if I’m here for a few years.

Speaking of Americans, “The Americans” (the evil ulpan gang that I told y’all about) have started using “the N word.” I feel like a baby for calling a word “the _____ word,” but using that word is beyond offensive, even for someone like me who swears like it’s her job. The Americans just say the most offensive things. It really disgusts me that Jews, of all people, are capable of being so racist and offensive. You’d think we’d know what it’s like to be treated in a not so kind way….

Then just now my Chilean roomie and I went to go talk to one of the friendless boys, and we bumped into the guy I hit. He started talking to my roommate and (I love her!!!) she told him in a weird hybrid of Spanish, English and Hebrew that she wanted nothing to do with him because he is so cruel to these two boys. And the guy responds in Hebrew, "But it's just fun!" And it was really awesome because I had one of those rare moments where I didn't have to think about what I was saying in Hebrew, I just blurted out, "But it's not fun to them! Not once did I say it wasn't fun for YOU, but it's not fun to them!" And the guy just stood there with a stupid expression on his face. Jesus, people are so stupid sometimes. I completely agree that being an asshole can be fun sometimes--if it weren't fun, people wouldn't do it! I'm just saying being an asshole is not RIGHT. My objection to his being an asshole has nothing to do with entertainment...

So right now I’m feeling simultaneously distanced from my fellow Americans and from my fellow Jews because I simply cannot stand how cruel some of them are capable of being. It makes me want to stay the fuck away from the US for the rest of my life, but at the same time I have the strongest desire to go back to the US to live in the middle of Alabama where I’m not likely to meet many Jews. Maybe my best option is to move away to a country that has no Americans and no Jews. Maybe I’ll move to North Korea.
I guess that’s one of the downsides to living in the Jewish state. I mean, the aliyah office will happily brag that “in Israel, everyone is Jewish!” Well that’s just it. Everyone is Jewish—including the assholes.

Anyway, if you need me I’ll be basking in the glow of our television that we just set up….

Mama raised me right!

I experienced an uncomfortable theoretical question about morals today. Sorry that lately my blog has become so serious and concerned with morals….except for today’s earlier post which was about me being ridiculous when it comes to cleaning floors. But you know what? This is my blog and I’ll write what I want! If you want online entertainment go to a porno site, don’t come here.

Anyway, so about that uncomfortable moral question. I went to talk to the person I smacked the other day because I was sick of having a public argument and I just wanted peace—not necessarily friendship again, but just peace. And he told me that if I had a problem with what he was doing to other people then I didn’t have to watch.

Look, I really hate to play the Hitler card here, but let’s think about it. What if every time a person saw cruelty in the world they just turned their eyes away? I think too many people did that during the Holocaust, and look what happened! So basically what this guy is telling me is that I should turn my eyes away for the sake of friendship with Hitler. Why would I want to turn a blind eye to suffering, and why would I want to be friends with Hitler? I know it’s ridiculous to compare simple bullying with mass murder, and maybe people reading this with family members who experienced death camps will find my comparison offensive….but I mean, the root of it is the same: evil and cruelty.

My friendship with this person is beyond repair—I’m an optimist so I’ll say that it’s only beyond repair until this person recognizes that what he is doing is unbelievably cruel….but even an optimist has to question whether or not that will ever happen. But the fact that I was put in a position where I had to honestly think about, if given the chance to re-do what happened, whether or not I would keep my mouth shut and turn a blind eye to what my friend was doing simply for the sake of his friendship really got me thinking and really made me upset. Would I be willing to do that?


And I thought about it. And here’s what I decided. There’s a limit to how beautiful a person can be—even with make up, a person can only be as pretty as their body simply is, you know? And there’s a limit to how smart a person can be. Sometimes people can never be Einstein, now matter how hard they try. And there’s a limit to how talented you can be at anything, like say playing the piano, because you’re either born with talent that you can cultivate through practice or you’re not. In fact, almost everything you can possibly be in life is limited by who you happen to be at birth. But I don’t think there’s a limit to how good you can be. I think anyone is capable of being the next Ghandi or Jesus or whoever the Jewish equivalent is (if Jesus doesn’t count…). I honestly believe that. Maybe I’m just being idealistic, maybe I’m just being stupid, but that is what I believe. I don’t care who you are or how you were raised or how bitter and angry you are at the world, you ALWAYS have the option of being the kindest person in the world. I’m not saying that it’s not a struggle or that there’s not temptation to be an asshole (because it’s often just as easy to be an asshole as a kind person, and usually assholes get the laughs), but I am saying that you are capable of it. So if the only thing you are capable of in the entire world is to be the kindest person on the planet, why are you not pursuing that goal rather than other goals? Why would I give up the opportunity to be the only thing in the world that I, and everyone else in the world, am born with the capability of becoming the best at just for the sake of convenience, for the sake of having one more person to eat dinner with on the kibbutz?

Look, I’m not aiming to be the next Ghandi or anything, but I simply want to be a decent person. And I don’t care if my wanting to be a decent person means that I will end up not having a single friend in this country. I’d much rather be the loneliest person in Israel with the ability to look at myself in the mirror than the most popular person in Israel with absolutely no shame and no end to my cruelty. And luckily I don’t think I’d have to make that kind of sacrifice, because I’m starting to see a sort of rebellion here in ulpan against the horrible boys. Apparently the French girl next door started shrieking at the boys for throwing sticks and dirt at the borderline-retarded boy while he was sleeping (I can’t believe I used to not like this French girl! She’s now my favorite person here!) and also screamed at the boys for farting on people in their sleep, and another person yelled at the boys for throwing goat shit in the socially awkward boy’s hair.

Another issue has arisen from all of this. I think for the first time in my entire life I am embarrassed to be American. One of my friends here thought I was German based on my accent in foreign languages, and hearing that made me so happy in a way that it never would have before this kibbutz experience. I’ve always been a flag-waving Republican, but after being on this kibbutz I am absolutely horrified that my country was able to nurture such horrible people as the “cool” boys. (My former friend is technically an American but was not raised there and does not have that accent….but all the other boys who are doing the cruelty are Americans. Big fat Americans.) In fact, some of the other people in the kibbutz that I’ve been talking to, including my French friend, refer to the group of horrible boys as “The Americans.” On a daily basis I hear the same phrase in several different languages from several people: “I hate The Americans.” They call the group The Americans because every single American boy in this ulpan is causing the trouble and no other nationality. When I hear someone saying that they hate The Americans, I always turn bright red because, well, I agree! I hate The Americans, too. Today when my French friend told me in French a long story about more things that The Americans did today. I didn’t say anything, just nodded and listened. Finally she finished by angrily blurting out that she hates The Americans. I sadly responded in French that I hated The Americans, too. And, of course, my accent instantly reminded her that I was American and she gasped and cupped her hands to her face in embarrassment. “Oh oh oh, of course I do not mean you, SamonTah!”

Well, I’m glad that I’m not part of the horrible gang called “The Americans,” but I hate being the only exception. I’ve always been so proud to be American, even though I’m in Israel now, so it feels strange to NOT want to be considered part of “The Americans.” I wish people here constantly said that they hated The Hungarians or The Peruvians or The Ukrainians. Why is it that MY fellow countrymen have to be this kibbutz’s resident assholes? I always thought of Americans as idealistic and optimistic people—right now I’m listening to the song “Only in America” which is just one of many songs about the American Dream, so positive--yet here we are being miserable bastards to lonely boys with disabilities. If there’s one thing I remember being told in school it was that in America anyone, even a boy born in a cardboard box in a back alley somewhere, ANYONE can be the president. Yeah, we know that not everyone wants to be president, but in school they always use this as a way of saying that in America anyone can aspire to greatness and become great. And being the good American that I am, I’ve always believed that. American Dream and all that. Well, if we can be anything we want to be, why are we being assholes? If we can do anything we choose, why do we choose to inflict pain on the weak? If we have limitless potential, why aspire to cruelty?

I don’t understand. We are in Israel now. We are in the most beautiful country in the world, we are next to the holiest city in the world, and most importantly we are among our fellow Jews now. Does that mean nothing to us? 60 years ago we probably wouldn’t have had this opportunity to be here, and yet we choose to show our appreciation for being here by taking this opportunity to inflict as much pain as possible within this country. Isn’t there enough shit going down in this region without stupid American boys drawing penises on people and throwing goat shit in people’s hair? Come on now, folks…

Three things

Three things I need to tell you about: The Negev, kibbutz healthcare, and cleaning floors.

1) I used to think that maybe one day I'd like to be a follower of Ben Gurion. Maybe one day I'd be one more person to settle in the Negev and continue to make the desert bloom. Before our tiyul to the desert I thought this. And then I went there.

Holy. Fucking. Balls.

I seriously don't think I've ever experienced heat like that. And it's not even summer yet.

I guess the moral of the story is that you should never plan on living somewhere where there's a major campaign to get people to live there...

2) I felt sick today. Nothing too serious, just a pretty bad headache and general shitness, right? Back at school when I had these symptoms I would just stay in bed or maybe miss morning classes, and just sleep it off. And by the end of the day, or at least by the next day, I'd usually be just fine.

So today I woke up feeling shitty--you know, weak and shaky and with a headache...slight fever--but went to class. After a couple hours I realized that I had made a mistake and that I should have stayed in bed and gotten better. So during the break I approached the teacher and asked if I might be excused to go home because I wasn't feeling very well.

I was told that, no, I couldn't just go back to sleep because if I want to miss class because I'm sick I have to go to the fucking kibbutz doctor and sit around to be examined and then he has to diagnose me with something and then I have to take medicine and only THEN can I just go back to bed. Why do I need this? I know I'm not deathly ill, I know that the thing I need right now is to just take it easy. Why do I have to go to a doctor for just having a headache and general crumminess?

It's not like I'd have to pay to visit the doctor. THe healthcare is included in the program. My not wanting to visit the doctor is not a money issue, it's a matter of principle. Why the hell is it necessary to go to the doctor for something as minor as this? if I ever need a Band-Aid here, am I going to have to go to the doctor for that as well??? Is this an Israeli thing or is this just my kibbutz being retarded?

3) I had to clean the ulpan room's floor with my teacher and with my roommate. My roommate's father is Israeli so she's been well-exposed to and well-practiced in the Israeli style of floor cleaning. And my teacher IS Israeli, so I'm guessing she's pretty familiar with this too. I, on the other hand, visited this country for the first time in my life only five months ago, and I find this method of cleaning floors to be interesting from the outside but absolutely ALARMING while doing it. My teacher kept yelling at me to do this/that in Hebrew, but I didn't understand what the fuck she was talking about because I didn't know the words for crucial things like "rag," "mop," "broom" or "that weird squeegee broom thing" in Hebrew. Normally when I don't understand certain vocabulary words I just use logic to figure out what they are, but since I had no idea how the fuck one normally cleans floors in Israel, it was a pretty hopeless exercise. So there I am, hearing, "SAMMY, USE THE XXXXXX TO AAGLKALDKJGLSDG THE BLBLBLBLB NOW!" And I'm just standing there, panicking because I can't understand what the hell I'm supposed to be doing, and meanwhile I'm struggling to swim because I'm almost up to my neck in the soapy water that my teacher has flooded the room with (okay, that's a stretch...).

Anyway, it's over now. But I think I'll be talking about this in therapy years from now....

Vigilante Justice

Um, so you remember how I am kind of vulnerable to practicing vigilante justice? Usually it’s harmless stuff—for example, I feel like I’m paying too much and working too hard to be on this kibbutz, so I got really annoyed when they said we had to buy our own toilet papers. So I’ve been “stealing”/taking more than I need for one go/whatevering toilet paper from all of the kibbutz’s public bathrooms. I am not stealing—I am not taking the toilet paper from the market here—but I am definitely abusing something in order to rectify something I see as wrong.

Well, I kind of practiced vigilante justice on Monday night. Don’t worry, I didn’t go on some ridiculous raid on a Palestinian village, nor did I release animals from some animal testing center….

On Monday night I hit someone. Really hard. Like, I’ve used the same move on my brother a couple years ago while we were roughhousing, and it reduced him to tears on one occasion.

Perhaps the most exciting part of all of this is that the person I hit was my best friend here. Yet I don’t regret what I did. In fact, if given the opportunity I would have hit this person even harder. In fact, I TRIED to hit the person again immediately after the first strike, but someone physically restrained me.

Maybe I should explain. What drove a short + fat dweeby jewish girl to violence? Cruelty. More details? There are two boys here in ulpan that don’t really have any friends. One of them has some serious physical problems that cause his speech to be almost unintelligible and from listening to the content of what he says, I suspect there are serious mental/intelligence issues. But he’s perfectly harmless and hasn’t done wrong to anybody. There’s another boy here who is just socially awkward….I don’t really know how else to explain it. Anyway, a group of “cool” boys have been teasing the two non-stop, and it just disgusts me. Previously my best friend (I hate to use the term “best friend” for someone I haven’t really known that long, but “closest friend so far in Israel” is a bit too long to have to keep repeating for the sake of the story) here was a kind of quasi-religious guy with a huge interest in Nachman (so he was really big on positivity), and he was very nice to everybody.

Well, the problem is that this guy is also a little bit insecure. And there was a sort of invitation from the “cool” boys to hang out with them. So he accepted. And he joined in with the merciless teasing of two boys who have not a single friend in this country. Everything these two boys said or did was met with cruel laughter and embarrassing imitations.

So on Monday night the “cool” boys decided they were going to play pranks on these two boys. Previously they had taken a pair of HUGE tightie-whities, drew in a skid mark and wrote one of the boy’s names on it in HUGE letters….and then left it out for all to see. Then they went into the borderline-retarded kid’s room while he was sleeping and drew an enormous penis on him in sharpie.

I kept yelling at them to stop, telling them how mean it was, but they just kept doing these things and other things to the boys. I spent the whole time screaming STOP! DON’T! until I was blue in the mouth, but they just keep playing horrible pranks and saying horrible things about the friendless boys. But my friend kept laughing right along with the “cool” boys, egging them on.

Well, finally I had had enough of yelling at people to stop behaving like teenaged assholes and I just wanted to go to bed. As I walked back to my room, I saw that the “cool” boys had left a flaming t-shirt on the borderline-retarded kid’s doorstep. (I hate to call someone “borderline-retarded,” but I’m not really sure how else to put it.) The flames were getting pretty large, but my friend jumped out with a can of hairspray to make an even larger flame. Before he could do that, I grabbed the t-shirt and was about to slam my foot down to put out the flames. My foot was right on top of the flames when my friend, absolutely desperate to be as big of jackass as possible, sprayed the flames with hairspray so that a HUGE fireball came up around my foot. I was okay, but it scared the shit out me and I was greatly upset that my friend was so desperate to continue a prank on some poor friendless kid that he was willing to put me at risk. I was disgusted that he was so willing to make some poor friendless kid’s life even worse than it would already be just so that he could have a gang of “cool” boys to call his own.

So he took a few steps away to laugh at how badass he was with the group of “cool” boys that had gathered…..so I took a few steps toward him, drew back my hand and

WHAM!!!!

I smacked him as hard as I possibly could. What I remember is that the look on his face was immediately of immense shock, then of horrible pain, and then of intense anger. I honestly thought I was going to have to follow up my smack with a legit fist fight.

Needless to say, I am no longer friends with my best friend in Israel. I’m not surprised. Usually best friends don’t get into physical fights. But then again, usually I’m not friends with immoral jackasses. So….

What makes me so angry about all of this is that my former best friend knows all the words to every song with the word “shalom” in it. If it’s a song that begs for peace, he knows it and sings it. If it’s a song that wonders when peace will come on Israel and the world, he sings it with tears in his eyes.

So this is a personal matter. Why am I bringing it up on this blog? Because I think it has everything to do with Israel, and everything to do with the world:
I got a few questions for him and people like him. Why the hell do we angrily wonder why the Arabs can’t stop blowing themselves up to kill us when you can’t let your borderline-retarded neighbor sleep in peace without worrying about whether or not he’s gonna wake up with a Sharpied-in phallus on him? Why sing “Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu” if you’re gonna do everything in your power to make sure two friendless boys have the complete opposite of shalom on them? If the rest of the world is already shit enough to the Jews to make them want to move to Israel to escape, why do we feel compelled to replace the missing negativity when we arrive with our own shit-ness?

Can we, the Jewish community, stop being such shitholes to each other? Maybe once we've gotten that under control we can ask the rest of the world to leave us the fuck alone, too.

You know what’s ironic? He complained bitterly about the “cruelty” to the camels we had to ride in the Negev, yet he sees nothing cruel about constantly taunting and teasing two boys without a single a friend in this country. I don’t know how that’s possible. I mean, I’m all for kindness to animals and all, I was a vegetarian for four years, but humans are worth more to me. I don’t give a shit that some camel is being ridden against its will when two poor boys are basically being tortured by their peers in ulpan.


I’m not saying we have to be best friends with anybody—I mean, I’m not exactly jumping in line to hang out with these two friendless guys—but if people don’t have the strength in them to be friends to the two guys (as I don’t), then they can at least just leave them in peace.

What I find really encouraging about all of this is that, though the “cool” boys keep teasing the friendless boys mercilessly, most of the rest of the ulpan heard what happened and has told me that I did the right thing and that they agree with my sentiments.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on in my life.

Laundry Tetris

I realized today that I work in Tetris. No matter how quickly I find a place for folded laundry, there is always huge heaps more of laundry thrown at me that is waiting to be folding. Always. Like Tetris. Laundry Tetris.

I also realized that I suck at folding. But I believe that everything in this world evens out. Everything is fair. I decided that since I’m terrible at folding towels, I must have some other great undiscovered talent. Maybe I’m the world’s greatest surfer, or maybe I’d be great at pole dancing. I don’t know, but one thing’s for sure: I’m certainly total shit at towel folding.

Today Old Bitch kept eying me to make sure I wasn’t folding small towels, because she still doesn’t trust me. You know what I noticed? Old Bitch is slow. She folds slower than I do, but no one cares because she’s old. What the hell is that woman doing still working anyway? I mean, fuck, that woman’s probably in Depends by now, what is she doing folding towels all day? She’s definitely older than my grandparents. Where are my grandparents? In an old people’s home sleeping most of the day. What is this woman doing? Working in a fucking sweatshop/playing Laundry Tetris.

I was really excited because I was about to put away my folded towels into the assigned cubbies, when French Bitch stopped me. She asked me (in Hebrew!!!) if I wanted to do this work together with her. “B’yachad” she said. Together. And I was very happy, because I thought FINALLY I was part of the Women of the Wash. “B’yachad?” I repeated. “Cen, b’yachad,” she confirmed.

So I take my handful of towels and start putting things away. After a few seconds I turn to see what she is doing and see that Israelis clearly have a different definition of “b’yachad” from what I learned back at NU. French Bitch was standing in the doorway, watching me with a bitch French smirk on her face, drinking a cup of coffee. Apparently finishing a job “b’yachad” means that one person does all the work while the other smiles condescendingly and drinks coffee (from a glass that is always dirty….hence, I never drink at work, and hence French Bitch is always yelling at me to drink).

When I had finished, I wanted to say something to her in Hebrew that was snarky, so I formed a sentence in my head that would be said as sarcastically as possible: “Hine, gamarnu b’yachad.” (Look, we’ve finished together!) But then I remembered hearing somewhere that “ligmor” sometimes has sexual connations, and I was not in the mood to hand out sexual innuendos. I’m not really sure if there’s an Israeli equivalent to “That’s what she said,” but I really don’t want to find out. Especially not from French Bitch.



You know what? From the moment I get my citizenship in Israel on I’m using “Immigrant” as a slur. As in, “You fucking immigrant!”

Also, I forgot to update for Israeli Music Sunday. So here is Subliminal's gift to the state for its 60th birthday. I hear this song every fucking day on the radio and it is the highlight of my day every day.

Babies!

Again, it's Shabbat and I am so bored with nothing to do but write all day......so I'm punishing you with it:

This has always interested me, but right now I’m thinking about it a lot since I’m clearly at an important turning point in my life. I’ve always found it interesting to look at pictures from a while ago and think about how the people in the pictures don’t know what I know. For example, I remember looking at a picture of my brother and one of his friends from when they were 15, and I thought to myself, “Wow, my brother’s friend didn’t know he was gonna get married four years after taking this picture.” I know it’s not that exciting because that’s just how time works, but there we are….

So right now I have in front of me a passport from the US, my birth certificate and a copy of my proof of Judaism from the synagogue I grew up in. The things I’m gonna need when I go to Misrad Hapnim. And my birth certificate is just blowing my mind in the same way that old pictures do because, you know, a birth certificate is the first record there is of a person….and it’s so weird to think that at one point I was just a little baby and no one had any idea that 19 (almost 20) years later I’d be 8000 miles away in a foreign country.

It’s also weird to look at the record of my dad on my birth certificate. His name is clearly not a Jewish one, and my birth certificate states that he was born in Arkansas. So then I get to thinking, wow, my grandparents had no idea when my dad was born that he was going to marry a Jew and have Jewish children and one of them was going to abandon the country that that side of the family had lived in for centuries…since before the U.S. existed.

Hell, even as recently as when I was 12—the last time I saw a grandparent from my dad’s side—they couldn’t have predicted that I would be where I am now. What did I want to do when I was 12? I think I wanted to be a Latin scholar at Oxford. I mean, I loved Israel but when I was 12 it wasn’t my priority. If my granny somehow knew that 7 years after the last time I would ever see her I’d be in the Jewish state, she wouldn’t believe it! I mean, for Christ’s sake, I was visiting her for CHRISTMAS!

It’s weird to think of all the Memorial Days of the country of my birth I celebrated by attending festive BBQ’s, having no idea that one day I’d spend the Memorial Day of a different country at a ceremony in a cemetery. It’s weird to remember that from the time I was five until I was 11, I had to say the Pledge of Allegiance 3 mornings a week during flag salute at school, and yet a few years later here I am about to declare citizenship of and allegiance to another country. It’s weird to think of my elementary school’s annual “American Appreciation Day” in which we all had to dress up as Americans—you know, blue jeans, white shirts and red bandanas—and sing songs about how great the United States is. And yet, for all the singing I did about how great the US is, I’ve left it.

It’s also weird to think about the slightest things that could have prevented me from reaching this moment. First off, my parents have told me that right before I was born they were seriously considering moving from California to Tennessee. And obviously I would be seriously different if I were raised in the south. Would I have never come to Israel? Or would I have come sooner? Then I think, what if the night before “The Big Earthquake,” during which a huge wardrobe fell on my bed, I hadn’t insisted on not sleeping in my own room? What if my parents had let me go to the high school I originally wanted to go to instead of the one I ended up going to and loving? Then I start thinking about what if certain larger things hadn’t happened, like the LA Riots or September 11th. Would my family be any different, and would I be any different? It really is crazy. The possibilities of what can happen in life are infinite, for better or worse.

It really is exciting when you think about it. And a little frightening. I mean, when I was a newborn my parents had no way of knowing what I was going to do with my life. It’s scary to think about. You know, you have a kid, but have no idea what’s gonna happen to it. I think of my brothers and me, how extremely different the three of us are, and yet when each of us were born we probably didn’t look too different from each other or act too different from each other because, let’s be totally honest, babies are pretty much the same. Parents have NO way of knowing what their little blob of a human is going to become. Sure, you might be birthing the next Einstein, but you also might be birthing someone who will grow up to be a serial killer, or someone who will grow up to cause great destruction in the world, or someone who will abandon you and move to Israel.

I don’t know if any of this made sense.

Country Music Shabbat

This is a fucking beautiful country!!!


So far I’ve spent my morning listening to Weird Al—I realize that I shouldn’t admit to being such a dweeb, but I remember reading somewhere in some Jewish values book that you should never be afraid to share with other people something that has helped you even if it’s embarrassing, because someone else in your shoes might not get a chance to benefit from the help you found. And I’m a Jew with values, so I’m telling you: Weird Al cures sadness/homesickness. Something about singing along to “Spam” and getting to yell the lyric “HAM AND PORK” in the Jewish state was extremely satisfying…

I’d share with you some Weird Al, but I meant it when I said Shabbat was Country Music Day on this blog. Rain/shine/sleet/snow/apocalypse, Shabbat is Country Music Day here on “Aw eff….”
Today I’m sharing with you a song from Rodney Atkins called “If You’re Going Through Hell.” It’s about how if you’re going through a shit time or you’re scared or whatever, just keep going. Which I think is appropriate. (Okay, maybe I’m being dramatic. To be perfectly honest, folding towels is not Hell; it’s Purgatory.)





P.S. You know how I know that I want to stay in this country? Because the following statement excites me: Mañana I am calling to make an appointment with Misrad Hapnim to give them my papers to get citizenship. (Jealous any?)

P.P.S. Is it confusing you that I don’t like the word “tomorrow” so I say “mañana?”

P.P.P.S. I think I’ll also say “mañana” when I’m speaking Hebrew instead of מחר.

I remember a time that I loved Israel...

I’m starting to feel a little down and homesick now…. At first I was only going to go 2 months without seeing my parents, but now I have to go 5 months. I’m going to have to go at least 9 months without seeing one of my brothers, and I have no idea when I’ll see the other. So, needless to say I’m feeling a little shit. I could REALLY use a frum cousin in Israel right now… I mean, the thought of having to go at least 5 months without seeing anyone you’re related to is real, real shit. Just shit.

I’m trying to stay positive but sometimes it’s a little difficult because sometimes you just need to go home to your family for a little unconditional love.

Also, I’m really freaked out because apparently whenever the Arabs in the village next to us get excited or are celebrating something they shoot off guns like no other. At least we THINK that’s what’s happening. So every couple days there’s like five minutes where you just hear a constant “BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!” and if it’s at night the sky keeps flashing. It is absolutely terrifying.

Anyway, I wrote a 4 page rant about how sad I feel and how foreign I feel and how this is so difficult. But I decided not to post it, and instead I'll save it and look at it when I'm finally settled here--whether it takes days, weeks, months or years. I WILL get settled here.

Well, people, you can help me get settled. (Prolly just Abraham and Elana reading this….though if you’re not A. or E. feel free to put in your thoughts anyway.) I’m calling upon you to remind me what I like about this country. Remind me that I REALLY want to be here. I’ll start us off:

I love that pudding can be found at every breakfast.

I love that there is this famous guy here (I think he’s a TV personality) whose name is Guy Penis.

I love that a gesture that reminds me of a gesture you would make for “money” or a gesture you would make while asking, “Understand?” is actually a gesture for “wait.”

I love that when I’m here I just say “Fuck it!” to world opinion and believe what I honestly believe is morally right.

I love that in ulpan I think I feel how my family must have felt when they moved to the US.

I love that I have the freedom of being thousands of miles away. Example? I’ve known this one girl for the past 8 years and she’s always bothered me with political/whatever types of arguments and I’ve always had to eventually give in and suggest that, “Okay, well, maybe you’re right…” just to get her to leave me alone and just to keep the peace. But today she said something to me via the internet that pissed me off, and I was about to respond by saying something diplomatic…..but then I realized that I was 5000 miles away from her, and there’s a good chance I’ll never see her again in person. And, well, I couldn’t be bothered to be diplomatic when she was clearly wrong. So I basically just sent back a snarky, sarcastic comment that basically suggested she was an idiot. And then came her response, “Thanks for your vote of confidence. Have a good fucking day.” 8 years I had been waiting for this moment, and I think I’ll thank G-d for Israel because I finally took care of this business. I’m not saying I’m going to tell off everyone I know in America….but I am saying I’m enjoying the chance to be who I want to be and believe what I want to believe!

I love that bus drivers, laundry women and people in supermarkets sing along to music they hear if they feel like it.

I love that I can now decently navigate my way around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on my own.

I love that I now have Jewish friends from England, Peru, Mexico, India, South Africa, Belarus, Russia, France, etc etc etc.

I love (and hate) that any errand involves a challenge because of the language barrier. Everything is always an adventure because there’s always a sign to try to decipher or there’s always some Israeli guy yelling at you in Hebrew because you’re doing something idiotic, but you have to struggle to understand exactly what… An errand ceases to be an errand and instead becomes a knight’s quest.

I love that when I’m here I don’t feel like a total asshole for considering a presidential candidate’s opinion on Israel to be the most important factor in deciding whether or not to vote for him.

EDIT: I love that the 28 year old Hungarian guy sitting next to me is watchign *NSYNC videos on youtube.

Above all else, I need to remind myself that I love Israel. I need to remember that I wanted (and still want, though sometimes I forget) to be here. I’ve loved Israel my entire life, and I decided in the summer of 2006 that I needed to live here. Well, now I’m here. And though I’m homesick and wish I had family here, and though this kibbutz is shit, and though my job is crap…..in the words of the great Beatles: “We can work it out.”

Actually, what the hell am I talking about, “We can work it out”??? One of my big philosophies in life is that there are two types of people: “Let It Be” people who just accept that things are shit, and “Hey Jude” people who try to make things better and feel better about things. And I want to be a “Hey Jude” person.

Bright side? Next week we’re going on a group tiyul to the south. Every single time I hear the “south” I imagine a bunch of rednecks, but then I remember I’m in Israel….. Anyway, I’m really excited. We’re gonna get to go to the Dead Sea, Sde Boker and Masada. I’m not too excited about Masada though, because I’ve never really liked the story behind it. I don’t like that they all killed themselves. Personally, I’d prefer to die fighting a futile fight than to kill myself and let the enemy win without even a minor fight. Shit, I have to remind myself of that when I’m having a shit time here. Keep fighting! (Jesus, Sam, it’s just a fucking kibbutz….you aren’t experiencing Masada!)

Awesome

If someone wants to make a techno remix of the two guys in the neighboring Arab village's mosques singing "Allah hu akbar," that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Also, I noticed that instead of calling me SemenTAH like the Israelis, the French folks here call me Sa-monTAH! which I also find interesting...

You'd think I spoke English fluently or something...

Today the Women of the Wash all just suddenly started speaking English to me. I had made SUCH an effort to speak Hebrew only to them, and suddenly today even the women who previously spoke only Hebrew to me now switched to only English. Even if I ask a question in Hebrew, I get a response in English. If I respond to a question in English in Hebrew, all follow-up questions are in English.

This is extremely frustrating. I'm pretty sure the Women of the Wash think I'm retarded. Sure, you might say that thinking that someone doesn't understand Hebrew is NOT the same as thinking someone is retarded. I completely agree. However, that is not all. Even when they give me instructions in ENGLISH now, the Women think they are helping me by gesturing wildly and ridiculously, with the sort of stupidity that you can only find in a game of Charades. To quote a previously un-named background bitch, who henceforth will be called Charades Bitch: "I (points to self) am GO-ING (makes walking gesture with fingers) to EAT (mimes moving food to her mouth). YOU (points to me) can FINISH (she couldn't think up a gesture for this one but was visibly DYING for one) to FOLD (mimes folding) the TOWELS (points to the basket of towels next to us). TOWELS! (points at the basket again)"

I wanted to say, "GO (make walking gesture with fingers) FUCK (make humping gesture) YOURSELF (point at woman)."

I'm fucking pissed off. They're extremely condescending. The Women of the Wash AND the people here in Israel who respond to me (and other people in the ulpan are having htis problem too) in English. It's so frustrating to be in this country and to make an effort to speak Hebrew and to have people respond in English. I know you might think, "Oh, well, they just want to practice their English!"

Well fuck that! I didn't come here to be the nation of Israel's English tutor! If you want a fucking English tutor, go to England! If someone made the trouble to drop everything and move to this country and is trying to learn Hebrew, responding to them in English 1) announces that their Hebrew sucks and 2) is denying the person the opportunity to NOT suck in Hebrew. People of Israel, if you move to the U.S. (G-d forbid!), then I won't use you as my personal Hebrew tutor when you're trying to speak English. But right now we're in Israel, so things are different. In America we speak English, in Israel we speak Hebrew.

I got so pissed off with the Women/Bitches of the Wash speaking English with me that I started responding in English and making intentional mistakes or at least confirming the mistakes they made. Naomi Bitch asked me, "I can to take the fan?" And I said, "Yes, you can to take the fan" as if what I were saying were perfect English. Old Bitch pointed at a basket of towels and asked me, "This need to fold?" And I responded with a perfectly serious expression on my face, "Yes, those need to fold." I figure if these women are going to be total bitches to me by denying me the ONE positive aspect of my job (the chance to learn Hebrew), I can be a total bitch by being the worst English tutor ever.

EXCITING NEWS: I HAVE CHOSEN BETWEEN TIBERIAS AND HAIFA. TOMORROW I AM GOING TO HAIFA! MORE INFORMATION TO FOLLOW.....OR NOT. BECAUSE THERE'S NOT MUCH ELSE TO SAY.

We shall overcome

Two days ago I went with a friend and a French bitch (not THE French Bitch, but A French bitch) to Jerusalem. And we went to the Kotel because the guy wanted to put on his tefillin and do what guys do, etc etc. On the way back we were running late so we decided to take a bus from the Old City or something to the central bus station instead of walking (but if my mother asks, we WALKED and did not even LOOK at an Israeli bus....). Anyway, I'm the first of the gang to get on, and I start looking for a place to sit. The first thing I see is three empty seats (perfect!) next to this Jewish guy in a black suit (which, I know I know, is soooooo specific, because there's only like two Jewish guys in black suits in Jerusalem), and I start to settle my butt down. But as I'm lowering my ass I take a look at everyone around me and I realize that everyone around me is a man. A man in a black suit and black hat. And they are all giving me REALLY angry looks.

I quickly realized that I was on one of those segregated buses that I had heard about. So I jumped up so quickly that you would have thought something had bitten my rear, and I sprinted to the back of the bus with the rest of the women before the men in black lynched me.

The sad thing is, whenever I tell my friends back home, "Dude, I was on a segregated bus today in Israel!" they always say, "Oh my G-d, you mean they make Arabs sit in the back????" And they're scandalized until I tell them that, no no, it's the Jewish (and other) women who are in the back. And, though weirded out, these friends feel much less scandalized. Which I find weird. You know, I'm not at all suggesting that segregation is a good idea or a morally acceptable idea--and I really want to stress that do not in any way believe that buses in Israel or in any country for that matter should be segregated in any way-- but if these guys in black just feel like they GOTTA enforce some kind of segregation on buses, why not segregate yourself from their perceived "enemy" rather than your wife? Why are they forcing their own women, the people who give birth to and raise future generations of Jews, to the back of the bus like second class citizens? I'm not even a feminist, and I'm totally in favor of separating sexes during prayer, but this is fucked up. It's fucked up, man...


Anyway, yesterday the Women of the Wash held a fascinating conversation on the pros and cons of making your own granola versus buying it in the store. It was so boring that for once in my life I wished I couldn't understand Hebrew.
So yesterday I was really excited about a "new" woman at work (she's not new, but I hadnt met her yet). But I sit right in back of her. And she's a farter. She is a shameless farter. She just farts nasty farts all day, and I have to breathe it in. I used to be concerned about the health of my lungs because of all the smokers I hang around with here in Israel, but now I'm concerned because I think these farts of hers are destroying the lining of my lungs.
I've christened this new bitch "Naomi Bitch" 'because she looks like my art teacher from Hebrew school who was named "Naomi." She was a large, but very nice (as most fat people are....i.e. Santa Claus), and she made us do the shittiest art projects. By the way, while I'm on the subject: what does a Hebrew school need an art teacher for? I mean, we barely came out of there knowing the Alef-Bet, so how is it that we had time to make shit out of popsicle sticks that our parents would immediately throw away anyway?
I was deciding between "Naomi Bitch" and "Charlie Brown's Teacher Bitch," but decided that "Charlie Brown's Teacher Bitch" was too long. Why Charlie Brown's teacher? Well, remember how during the TV show, whenever his teacher talked, it was just this bizarre and nasal "Waaa waaa waaa waaaa?" Well, basically Naomi Bitch's voice is bizarre and nasal, and when she speaks she sounds like how Charlie Brown's teacher would sound if she were speaking Hebrew.

Yesterday I folded a classmate's underpants. You seriously do not know awkward until you've folded a classmate's underwear.

I also totally out-diva-ed all the women because the song "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" came on the radio and, well, what can I say. I know all the words, including the difficult "Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making up again" part.

I would also like to know what is up with this kibbutz and its love affair with shoulder pads. I feel like every other women's shirt that I fold has shoulder pads. Are women here concerned that their shoulders are not padded enough?

This one Woman of the Wash (henceforth called "English Bitch") keeps talking to me in English. Even though I ONLY speak to her in Hebrew. And though she responds in English, she responds in such a way that lets me know that clearly what I said in Hebrew was able to be understood. So it pisses me off. And it wasn't like the usual Israel thing where they just want to practice their English. She clearly just thought I didn't understand Hebrew. I wanted to say to her, "Bitch, you respond to me in English one more time and I will K-I-L-L you....." but instead I just said, "Don't speak to me in English, I am not English!" And she said to me, "But you are American!" So I said in Hebrew, "But we're not in America!!!"

Henyways....things in the laundry room are really boring still. Yesterday was the first legit hot day we've had so far, and OH MY G-D, I work in an armpit. A smelly, smelly armpit.

Also, Fat Bitch laughs like this: "Khe khe khe!!!" and I just want to smack her.

I was gonna delete my drunk post, because it's a little embarrassing to be drunk. As my English friend told me last night, "Wow, you are SUCH an under-21 year old American right now...." But I'm leaving it up because I think I made a valid point. We should accept that if you're foreign, you're gonna sound like a total jackass when you speak a different language. Unless you're Oz, in which case you're just a lucky bastard. You know, we should all have the confidence of a drunk person when we speak foreign languages.

Oh shit....

So I'm quite drunk right now. we were waiting for the bus to the kibbuts and we had nothign better to do, so the boys kept saying how funny it would be if i drank. so i drank. a lot. more than all the boys combined.'

And I was speaking to hte French people. And everyone was like, "Holy fuck, you can speak French?" And I was like, "terribly." And everyone was like, "You were speaking SO fucking fast in French." So apparently when I'm really drunk I speak French REALLY fast and with the utmost confidence. So aparent;y what I need to do in Hebrew is be drunk in hebrew all the time and then il feel like i'm completely fluent in hebrew and people will be like,"shit son, you speak hebrew SO well" and i'll just be like, "no i dont, im just drunk."

Today I felt Israeli.

Today in the laundry room I had a wonderful moment where I just loved this country. I was folding laundry when the song "I will always love you" came on the radio. And I was really excited, because it was one of hte first songs I've heard on this radio station that was actually in English. I looked around and noticed that the women of the wash were kind of humming along, but most of the words were giving them difficulty (besides the chorus, which EVERYONE knows). And I thought of how the women try to out-diva each other whenever a familiar Hebrew song comes on the radio. And I thought, this is my moment.

So I started singing. I started singing "I will always love you." In the middle of the laundry room. I didn't belt it as loud as I wanted to, but it was DEFINITELY audible and I definitely sang with emotion. Simply because I was the only one in the room who could easily handle the English lyrics, I out-diva-ed EVERYONE.

And you know what the miraculous thing is? No one gave me a funny look. Not a SINGLE person in the room thought it was bizarre that I was singing loudly to a ridiculously emotional, almost hilariously over-the-top, song. No one even batted an eye.

I fucking love the laundry room. And I fucking love this country.



Today two friends visited me during work when all my coworkers were on their two hour breakfast break. After I told them where my coworkers were, the chubby German kid says in his ridiculous accent, "They take two hours breakfast?? I vould be dancing nekkid on zeh tables!!!" So I'm actually considering doing that on Tuesday....

People keep telling me that the behavior of the women in the laundry room is simply due to the fact that most of the women are 'sabras' or sabra wannabes. No. There is a difference between being a sabra and being a bitch. Okay?

Today I found out that Cold Bitch (daughter of Crazy Bitch) has a daughter. My immediate reaction was, "Someone actually had SEX with this woman??? Jesus, that's further proof that there's someone out there for EVERYONE!" Cold Bitch's daughter is henceforth to be referred to as Lil BIT--Little Bitch in Training.

Today I heard a lot of military copters and shit flying over the kibbutz. And I kept praying, "Please, G-d. Please let them bomb this hell-hole of a kibbutz." When I am Prime Minister (don't laugh, assholes!), my first order will be to raze this kibbutz to the ground and salt the earth.

Applying the "Chaval Al Hazman" principle I learned earlier (that as long as the person saying something you don't understand is smiling, you will assume it's a good or a harmless thing), I have started messing with Fat Bitch. When the other women leave the room, I strike up a conversation in Hebrew. And we're friendly and we chat. Then I pretend that I can't quite figure out how to say something in Hebrew, so I look at her and smile a sweet, sincere-looking smile, and I say something like, "I'm gonna draw on you with a Sharpie." She doesn't understand English and since I'm smiling, she assumes that I"m saying something sweet, so she just smiles back. Oh goodness, it's so fun.

I have to tell you about how Astrology Bitch told me that "Zionism is just about wanting to speak our own language."

My job is so worthless. At least with other jobs, you can wake up and be like, "wow, people NEED me today." When I wake up in the morning, it's hard to seriously think to myself, "Wow, if I didn't go to work today, peoples' clothing on this kibbutz would be even WRINKLIER!"

My mom is telling me that she wants me to study in Jerusalem after ulpan here rather than Haifa (and Tel Aviv is out of the question!) because "Haifa is just too close to Lebanon!" I want to tell her, "This is Israel. EVERYTHING is too close to EVERYTHING!" I mean, Jerusalem is practically in the West Bank! Oh mother....

I'm thinking of calling my job either "Garment Restoration," "Garment Maintenance" or, my personal favorite, "Aquatic Activity Anti-Hydration Apparatus Technician" (which basically amounts to towel folder).

Today my Hebrew teacher came in to pick up her laundry. she knows damn well that I hate my job, and she asks me, "Mah shlomech?" And I wanted to be like, "how the fuck do you THINK it is, bitch? I'm fucking folding towels all day!" But instead I just said, "B'seder."



I feel bad because my country music plug suggests that I don't like the music in this country. Not true! So in addition to "Country Music Shabbat," we'll be having "Israeli Music Sunday!" Today's song is a great song that I listen to basically every day in the laundry room.