Fatantha

Work is starting to make me feel very self-conscious. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been under the impression that I was skinny or whatever, but even still I’m finding work very embarrassing. The boss is very nice and everything, but I have the understanding that he thinks I’m some kind of ginormous walking female case of fat. Again, I’ll be the first to admit that I need to lose quite a bit of weight, and that I could stand to exercise quite a bit more, and that (simply put) I am indeed fat—but I hardly thought “fat” was my defining characteristic. I figured that if my defining characteristic were something negative (which it may well be), it’d probably be more along the lines of “obnoxious.”

What makes me think that my boss suspects me of eating sticks of butter like Bugs Bunny eats carrots? Well, the first day I started work, he took me to the back room to get me a uniform t-shirt. He looked at me and kind of frowned, then rummaged through the storage a bit more. He then pulled out a man’s XL shirt, and said with an unsettling amount of doubt in his voice, “Here, this miiiiiiiight fit.” As if Jesus Christ himself would first have to be resurrected and then perform a miracle in order for me to fit into that shirt. (For the record: I wear that shirt. I am basically swimming in it.)

Then, as he explained the gist of working at this pizza place, he said that I could take pizza whenever I wanted to while I was working. He then offered me a piece right then and there. I told him, “Oh, no thank you, I’m actually not too hungry at the moment.” And what did my boss say in response? “That’s probably good….you don’t really need the calories.”

I had kind of gotten over it, and instead tried to focus on being a good worker. Today though, while the boss was out, I went to the back room to wash my hands, when suddenly one of the boys says, “How’s it going, Shamen-Tah?”

For those of you who speak Hebrew, you’ll recognize the pun on the name “Samantha.” Basically my new nickname at work is “Fat-Tah.” Or, as I prefer to translate into English, though it is less precise, “Fatantha.”

My initial response was to say something mean (in jest) right back, to say that the mothers of all my coworkers were all bitches….and then I said it was mean to call me Fatantha. At which point all the boys got very concerned looks on their faces, and all insisted that they appreciated me as a coworker, that I was a good worker and a sweet girl on top of that…but they just want to call me Fatantha.

I tried not to take it to heart, and I tried joking with the boys that if they didn’t watch what they said then I’d sit on them (Weird Al? Anybody? No?)

But I’m not going to lie…I didn’t think I was fat enough to warrant my weight being the main thing my coworkers notice.

Maybe I’m just too sensitive. (Or too fat?)

What a wonderful world

When I was at French camp (where you go to learn French…in the middle of the American woods), somehow impressions of Louis Armstrong got to be very popular. I’m not really sure why, because you’d think with all the French around us we’d get Edith Piaf impressions or something, but such is the nature of the world: bizarre.

Anyway, impressions of Louis Armstrong were all around us: Louis Armstrong would respond in French to a teacher’s question, Louis Armstrong would sing French camp songs in his signature voice, Louis Armstrong would wish her fellow bunkmates a good night, and Louis Armstrong would share (in French) some of the things he liked about the day during a nightly campfire. Most of us didn’t take our admiration of Louis Armstrong’s voice to this level, and instead settled on singing “What a Wonderful World” in his voice as we wandered from activity to activity. Certain people became known as really good imitators of Louis Armstrong, and we all looked to them for inspiration.

Towards the end of camp came “International Day,” where all the different language camps got together at the German camp and interacted. And the English camp, mostly filled with immigrant youth, had prepared a song to present to all the other camps.

“What a Wonderful World”

They sang this song with their normal voices. After the first verse, they invited the other campers to all sing together. So all 100 of my fellow French campers stood up, and without any prior coordination all sang in that unique, scratchy voice of his at the top of our lungs. Over 100 Louis Armstrongs.

The language camps around us heard our distinctive scratchiness and immediately switched their voices to join us, until most of the hundreds of native-born Americans in the vicinity were singing like Louis Armstrong, while meanwhile the immigrants kept singing in their normal voices and couldn’t quite figure out what was going on.

After the ceremony, a bunch of us went to talk to the immigrant campers and compliment them on their song and on their English. And they all asked why we were singing so funny. We laughed and explained about Louis Armstrong (“Who?” they asked), and it was revealed that they had never heard the song before. It was simply taught to them, and they didn’t even understand what they were singing about. We were initially shocked—how could you not have heard the song “What a Wonderful World” before??? Anyway, we tried to explain that he had a distinctive voice, but they didn’t understand the word distinctive….finally a girl says, “Oh…he has funny voice?” Well, yes, but…. In the end we all decided that the immigrants were “cute” and we went on to go do something else.

_______

Well, now I’m the immigrant. Now I’m the one singing songs without background knowledge, and I’m the one people are calling “cute.” At the army gibush this past week, the girls in my group constantly called me “cute.” These Israeli girls (all of them younger than me, mind you) decided that my Hebrew was cute, my accent was cute, and my American attitude and way of thinking were cute.

Anyway, I was just thinking about all of this because today, in preparation for Memorial Day here, we spent most of class listening to famous sad Israeli songs. There were moments where the teacher turned down the volume and then instructed us all to sing along. And as I sat there, my mind immediately went back to “International Day” those years ago. Here I was, just like those American immigrants from Mexico or France or the Middle East or whatever from years back, singing a song that everyone else in the country probably knew very well from Memorial Days past, but which I had never encountered before. And on top of that I had no idea what the hell I was singing about.

The teacher went on to explain on the different memories and whatever that she associates with these songs, being the Israeli that she is. I thought of the song “What a Wonderful World,” and how the song makes me think of the big earthquake in LA from when I was 5, and of riding in the backseat of my grandpa’s car (he was taking me and me brothers to stay with him and our grandma since we didn’t have any water) while that song played on the radio and the window was down and blowing frigid air into my face, and I remember looking out the window of the car and seeing all the destruction that the earthquake had caused. Memories of natural disasters aside though, the song makes me think of old people (usually my grandparents), because this song comes on a lot on oldies stations. And also I think of people doing Louis Armstrong impressions. But when immigrants to the US sing it, or when I sing famous Israeli songs, we’re just singing songs we learned in class.

Gibush Lechimah

Yesterday I returned from a two-day gibush for combat positions for girls. It was pretty badass (except they didn’t have us sleeping in tents…I was a little disappointed…), but now pretty much every possible part of my body is sore.

It was actually interesting how much army protocol is supposed to be intuitive for Israelis. For example, you’re not supposed to know your commander’s name until a certain point in time, and somehow you’re simply supposed to know that that’s the way things are. So when we started the gibush, my 16 person team (though towards the end it was about 13 or so) stood in the shape of a chet in front of our commander, and the commander introduced herself as our commander. After her short introduction, one of the girls asked in total innocence and without a hint of sarcasm, “What’s your name, commander?” And the commander scowled, and the other girls looked at this girl as if she were a total idiot, like what a complete fool she was for asking a basic question about her commander. I mean, I already happened to know the rules about that, but I kind of felt bad for the girl because that’s an easy mistake to make if you don’t know in advance that you’re not supposed to ask…

If I had to describe this two-day experience in one word, it’d be “shocking.” To understand what I mean by that, you have to understand that this army test is 100 percent voluntary, and that there are plenty of interesting jobs you can get without doing this test (just not combat jobs). In order to get an invitation to this test, you have to actually go to the trouble of faxing the army enlistment center asking to be considered for it. One would assume, therefore, that the people coming to this test would be a little more motivated than the average girl, or a least a bit more determined to get these specific army jobs that we were trying out for.

What was shocking then? Maybe it was just my group that was like this, but the one phrase I heard non-stop was “Ein li coach.” Literally, “I don’t have strength.” The girls in my team just whined non-stop, “Ein li coooo-aaaaaachhh…..” They constantly complained that they were tired, or that they were sore, or that they didn’t feel like doing what we were told to do.

That’s not to say that I wasn’t sore or tired or that I really felt like running a mile. But I just shut up about it. Why? Because I knew I was there of my own accord, and that I could leave whenever I wanted to if I really didn’t feel like doing anything. But for some reason these girls didn’t realize the same.

We had to do this one drill where there were nine bags of sand scattered around a field, and in groups of four we had to crawl on our bellies through the dirt to each bag, competing to do it before the other groups. The catch was that if even one of the four didn’t keep up with the pace of her group (either too fast or too slow), the entire group had to crawl back to the base they were coming from. And if the group stopped in between bases to rest, they had to crawl back to the base they were coming from and do it all over again.
So my group finally got to the second base and started moving to the third one, and one girl in the group (who was in MUCH better physical condition than me!) said she was too tired to go on and that we could go on without her. We called out to the commander to ask if we could go on without her, and the commander said NO. So then we started begging the girl to go on with us so that we could get good marks in the gibush, and she still refused. Then the commander saw that we were spending too long in between bases, so she ordered us to crawl back to the second base. So we started crawling, but the lazy girl refused. So then we had to crawl back to the lazy girl. By this point the Israeli girls were yelling at this girl to get her ass in gear, whereas I was saying, “Please….we don’t have to finish, but can we at least do one more?” Because I feel like sometimes the bigger picture is overwhelming, and it’s much easier to do something one step at a time. Finally the girl agreed, and we crawled back together to the second base. But once we got there, the girl refused to go on. So the commander told us we had to crawl back to the first base. So we started crawling back to the first base, but lazy girl refused to move. So we were ordered to crawl back to the second base. Followed by more screaming from the Israelis, and more of my begging to crawl to at least one more base.
Long story short…this is how I spent a solid 30 minutes of my life. We didn’t finish, and I have bruises all over my legs and arms from the experience. Most of all though, I’m just shocked that someone could be so lazy (she was in better physical condition than me—if I could do it, she can do it!), and so inconsiderate towards other people.


At night one of the girls was having a conversation with me in English. Actually, throughout the experience there were two girls that every now and then would try to “help” me by translating something that the commander said in Hebrew into bizarre pidgin English. This despite the fact that they clearly saw that without their translations I was somehow doing fine on my own. Anyway, one of the girls was talking to me and asked what I thought of the commander. I responded that I thought the commander was just fine. The Israeli said, “I think she’s a bitch, and I hate her.”

I explained that her role wasn’t to be a nice person who fed us muffins and cakes all day. Yeah, our commander was tough, and in general it’s not fun to have someone telling you when to sleep, when to stand, when to run, and even when to go to the bathroom, but that’s the army, and our commander was like any other commander in that sense.

But the Israeli said, “Yes…but I think she is a ‘bat zonah.’ “ (Daughter of a whore).

I think heard a slight noise behind me, and I turned my head a bit and…lo and behold…it turns out our commander was standing behind us the entire time. Thank G-d I didn’t say anything against her!!



On the Hebrew-front, I think I did really well. I understood almost everything that the commander said, and for the most part kept up with things during the two assemblies we had (one about rules and one about job options). Actually, there were times when I was rather grateful that I’m not very quick in Hebrew yet. Why? Because if you did something wrong the commander would yell something like, “WHY DID YOU MOVE AFTER WE SAID ‘HAKSHEV’?!?!?!” And your normal reaction to someone asking you a question like this is to explain your reasons (“I had an itch,” or “I forgot” or “I saw a bee.”) The problem is that the commander doesn’t want a response. The commander simply likes to tell you that you did something wrong, but she wants to do it in the form of a question, just like Jeopardy. So when the commander would do this question-criticism of an Israeli girl, they would accidentally blurt out a response. But with me, it’s a little bit harder for me to blurt things out in Hebrew. I had a little bit more time, like a second extra, in my head as I translated to think to myself if I really wanted to respond. And so I didn’t. And this really worked in my favor.

Actually, my Hebrew skills were the one thing that caused the commander to stifle a laugh during the entire process. Normally the commander doesn’t smile or laugh in front of her team at the beginning. But there was one moment where we were walking in two lines to somewhere, and the commander turned around and started saying that our line looked terrible. She asked what we didn’t understand in the word straight, and told us that she wanted the lines to look like a BLANK. I say BLANK because I don’t remember exactly what the word was. “Do you not understand me? I want these two lines to be like a BLANK. You all know what a BLANK is, or is there someone here who does not know what a BLANK is????” she said, as if there better not be anybody who didn’t understand. Then I raised my hand, “Attention commander.”
The commander nodded for me to continue.

“I don’t know what a BLANK is.”

There was then a brief moment where the commanders face crumpled into a stifled laugh as suddenly she was reminded that she had a foreigner in the group, and she promised to explain to me later, and then completely regained her composure: “OKAY. APART FROM THE AMERICAN, IS THERE SOMEONE HERE THAT DOESN’T UNDERSTAND? GREAT, NOW MOVE!!!”


We then moved on to an assembly where female combat job options were to be presented. Each job had made a video of pictures and pop music, and two out of the 7 or so groups used the song “Eye of the Tiger.” For some reason I seemed to be the only person who was amused by this. I especially liked the “Eye of the Tiger” video that synced bullets flying out of guns and explosions from tanks with the music, because I thought there was something slightly vulgar and callous about it. I feel like I should inform the American army, because maybe if they made stuff like this instead of “Army of One” or “Army Strong” commercials it might help with enlistment rates. Or maybe it’d hurt.

At one point the anti-aircraft unit (I say unit because I don’t know the proper term, but I think it’s much bigger than a unit) put on their video…which started with a clip of planes slamming into the World Trade Center. A couple seconds later, they indirectly suggested that their unit could have prevented 9/11, which caused me to kind of gasp with shock. Later, during a more intimate presentation to just my team, the soldiers made the exact same claim.

I think it’s a pretty horrid claim to make. First of all, even if you could get the equipment positioned in Manhattan in time to shoot the planes down before they hit the buildings (though you almost certainly couldn’t), there’s still several problems: 1) there were still a LOT of civilians on those planes, and they still would have died and it still would have been an enormous tragedy, 2) if you blow up low-flying planes in the middle of Manhattan, it’s going to cause not only the deaths of the people on the planes but also death to many people on the street, and people in office buildings near the site of the explosion, so it’d still be an enormous tragedy, and 3) there is something particularly horrid about the thought of an army shooting down its own citizens, even if it’s to prevent even more loss of life. But the point though is that I wouldn’t have minded as much if the claim that the soldiers were making was that the tragedy could have been reduced, but they were in fact making it sound like had their unit been in Manhattan at the time, there would have been a happy ending…. Anyway, it just horrified me, and I didn’t really like that the Israelis were talking about it in this way. Whatever.

One job, however, ended up making such an impressive presentation that it booted out karakal for my first-choice job. Field intelligence gave a couple sentences about their jobs, and then said to us, “In that small field over there, there is a man watching you and taking notes on all of you. Can you see him?” And no matter how hard we all looked, we couldn’t see him. “THAT’s what our job is about.” Anyway, I thought that was just so bad-ass that I had to put it first choice. I want to sit in fields and take notes on people and be completely invisible. I’m almost 100 percent positive that I won’t be allowed to do that job, just based on my eyes and physical condition, and also because I’m considered a security risk cos I’m new in the country and without family (did I tell you that the first night of the gibush I had to have a security interview that none of the other girls had to do?), but oh well. Hopefully I’ll be allowed to do A combat job (I won’t know for another couple weeks if I passed), and I’ll worry about specific jobs later.



Anyway, I have a lot more to share, but one step at a time, I think…..stay tuned!

my doggy is sick :-( . my dog that we've had since I was 6.....

Someone call the Messiah! Quick!

So Motzei Shabbat, my second day of work in the pizza place was kind of interesting. A new character joined the pack (although he was clearly a senior staff member), and he kept getting angry at me for using the serving utensil to place pizza on people’s plates. Actually, we don’t use plates in Israel for pizza, we use cardboard sheets. it’s kind of weird. But whatever.

Anyway, I was really reluctant to touch other people’s food because I wasn’t wearing gloves and because G-d only knows where my hands have been and what nastiness they have touched, which I guess is kind of stupid an un-Israeli of me. Three months of aliyah plus 5 months as a tourist, the norm for me should be to assume the lowest standards of hygiene. This isn’t me picking on the pizza place, but rather me picking on Israel in general. Look, come to Israel for religious reasons, for the weather, for the culture, for whatever….but don’t come here for its high standards of food hygiene.

Whatever though. If this senior staff member wants me to touch other people’s food with my dirty hands (even though I do make a habit of washing them regularly during work, being the OCD American that I am), then fine.

Actually, Saturday was rather confusing because the new senior staff member who I had not met before kept giving me contradictory advice to what the man I recognized as “Boss” suggested. It was actually a little terrifying. But the important thing is that both men seemed to mean well, so that’s something…

After work I stopped in a minimart to buy a drink, and the guy behind the counter asks me in English, “Do you speak German?” Confused, I answered back in English, “Uh, no. Why? Do I look German?” The man then insisted that I looked German, then pulled his co-worker over, who agreed that I looked German. I then insisted that I was both American and Israeli, but certainly not German. The men kind of shrugged, but as I exited the store I heard one say to the other in Hebrew, “She’s definitely German.”



Today, my third day, I felt a little more relaxed. None of the older bosses were around, and it was just “kids” working. I found it a little less stressful and therefore I felt a lot more comfortable with my Hebrew. That’s not to say that I didn’t end up making a mortifying mistake in Hebrew:

In walks a religious man who wants to know about our kosher certification. I pointed to the certificates on the wall, and the man came back unsatisfied and asked if he could borrow our phone to ask our kosher supervisor a question. I went to one of my more experienced co-workers and said to him in Hebrew, “This man is not satisfied with our kosher certification and wants to call The Messiah.”

Followed by a confused stare from my coworker and raised eyebrows from the religious man.
Followed by me blurting out, “SHIT! I meant, Kosher Supervisor!”

But I kind of like the image of the Messiah bursting into pizza places with insufficient kosher certification. Like, you shine the Batman beacon into the night sky, and a guy who slightly resembles Jesus, except even more Jewish looking, comes bursting in and dramatically yells at a man who is about to take a bite of pizza, “HALT! That pizza is not sufficiently kosher!”


I’m actually starting to get really frustrated with my Hebrew. I know it’s one of those things that just take time, but sometimes you just feel like you can’t even wait another day to get fluent. It’s especially difficult when you work in a Hebrew-speaking environment—don’t get me wrong, it’s great practice and I’ll probably improve faster because of it. But sometimes you just want to start crying when an Israeli treats you like you’re some kind of retard because you don’t understand what they’re saying. And in this instance I’m not using the word “retard” lightly. I mean, literally, they think you are of a substantially lower IQ because you can’t figure out what the fuck is going on in Hebrew. It’s so frustrating to be in ulpan and feel fluent for a couple hours a day during class, and then you come out in the real world and everyone expects you to understand everything.

There was actually one horrible moment where this one guy keeps yelling at me to get him some BLJHSDGOIUSOIDGU. And I kept looking around confused, searching for something on the counter, ruling out things that I already knew the word for, trying desperately to use logic to figure out what he was asking for, and he just kept yelling. Finally he yelled, “WHAT’S NOT TO UNDERSTAND???”

I really hate this question. It’s not much of a question, rather a declaration of how stupid you are. I’ve gotten it a few times in my experience as an outsider in Israel, and it never gets any easier on your self-esteem when you hear it.

“WHAT’S NOT TO UNDERSTAND???”

And I responded in Hebrew as I felt my face glow bright red with anger, “A lot. I’m an immigrant, I’m learning Hebrew, I’m still in ulpan.” I really felt like I wanted to cry. And then all of the sudden the man softened and got all apologetic. It turns out he hadn’t heard me say anything, meaning that he didn’t hear that I have an accent, meaning that he didn’t realize that it was a matter of not understanding the vocabulary rather than being a retarded Israeli girl.

Many Israelis, however, hear the accent and yet still treat me like a retard as opposed to a foreigner. Many though are actually quite nice and helpful, for which I’m extremely grateful.

I really really really feel a deep connection between myself and the Mexicans (and other Southern California immigrants). Americans who are reading this: I beg of you to please please please be nice to immigrants in the US.

Anyway, after a particularly negative exchange with an Israeli, I turned to my coworker after the Israeli had left and said, “I feel like a lot of Israelis relate to me as if I’m retarded because I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Coworker: “Awww, you’re not retarded.”
Sam: “No, really, sometimes I just feel so very retarded because of my Hebrew.”
Coworker: “Really, SemenTAH, you can’t be retarded, because even retards understand Hebrew at least sometimes.”

Hahaha, thanks asshole….

On kind of a positive note, I realized that my coworkers know even less English than I had previously thought. During a slow hour, one of my coworkers thought of basic Hebrew words he wants to know in English (to eat, to walk, restaurant, to sleep, my name is, etc…), and then asked me. It actually was great for my self-esteem. I hate to derive self-esteems out of the failings of others, but damnit….where else am I going to get it from? Okay, maybe my Hebrew sucks, but 1) that will hopefully change with time and 2) at least I can go anywhere in the Western World and be understood. I have no clue what my coworkers would do if they were outside of Israel.

Also, we watch a lot of TV at work. Can I just say that I have fallen in love with a show that I guess would be called in English, “Money Cab”? Apparently people get into this cab and then are like, “OMG, IT’S THE MONEY CAB!” And then they answer these trivia questions. It was kind of awesome. I really want to be on the show, but the questions are all Israeli….although it was actually awesome because tonight this group of guys lost because they didn’t know where Toto Tammuz (a soccer player here in Israel) was born. They were choosing between Ghana and Israel, and I kept yelling at the TV, “NO! NO! It’s Nigeria! Nigeria!” Who was right? Oh yeah. That’s right. MEEEE!

Then this TV show came on with Yehuda Levi in it. It was kind of overly dramatic, and all of the sudden someone cut her wrists…causing me to yell in the middle of the pizza place. Then Yehuda Levy came on…wearing glasses, no less…and I kind of sighed a bit and said I liked him. My coworker couldn’t believe that I recognized Yehuda Levy, being a foreigner and all, and started asking if Yehuda Levy was famous back in Los Angeles. I then explained that while I was a tourist for five months I came across the TV show “Ha’Alufa,” and then went on a rant about how great that TV show was…..causing my coworker to start making fun of me mercilessly.

Great. Two paragraphs on Israeli TV. I have to get a life. But oh man….Yehuda Levy….what a dreamboat.

col parit

So…the work in the pizza place? Kinda fun. Towards the later hours there were a lot of drunken Americans and Israelis. I’ve realized that Americans can be total asswipes. One guy came in and was speaking loudly in English as if we behind the counter couldn’t hear him, calling the place ghetto and saying that it better be good. It was really awesome them when they ordered and I responded in perfect English. The look on their faces? Priceless. During a particularly busy time, an American teenager (like 18…clearly here for post-high school yeshiva year in Israel) called me over like he had some cool secret to share. I thought, “Oh great…..” and then he says very furtively and as if he is just the coolest guy in town, “Hey, maybe you hook us up with some pizza?” Oh man….Americans….

Now drunken Israelis….this is interesting to me. The ones I saw were very flamboyant. Like, not like drunken Americans which are annoying as hell, but extremely entertaining. Acting as though everything were just WONDERFUL! “I’ll take a slice of pizza!” cheered one Israeli drunkard, flinging his hands into the air to effect, and then handing us a credit card. My coworker informed him that there is a minimum limit on credit card purchases, and without missing a beat the drunken Israeli flung his hands into the air again as if nothing had changed and cheerily shouted, “Then I’ll take TWO slices of pizza!”

Working in an environment with a lot of Hebrew was very bizarre. I realized that before ordering, a lot of people will kind of talk through their choices out loud, most of which I didn’t understand. Also, as the night wore on, it got increasingly difficult to understand Hebrew cos I simply started getting tired. And holy fuck did I get a lot of practice in Hebrew. Even if I had wanted to break down and speak Hebrew to the people I now work with, I wouldn’t have been able to. They have extremely limited English. Like, they can’t even really speak English to the costumers—a customer will order in English and they respond in Hebrew or broken Heblish: “B’seder, az you want pitriyot?” Like pretty much everything in my life, this makes me think of the army, and this work experience (whether or not it lasts), even for this one night, really made me feel more confident about my Hebrew and about how I’ll be able to work in a Hebrew-speaking environment come July. That’s not to say that I understood everything, or that I didn’t have to ask customers to repeat their orders in Hebrew, but I was quite pleased that I was able to actually function and even joke around in Hebrew. And holy crap did I get a lot of practice in Hebrew numbers last night!


The one problem is that this job wants people working late…to the point where there are no busses. And this gives me three concerns: 1) As of Sunday my roommate will be back from vacation, and it wouldn’t fair for me to wake her up by walking in the door at 4.30 am very frequently. If it were an apartment with separate bedrooms, it’d be different. But it’s not. 2) I have ulpan early in the morning. 3) When I was walking home at 3.15 am last night (or this morning), it was maybe the scariest thing ever.
So what I’m going to try to do is to negotiate into only having to work extremely late on Saturday and Thursdays (when my roommate isn’t in our room), and then the rest of the time just working until reasonably late. If that isn’t feasible then I guess I wouldn’t be able to work there…which would be sad, cos it’s actually rather pleasant.

The walk is like an hour and 15 minutes or so, depending on how quickly you go. It was actually rather pleasant while I was still in the center of town. The streets were quiet except for a few taxis and the occasional person, but I still felt safe for the most part. But then as I got closer and closer to where I live, I got increasingly uncomfortable. Not only were the streets pretty much deserted for the most part since we were far from the center of town, but also….I live in East Jerusalem, and I don’t want to be racist or anything but we’re surrounded by Arabs. Arabs of the angry variety (our immediate neighbors include the hometowns of, if I’m not mistaken, all of the bulldozer terrorists). Actually, I don’t think it’s racist to fear someone who would willingly admit that they don’t wish you will (to put it lightly). Anyway, while I’m perfectly happy living where I’m living and even walking around my neighborhood by myself well after dark (aka 10 pm), there’s something just terrifying about walking around it all by myself at like 4 in the morning.

Still though, it’s better than LA. Back home you couldn’t pay me even a million dollars to get me to walk outside in our neighborhood after dark, even at only 9 pm.

The worst part of all of this was that I kept thinking to myself that if something happened to me, no one would notice. This is a thought that frequently bothers me here in Israel, not just when I’m walking around East Jerusalem by myself in the middle of the night. What I mean is that, while I do have friends, it would be a while before my absence would become cause for concern or panic. And as much as I hate to admit it, it would probably take equally as long for me to become concerned or panicked over their absence.

This was the nice thing about living at home. Okay, so maybe moms are paranoid, but isn’t there something comforting about knowing that someone is waiting up for you at home? Or if they’re not really waiting up for you, at least when they wake up in the morning they’ll wonder if you made it back safely, and they’ll go to see? Here though, I feel like I could go at least a week without someone thinking that my absence was by my own choice.

So I’ve come up with yet another reason to look forward to being the in army: someone will always be waiting up at night for me. Okay, not in the literal sense. What I mean is this: my understanding is that if you don’t show up on time to army shit, you get in trouble. If you want to take a leave of absence (like vacation or whatever), you have to ask and get it approved. So if (here’s your cue to say, “G-d forbid!”) something were to happen to me, people would immediately notice that I hadn’t shown up to work or whatever. Whereas here in ulpan, I could be dead for at least a week without anyone realizing it.

Anyway, so around 4.20 in the morning I was like a block and a half away from my building when the first Muslim call to prayer of the day went off. On one level this should have been comforting, and I should have taken it as a sign that the worst was over, that it was morning, and there’s nothing scary about morning. But on another level, it was still pitch black, the streets were still abandoned, and I was still walking alone surrounded by hills that had the green glow of mosques. So now you add onto this the creepiness of wailing Arabic echoing across the hills late at night, and you got yourself a heart attack.

So I hurried towards my building, and in the last few yards I had to pass a creepy, bush-covered staircase. And as I hurried past, there was a loud, creepy cough. Followed by silence. Followed by more throat clearing. At that point, I just sprinting the last couple yards and THANK G-D the guard wasn’t watching basketball and immediately buzzed me in…..

On a completely unrelated note, yesterday as I was walking around town I walked past a shop, and I heard “Hatikvah” blasting from their speakers but thought nothing of it…until I realized the words weren’t the same. Instead of talking about a Jewish land and all that jazz, this Hatikvah was advertising that everything in the store was only 99 agorot—which is like a quarter in American currency. I thought I was going to die laughing, and even tried to record it to share on this blog….but by the time I got my video camera on my cell phone ready, the song had switched to a familiar Hasidic tune, again boasting that everything in the store was only 99 agorot.

I love this country. Does the US use this advertising method?

COL. PARIT. SHEKEL VAHETZI. SHEKEL VAHETZI. SHEKEL VAHETZI. COL. PARIT. SHEKEL VAHETZI. SHEKEL VAHETZI. SHEKEL VAHETZI.

I may or may not have a job at a pizza place. but this would involve getting maybe 5 hours of sleep a day....sooo....we'll see.

The one in which i mope a bit....or a lot.

Sam: “I’m really excited for my ‘army sleepover.’”
Friend: “What do you mean ‘army sleepover?’ What, are you going to talk about boys and make smores?”
Other Friend: “You know what Israelis really don’t understand? Smores.”
“And waiting in line.”
“And manners.”
“And personal space.”


LAST NIGHT

A couple hours ago I found myself sitting on the bench swing in the playground at the absorption center. I was having yet another moment of second guessing my motives for making aliyah, wondering about something that’s been bothering me for a few months, and just being kinda generally depressed. So pretty much it was one of those moments where I just wanted to swing a little by myself and listen to “Hey Jude” (in my head).

Some yards away in the courtyard a group of people were standing around and talking. Most of them I didn’t know (some I recognized, some looked totally foreign and new). They were talking in English, though the group was mostly Russian folks with maybe two English speakers. One of them called out to me in Russian-accented Hebrew, “Hey, how’s it going?”

And as I turned (showing my face to the group), giving a polite smile and a friendly wave back, I heard someone in the group say, “Oh wait, that’s not [*person’s name*]…it’s that girl we don’t like.”

Which was maybe the worst possible thing for me to hear at the moment. Or I guess there’s never really a “good” moment to hear something like that.

I mean, I can understand maybe a couple reasons why people I actually know here might not particularly like me, that maybe our personalities don’t quite fit together….but I’m (to put it mildly) absolutely horrified that people I don’t even know could classify me as “that girl we don’t like.” I’ve never spoken to any of these people before in my life (but would be more than friendly if approached), and in terms of just generally annoying them…I can’t really understand, because pretty much in this building I’m quiet and keep to myself.

So then I had to pretend like I hadn’t heard what this person said, since I was mid-wave when I heard it and it would have been even worse to pretend that I had heard it. Actually, that was rather cowardly of me. I kind of wish I had had the courage to drop the smile and shout back, “Yeah, well this girl doesn’t like you cock suckers either!”

I then spent an excruciating 30 minutes sitting on the swing waiting for the crowd to clear so that I could go to my room and be upset in peace. But the group was blocking the door, and no way in hell was I going to walk past them. So instead I just sat on the swing and felt my face burn bright red, and pretended that the reason I was still sitting on the bench was that I had to send text messages to all of my many friends. But really I just pretended to hit buttons on my cell phone.

About an hour later I went to dinner, and a friend called out, “Sam, come sit by me!” Which temporarily made me feel less like crap. But at the same table was one of the people in the group, who apparently doesn’t like me. So pretty much throughout all of dinner I felt like throwing up. Maybe that’s because they fed us hearts and liver….but I’m more inclined to blame it on the fact that apparently I have a large following of strangers who hate me.

This has been one of those things that encourages my belief that my only shot at leading a happy life would be to go off and become a truck driver. Or a hermit. Just something where I can see nature all day and not have to interact with people. Of course, being a truck driver has the added bonus of allowing me to listen to country music all day.

As I sat on the swing waiting for the crowd of Sam-haters to clear, I found myself thinking, “Well, I guess maybe I should go back to the US.” But then I realized that if strangers in Israel hate me, surely strangers in the US hate me too. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if people in Finland hate me, or even if remote African tribes believe that I’m some sort of evil devil spirit that must be disliked. So given this international hatred of Sam, I’ve decided that the only rational thing for me to do is to sit in my room, watch “Brigadoon” and mope around for a few hours.

To be honest, I’m not too hurt. Actually I feel more indignant than anything else.

Russians and Pretty Girls

So yesterday I woke up bright and early to celebrate two things: 1) I was officially a citizen, and 2) I was going to Haifa to begin the search for an apartment…and any trip to Haifa is a celebration. Also, on a less exciting note, apparently yesterday it was also Jesus’ birthday or he came back to life or split the Red Sea in two or he defeated the Romans with lasers that came out of his eyes or something. Whatever.

I ended up spending a solid hour and a half in the central bus station. I just missed a bus to Haifa so I had to wait 40 minutes. Fine, whatever. When the second bus came I was maybe like fifth in line (if you can call the mass outside the terminal a “line”), which was incredible considering that the bus station was like nothing I had ever seen before. It was a sea of people. People inside had seen that the bus had come, so they came outside to board…but the driver just sat in the bus with the door closed, so the tiny area between the door to the terminal and the door to the bus just became a sardine can…with me in the middle. Then…Oh G-d…the driver opens the door to the bus to announce that he can only allow people to board if they have a pre-bought ticket (to tell you how weird this is: I’ve had to pre-buy a bus ticket in Israel a grand total of Never times.). And, Oh G-d, I thought a riot was going to break out. It was really hot so it was perfect weather for tempers to flare. People were screaming in Hebrew, “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL US BEFORE???” And there was a lot of pushing and shoving as those with tickets tried to board and those without tried to get to the ticket counter in the terminal before anyone else. There were a few English speakers within the crowd who clearly had no idea what was going on and who were clearly freaked out by what was going on. One shouted to me, “DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?” “YES!”
He asked with visible fear in his eyes, “WHAT IS GOING ON?”

“YOU NEED TO HAVE A PRE-BOUGHT TICKET TO BOARD!” I said as I was carried away by the crowd of people between whom I was physically wedged.

Anyway, eventually I made it to the ticket counter but missed the bus…and had to wait another 40 minutes.

As if my day wasn’t off to a bad enough start, on the bus I ended up having an allergic reaction….on my face. As I’ve mentioned, I have very sensitive skin and have bad skin reactions to laundry detergent and certain skin products (certain moisturizers and so on and so forth). That morning I had tried a new facial cleanser with built in moisturizer…which apparently I’m allergic to. Thankfully it’s not like I’m deathly allergic, it’s just a slightly painful nuisance and it’s kind of embarrassing for your face to be red and have welts on it and itch like crazy. I ended up spending 30 minutes in the Haifa bus station in the bathroom, running cold water on my face. In the end the welts went down and stopped itching for the most part…except it looked like I got majorly sunburned.

Anyway, eventually I got onto the bus to take me to my first stop of the day. Since I had never been to this area before I asked the driver if he could tell me when we got to Street X. He gave me a confused look, and I was about to repeat myself, thinking that maybe my accent was just difficult for him to understand. Before I could, an Israeli asked the driver, “Does this route get to Street Y?” And the driver said, “Street Y? I don’t know…” The Israeli snapped, “What do you mean, you don’t know? How can you not know?” And the driver kind of shrugged and repeated that he didn’t know.

As the driver began driving, the answer became obvious: he was new. Extremely new. In fact, maybe he just got his license the day before. There were several times where he would turn the bus, and then have to stop and back up and then turn again because he was about to smash into cars going in the opposite direction. When there were no cars, sometimes he’d just go right over the median curb and then pop back over to the correct side as he straightened out. It was actually pretty cool, it was a bit like being on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland.

I ended up later on wandering around a mall in Haifa. It was slightly bizarre, because the last time I was there it was September and I was on my farewell tour of Israel. I remember there was this one part of the mall that wasn’t too happening and had a bunch of signs saying, “COMING SOON, AROMA CAFÉ” or whatever. As I was walking around the mall I saw this happening café and thought to myself, “Hmm, I don’t remember that being there…” but then I remembered the construction. Anyway, I know it’s sort of an obvious concept, but it was just sort of a bizarre realization for me that life moves on with or without me in the country. Whatev.

Later on as I was talking a bus back to the central bus station to go back to Jerusalem, the bus stopped not too far from the Bahai Temple. Though I guess since there’s only a few Bahai temples, anywhere in Israel could be considered “not too far from the Bahai Temple.” Anyway, as the bus stopped, a pretty girl started to board the bus, when all of the sudden from the opposite direction comes running a Russian guy holding a bouquet of roses. The bus was about to pull away when the Russian called out for it to wait, and pulled out one of the roses and handed it to the girl. As the bus pulled away, I had fun watching the Russian guy walk away with his bouquet of roses (minus one) and thinking about who and what he was. Who would he be giving a bouquet of roses to that he wouldn’t mind taking some roses from them to give to a pretty girl? Surely not a girlfriend…. Or maybe he just bought a bouquet of roses for no one in particular, and instead would give a rose away to anybody he came across that he found appealing. What I found especially interesting about the whole thing was the fact that he came running out of the complete opposite direction to give this girl a flower. Like, if he had yelled, maybe he would have said something like, “STOP, PRETTY GIRL! I DESPERATELY NEED TO GIVE YOU THIS FLOWER!”

My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the arrival of a guy sitting next to me. He had pit stains practically down to his waist, and he was radiating tangible humidity. The bus was air-conditioned, but sitting next to this guy felt like being in Tel Aviv in the middle of summer. His hair was dripping wet, but unfortunately for me I don’t think it was wet from a shower. I ended up spending the rest of the journey with my eyes closed in prayer. “Oh G-d…please don’t let his sweaty hair drip on me…please G-d…”

Finally finally finally it was time to go back to Jerusalem. Can I just say I really like bus rides in this country? I like to look out the window and constantly repeat in my head, “Mine. Mine. Mine.” Also, I feel a bit like Simba when Mufasa shows him a view of the kingdom and whatnot. Yeah, that’s right, I just made a Lion King reference. I figure it’s a refreshing change from the usual Brigadoon references on this blog.

Wow. I just realized the bi- and tri- roots in the words “billion” and “trillion.” Little by little, English is starting to make sense to me!

We ended up approaching Jerusalem around Mincha. There were many cars pulled to the side of the road, with men standing outside of their cars with prayer books, facing Jerusalem, and bending and bobbing in prayer. It was actually really cool to see.

As I waited in line to go through security at the bus station in Jerusalem (I said hi to Asi…but didn’t try to take a picture again), I heard English. And I realized that after leaving the bus station in Haifa (in the morning), I didn’t hear English in Haifa. Like, at all. Which would never in a million years happen in Jerusalem. Here in Jerusalem you can’t go five minutes without hearing English. Oh man….I guess it really is time to leave then

just got an invite from the army to sleep in a tent for a night next wednesday......some kind of combat test or something. hahahha, im so excited

So tomorrow I'm a full citizen. 3 months. I can vote as of tomorrow, and blahblahblah. today was my last day to say i dont want to be israeli and not be penalized in some way

I just had the stupidest fall ever. Sometimes the internet doesn't work (okay, ALWAYS the internet doesn't work) and so you hve to stand on a table and unplug the modem and then plug it back in. So a couple minutes ago I stood on the table, did this, and as I was getting back down I stepped on an uneven part of the table, causing it to flip over....which made me fall on top of the piano, and then fall onto the floor. My hands are killing me, as is my ass....but dammit, I have internet!

Dimona in the Central Bus Station

So first of all, yesterday after coming back to Jerusalem after spending a day in Tel Aviv I had to go through security at the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem. After I went through the metal detector I waited for my friend’s enormous bag to be searched. I looked around and saw that the bag scanner (like they have at airports for carry-on bags) was not working today, but I saw that next to it was a very large cardboard cut-out of Asi Cohen. Who is Asi Cohen? I guess he’s sort of like the Israeli Will Ferrel (maybe not as big as that) or Seth Meyers or something….if I’m not mistaken he’s a performer on Eretz Nehederet, which is kind of like SNL except not on Saturday. And maybe not even live…I’m not really sure.

Anyway, originally “Assi” was holding a sign announcing an upcoming performance, but the security personnel at the Central Bus Station took the cardboard cut-out after the show and put over the sign he was holding a new piece of paper that said, “Please don’t stick your hands into the [x-ray] machine.”

I thought this was kind of amusing, so I whipped out my phone and tried to take a picture. I was right about to snap it when suddenly a voice called out from behind me something like, “IT’S FORBIDDEN TO TAKE PICTURES FOR SECURITY REASONS!”

I turned around I found myself staring at a big scary security supervisor guy. I couldn’t tell if he was joking, so I just kind of stared at him for a few seconds until he held out his hand and said, “May I delete the picture?” Except he wasn’t really asking for permission.

Caught off guard, all of my Hebrew flew right out of my head. I kept trying to say in Hebrew that I didn’t take a picture, but pretty much all that came out was the equivalent of, “I….I….I…..I—“ Finally the words came out, and the guard just kind of waved me away and that was the end of that.

But now I’m actually really pissed off. What the hell was wrong with taking a picture?
Oh no, the terrorists are going to know that we have a carboard cut-out of Assi Cohen guarding the x-ray machine! It’s just ridiculous.
You know where else they don’t let you take pictures in Israel? At the “secret” nuclear facility in Dimona.

Now I’m beginning to suspect that we don’t actually have nuclear facilities in this country, but rather heavily guarded factories for cardboard cut-outs of Assi Cohen.

All I know is, if I can’t take pictures of Assi Cohen guarding an x-ray machine…then the terrorists have already won.


Anyway, yesterday I spent the day on the beach with a friend and a friend of a friend. It was actually rather bizarre. People were playing “Beach Pong” everywhere, and one woman in particular looked like she took the game a little too seriously. She had a six-pack, and was even wearing a sport glove on her paddle hand. She had a sports visor and was grunting away like Serena Williams….. And all this struck me as very bizarre. Calling the Israeli game of beach ping pong (minus a table/net/everything) a sport and taking it seriously is kind of like calling Catch a sport. No, BASEBALL is the sport, Catch is a way of practicing one aspect of baseball.

So this was my first tanning experience. I actually didn’t really know it was going to be a tanning experience. I suggested, “Let’s go to the beach!” and to me that meant maybe getting our feet a little bit wet, maybe sitting for a bit, and then calling it a day and going off to do something else. Maybe this is because I’m from Los Angeles, and so going to the beach is not exactly a special full day event. Going to the beach was something I could do every day right after school if I felt like it—but I rarely felt like it. The people I was with, however, are not from areas of the United States with nice coasts. Going to the beach for them meant lying out on towels in bikinis for hours at a time, trying desperately to tan as much as possible because apparently the sun is going to be extinguished tomorrow.

I suppose my first clue as to the nature of our trip to the beach should have been when we were leaving the apartment. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and one of the girls said, “Aren’t you going to put on a bathing suit, Sam?” And I laughed as though that were a ridiculous suggestion and said, “Why? I’m not planning on going swimming.”


My mother and her side of the family have lovely skin that is difficult to burn, but I, unfortunately, have the skin of my dad’s side of the family, which is mostly Irish/Scottish. Meaning, my skin is actually transparent until I step out into the sun for 1 second or more, at which point my skin turns bright red. Tanning is not really something that is encouraged for people like me…rather, people like me are encouraged to pursue the same things a vampire might pursue.
The people I was with, though both Ashkenazi like me, had somehow tanned enough that they could easily pass as African Americans.

And so we sat for about an hour…. Me in my shorts and t-shirt and 5000 SPF sunblock, and them in nothing but bikinis. Eventually I decided that I was going to be a tomato (or lobster, as a friend of mine used to call me in high school whenever I got embarrassed and my face turned bright red) if I didn’t get up soon, and I ended up walking around Tel Aviv by myself. As much as I dislike Tel Aviv, I actually really like walking around it because unlike Jerusalem there are pretty much no hills.

As I walked around I bumped into an enormous group of punks standing around the fountain on Dizengoff…. It was actually rather amusing, because there was maybe like 50 people with mohawks of various sizes and colors, and they were all preparing to board a tour bus to somewhere. Where do large groups of people with strange piercings and chains and such go for vacations? Is there a travel agency that specializes in things like this?

Anyway, about 2 hours after I left my friends on the beach they called and said they were done tanning. I suspect they would have tanned longer, but the sun was starting to set at that time. And so that was the end of my tanning experience….. next time I think I won’t go with experts, but with vampires like me.


Anyway….on Sunday I’m taking a day trip to Haifa, which I’m excited about. It’s partially a day of fun and partially a day of figuring out where the hell I’m going to live. I need to find a cheap place to live after ulpan, and pretty much the only sizeable, convenient cities that are within my budget are Beer Sheva and Haifa. Or, if I really wanted to stay in Jerusalem, I could share a single room with a couple Haredi girls….or maybe a cupboard all to myself in Tel Aviv….because those also fall into my budget. So Sunday I’m going to Haifa to visit a couple apartments and then probably later in the week I’ll be in Beer Sheva. WOOOOOOOOT.

Tomorrow you'll hear the story of how an Israeli security person insisted that I delete a photo from my phone camera, and also how i met the very person i dont want to be.

FYI: It's very likely that I won't be updating the blog for a couple days. Tomorrow I'm heading to Tel Aviv for a seder, and following that I might be going around the country a bit. So....catch ya on the flipside (whatever that means) and in the meantime have a Happy Passover or Easter or Springtime or whatever is your custom!

HiThisIsOshratFromTheLishkatGiyusAndINeedToVerifyYourContactDetails!

Today I got a call from the Lishkat Giyus to verify and update my educational details and also to confirm that my parents still had not joined me here in Israel (which would mean that I would get less financial help from the army). I swear, this woman must have been on speed or something, because she was talking like….I guess the only way to describe it would be like….she talked like she had to recite the U.S. Constitution (including amendments) in three seconds because the world was ending. Except in Hebrew.

What struck me as particularly idiotic in the whole exchange was that I was clearly having trouble understanding her, yet she did not slow down. I mean, sure, I’d be pissed off if she were patronizingly slow and loud, but there’s a happy medium of speaking clearly and at a reasonable pace. The worst part was at the end when she ran off a list of all my contact details (address, phone numbers, etc etc), and then asked if this was correct. In all that jumble I think I might have heard my street name and a couple numbers I recognized, so I just said yes. Hopefully that’s all true…


So as I surely must have mentioned, my family (or most of it) is coming to visit in June. Yesterday I asked my mother if my Catholic brother (the oldest) would be coming, but my mother said he has a summer job and he really needs the money cos he’s in law school and getting married in August. I jokingly suggested that she should plan an additional family visit to Israel over Christmas that my Catholic brother could come on so that he “can hang out with his friend Jesus.” And, bizarrely, my mother thought this was a great idea, so now in addition to our Jewish Israel Family Vacation in June (minus maybe a couple church visits with my dad), we’re also going to have a Christian Israel Family Vacation for Christmas in which we’ll hit up all the Jesus sites. Best of all? Assuming all goes to plan, my brother will be married by then, so his wife will be here too. With the new addition of my brother’s wife, my family (meaning people with my last name that are still alive) will be exactly half Jewish (me, mom, haredi brother) and half Christian (protestant dad, catholic brother, catholic sister-in-law). Anyway…should be an interesting dynamic. I always joke with my brothers that I’m such a nomad that I’ll end up marrying a Bedouin, but maybe now I’ll actually try to go through with it just so that the family’s religious dynamic can get even more interesting…


All of this just made me think of what on Earth members of my family who have passed away would think, of my brother’s devout Catholicism, of my brother’s Orthodox Judaism, and of my Zionism. Specifically, I think about what my paternal grandparents would think about me living in Israel. I don’t really think about what my grandpa on that side would think, cos unfortunately I barely remember him, but I constantly think about what my granny would think. The last time I saw her I was 12, and since she lived 2000 miles away I didn’t get to see her all that often before then. So it’s put me in this annoying position of remembering her well enough that I’d be concerned about what she would think about how I live my life, but not knowing or remembering her well enough that I could actually determine how she would feel about how I live my life. Unfortunately, the last time I saw her was it was Christmas, so whenever I think about her I remember the Christmas decorations, the snow, the music on the radio, the Christmas-themed presents, etc etc….and I automatically think that, whatever you want to call what I’m doing here in Israel, I’m probably not doing what she would have wanted me to do. I’m guessing my orthodox brother probably isn’t either.
At the same time though, I clearly remember her telling me in her ridiculous southern accent, “Honey, you can do whatever the heck you want….long as you don’t kill anybody.” Granted, this was in response to my asking for permission to drink a Pepsi in her living room, but since this is pretty much the only thing I can remember my granny saying, I like to think of it as her giving general permission to do what I want in life. Including being Jewish, living in a foreign country, and joining a foreign army.

Oh man. Thinking about all of this has kind of brought me down a bit. Pure positive stuff? Seder night I’m going to Tel Aviv with a couple friends from ulpan for a seder with the family of one of my friends…so that should be fun. Also, tomorrow I’m planning on sleeping ridiculously late, so that’s also good news. More good news? My parents are shipping me over a couple pairs of gap jeans since all the pants in this country are totally weird. G-d, I can’t wait until the Israel gap store opens up….I think it opens in the fall, no? I think I could live in this country for the rest of my life and still think the clothing here is weird.

I've been accepted into the Windmill-Building Unit

Well, I’m done with that! It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought, in terms of not being able to understand things. There was one fantastic test we had to do as a group though where not understanding was kind of crucial:

Instructor: “Okay, as a group you’re all going to build a BARF using straws and pins.”

Here I waited to see if something she said would give me a clue as the to the meaning of the word I didn’t understand, represented in this story by the word BARF.

Instructor: “After that, each group is going to name their BARF and then advertise their BARF.”

Well…fuck. This was early in the day, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself by asking my teammates just what on earth we were supposed to be building. I listened carefully for clues, but here’s pretty much a summary of the conversation that happened for the following five minutes: “Let’s make our BARF out of squares on top of each other.” “Great, but how will that look like a BARF?” “What do you mean, it won’t look like a BARF? Do people normally build BARFs out of straws???”

Finally the only boy in the group grabbed a piece of paper and said, “No, if we take the straws we can make the BARF like this.”

And he drew a rocket ship. So five minutes into a ten minute exercise, I figured out the word for what we were supposed to be building.

After the exercise we had a couple minutes to kill, so we started chatting as a group. The instructor said, “Does anyone have anything interesting to share from the exercise or in general?” And so I said, “Yes. I learned the word rocket ship five minutes ago.” And everyone cracked up….


After this we had to do a computer test in Hebrew. Which I didn’t think was all that bad. A lot of the Israelis were moaning about how horrible is was in terms of length and confusing-ness….but I didn’t think it was all too terrible. It had some confusing parts, and there were a couple graphs I had to analyze that I didn’t understand (they used acronyms I didn’t know…so I could answer the questions on them because the answers also used the acronyms, but I had no idea what is the graph was describing)….there was also a part where I had to click a button if I saw a blue square and a different button if I saw no blue square…and the blue square was hidden among red squares and blue circles, so it was kind of a like a visual mindfuck. Good news for me? I learned the word for square YESTERDAY….

Next we had to talk to the group about a topic of our choice for three minutes. I talked about my hobby of people-watching….and it was excruciating. I felt like I couldn’t find the words for anything. The instructor asked me to tell about a specific person I saw, and so I started on a story, but then realized that I didn’t know any of the words in Hebrew. A couple kids in the group called out, “Oh, let her tell it in English!” So I was allowed to tell the story in English. I ended up telling the story of the pink packing peanuts man with his log of bubble wrap, which cracked up the instructor and some of the kids. Finally I sat down and one of the girls that wasn’t laughing turns to me and says, “I did not understand a single word you just said.”

We eventually had to do another exercise of speaking in front of people, but this one was based on texts we had to read. It was challenging just because I didn’t have as much time to prepare as the other kids (just cos I can’t read as fast….yet), but I think I did okay considering the whole language barrier.

Next we had to build windmills according to a picture. (A crucial army skill right there—from what I hear, you’re CONSTANTLY building windmills in the army). I actually felt really proud of this one, because in all the other activities the other folks had an advantage over me because of language (even the other two immigrants in the group were already fluent because they’ve been here longer), but here everyone was on equal footing. When we got out of that activity, one of the girls in my group was telling anyone who would listen that I built the best windmill out of the group. Hahah….so I guess that’s good news.

Towards the end we had to do an exercise in what you might describe as “customer service.” Basically we had to sit in front of an interviewer who would act as a dissatisfied customer or student or whatever. Before we started this exercise, one of the Israeli girls in the lobby was talking about how frustrated she got with this exercise. She said when it was her turn she had to be a receptionist at a hotel and a dissatisfied guest was threatening to leave. “She says, ‘I want to leave!’ THEN LEAVE!”

In any case, I hope I did well on that part. Not that I want to be on the end of some army customer service hotline, but just because I think I’d be a bad American if I sucked at this. When I think of Israel, I think of a customer yelling at store employee and the store employee yelling back in an even more aggressive way. When I think of the US, I think of a customer yelling at a store employee and the employee saying very calmly, “Ma’am, I’m sorry you feel that way, but unfortunately that’s the store policy….Ma’am--….Ma’am--…please stop throwing stuff at me, Ma’am, I’m trying to help.”

All in all, I had an interesting and pleasant time. The people in my group were very nice and extremely protective of me, constantly making sure that I understood.

So that, my friends, is what I did today.

Romans? Yeah right...

So I’m a little freaked out about tomorrow. From 8 am to 5 pm I’m going to be in a Hebrew environment. And it’s not like being in a Hebrew environment when I’m out in town, where I can for the most part just choose not to say anything. Tomorrow I’m actually going to have to talk. I have to read things in Hebrew and then talk about them, I have to have group discussions with Israeli girls. G-d. Oh G-d. I’m gonna seem like a total idiot, having to say, “What?” “I don’t understand…” over and over again. And it’s different from other fully Hebrew exchanges I’ve had. Like at the army enlistment center, it was one-on-one stuff. Any soldier helping me was helping ONLY me at that moment, so I didn’t feel bad making them repeat themselves or whatever. But here I’m going to be one of many, so I can’t constantly be demanding repetition or explanation in simpler words.

Part of me is a little bit excited because it’ll give me a chance to see what level my Hebrew is at. Like, I’ll get to find out whether or not I can keep up with a discussion when it’s not a discussion among immigrants or if I’ll be able to understand directions when it’s not specifically phrased so that immigrants will understand. But….if it turns out that I cannot…I don’t know what I’ll do.

On an unrelated note, every single time that something goes kind of wrong in Israel (like the army telling me I have to redo medical tests a few weeks ago….or waiting at the Misrad Hapnim for 4 hours cos there was no electricity last year) or whenever something is bizarre or strange in Israel (like registering for Health Insurance at the Post Office—what??) the song “Rak B’Yisrael” (only in Israel) plays in my head. Almost like the song is mocking me. One of these days, when my Hebrew is good enough, I’m going to have to rewrite that song.

Narnadoooooon….Narnadoooooon…..



Okay, totally random now: I cannot believe Italians are descended from the Romans. I cannot imagine a people less like the Romans. It’s especially bizarre to think about this while watching the Italian soccer team as they dramatically and flamboyantly dive. Anyway, just something to think about with me…

A couple hours ago someone from my class asked if I had a blog. To which I immediately said, "No." Now I regret saying that, because if she knows somehow that I have a blog (which I suspect she does, seeing as she asked me and then looked confused when I said no), now she's going to suspect that I talk shit about her on the blog (which I haven't....at all). Dear Classmate: if you happen to be reading this....sorry I lied!

Also....I have a two week Passover vacation...but nowhere to go. Please tell me what to do with my life for 2 weeks. G-d i'm going to die of boredom.

Bad names

Today in class I was telling the story (already described on this blog months ago) of how I was once asked by the manager of my kibbutz ulpan to speak at a Jewish Agency fundraising committee meeting….and then as I sat there waiting for my turn to speak, I found out that it was not in fact the Jewish Agency and instead a MASA program fundraising committee meeting. So I had to talk about how great my MASA program was and how grateful I was for the funding, etc etc…..except these were all wild lies because I was not, in fact, on a MASA program.

It was actually really cool, cos I was telling the story in Hebrew. I feel like so often the Hebrew I use is simple, functional Hebrew, like trying to buy things or convey practical information. But here I was telling a story in Hebrew—granted, not a complicated story, but still. I can actually tell stories in Hebrew! It was awesome, everyone in class was cracking up.


So I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s back: someone is trying to name me. See, unlike most American Jews—including even my Catholic brother—I have no Hebrew name. Which doesn’t particularly bother me. Well, I take that back, it kind of bothers me that I wasn’t given a Hebrew name as a baby, but I’m not so upset about it that I want to name myself now, because that seems so silly. I feel like my name in English. I identify with it, whether it’s my full name or my nicknames or my middle name or whatever. That’s me. I’m “Samantha” when my father’s angry, and I’m “Sam” to recent friends (usually Sam + Last Name together), “Sammy” to childhood friends and family. I’m Samster to my father and to friends’ parents that I know from elementary school, or Samboo, or Sammy-Wammy to my grandma—from which my brother derived another nickname for me—“Whammer Time.” And I think about my names, and I think about my brother’s names….and it just seems to all fit. My family consists of those names, of those people.

Anyway, my point is that given all that, it seems ridiculous that I should now just “decide” that I’m Rivka or whatever. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate the concern and effort on the part of the friend who is trying to have me get a Hebrew name and have some sort of naming thing at a synagogue.

And apart from concerns for my connection to my English name, I just flat out think the idea of naming yourself is arrogant. Unless your parents named you “Fucker McFuckerson,” you should stick with it. Also, itt’s totally fine if your mother wants to name you after some biblical hero or heroine, or wants to call you something like, “Light of G-d” or “Flower of Heaven” or “More Pious Than You Could Ever Hope To Be” whatever in Hebrew…..but it’s arrogant for you to decide at age 20 or whatever that you’re “Beauty of the Ocean” or “Mother of G-d” or the next Moses. It’s your mom’s job to think you’re that fucking incredible—not yours.


All this has made me think about Israelis and their names. Being a foreign person, I frequently come across people with names that I had until then never heard—or I had at least never met someone with that name. So I begin to think of these people as “originals,” and that what these people do decides everything for anyone else with that name. Based on the people I’ve met, I expect all Yaels to work in laundry rooms. Men named Ofer should (according to me) all work in office jobs in the army. Yanivs all work in the air force, and Be’eris are all 4 year old boys.

Speaking of names…I’m still looking for Avi. Haven’t heard much about him since I was last in Israel. Maybe his friends are still looking for him and I just haven’t heard?

Is this gonna be like Pride and Prejudice?

Today I actually felt a little better. One of the jobs that apparently would be open to people like me is said to always attract total bitches and unpleasant people. (Not that I’m saying I’m not a bitch just like them…) Obviously I don’t know much about army jobs, being a newcomer to this country, but just from asking around that’s the impression I got. But today at the bus stop I ended up getting into a 10 minute conversation with a 20 year old Israeli girl who happened to be doing that very job, and she seemed to say positive things about it. It didn’t sound like the most thrilling job on the planet, but all aspects of the actual work aside, it was reassuring to know that if nothing else that not everyone in that position is mean or miserable, and that at least one person in it was friendly and helpful. And it’s encouraging to know that maybe maybe maybe I’m wrong about the other jobs too.

Also, I spoke to the enlistment center, and asked if all this meant that I wasn’t eligible to do something combat-ish. The woman on the other end of the line sounded a bit surprised and said, “Oh, you want to do combat? Since you’re a girl you have to send a fax saying you wish to be considered for combat.” So I did. In the end, I might still end up with some kind of office job or “Lint Mistress” job* but at least now I don’t feel like my fate is completely decided.

*Lint Mistress refers to the first technical theater job I had at my university. I was in a design/tech class and we were all assigned to work on shows. They assigned too many people to work on this tiny, technically simple show so they had to make up job positions….and I was “Lint Mistress.” My job was literally to just pick lint off the male lead’s coat. So basically any ridiculously irrelevant or made-up job like this I now refer to as a “Lint Mistress” Job.


Today I ended up eating lunch at a place called something like, “King of Falafel and Shawarma.” It ended up being really gross. In my opinion, shwarma isn’t good shwarma unless you feel physically ill after eating it. Anyway, I ended up getting really upset with this place for calling themselves “The King,” when in fact they’re clearly a pretender to the throne. I sincerely hope that the one true king of shawarma, wherever he may be, will one day show himself and wage war against such flagrant treason. Now THAT is an army I would gladly fight in. One day we shall restore the rightful king to his rightful throne.