"EVERYONE in this country is an immigrant!"

So I met two people this week that have frightened me: one is someone who has lived here for two years now and still cannot hold even the most basic conversation in Hebrew. The other just finished his army service (three years), and is still basically illiterate in Hebrew. Shit. I'm afraid now that even just giving myself time in this country isn't going to make me fluent/completely literate in Hebrew. Shit shit shit!

I started talking to the one who just did his army service, and the subject of guns on buses came up. He said, "Yeah, when I was on a bus with my gun, I accidentally lightly bumped a woman with it as I got up. I told her in Hebrew, 'Oh, I didn't mean to do that, I'm really sorry.' And she heard my accent and she started screaming at me, 'Go back to America, no one wants you here!' And I'm a soldier, in Israeli uniform, and she's yelling at me to go home."

I gasped and started panicking that something similar would happen to me, but the guy continued:

"Well, as it turns out, there were four soldiers sitting in the back--four Russian immigrant soldiers. And they all stood up and came forward, and started screaming at the lady, 'EVERYONE in this country is an immigrant! If you tell him to go home, then why don't YOU go back to whatever country your family came from too!' "

I just thought this story is both appalling and sweet at the same time and needed to be shared.

'Merka. Fuck yeah.

First off, does “Little House on the Prairie” come in Hebrew? Must research…

Well, happy fourth everybody!

First off, let me warn you that what follows is a lot of homesickness, but it doesn’t mean that I’m about to give up and go back to the US or anything. It’s just part of moving to a new country, okay? So:
I got to admit, I hate not being in the US for Independence Day. I hate that I’m gonna miss the BBQ’s, the Galaxy game, the fireworks…everything. In fairness, having experienced Yom Ha’Aztmaut in Israel makes me realize that I don’t ever want to be in the US again on Yom Ha’Atzmaut……but today is my day to be a little homesick. Not homesick enough to want to go home, but homesick enough to be a little sad.
Because tonight there are hot dogs out there in the world, being grilled thousands of miles away, that I’m not eating! Nooo! (And I miss the fact that “Independence Day” will be on TV, and I’ll miss that fact that many little girls will be forced by their mothers to dress ‘adorably’ patriotic—when I was little, I had a red/white/blue bow for my hair that my mother bought me to wear only on the Fourth of July every year…..thank G-d I grew up!)

I suppose the worst part of all of this is that I feel like celebrating and shouting HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY at people, but because most people here are Israeli or at least not American, everyone would be like, “You missed it by two months, you retard!” So instead I put on some patriotic music and sat by myself for a while.

Just listened to “America the Beautiful,” and it reminded me of elementary school. Sometime around the age of 8 during one of the millions of times we had to sing it during music class, I decided I didn’t like the first verse and instead decided to sing my favorite verse, which is the one about how America’s beautiful for having heros that died for it and loved the country more than themselves. So the class starts singing the first verse, and I’m singing the third verse—and I have the world’s worst voice, but when I get into it I don’t give a shit and I sing LOUD. And then the music teacher stops the entire class, and demands to know who the hell is 1) not singing the correct verse and 2) BUTCHERING the song. And everyone looks at me. So I get into an argument with the music teacher, and he tells me I have to sing the first verse, I tell him I don’t like the first verse, and he tells me that that’s not the point, and so I tell him that I don’t care what the point is and that I like the third verse. And I got kicked out of class for the day…..

I still hate the first verse. With a fiery passion. When I was little I didn’t like it cos it didn't have the word "heros" like the other verse, but now I’ve thought about it more and realized what my problem is: if you’re gonna call a song “America the Beautiful,” you could get a little creative and describe something OTHER than physical beauty in the first verse. Don’t get me wrong, I think the U.S. is tied with Israel for being the most beautiful country in the world, but you shouldn’t want to live in a country just because it’s beautiful to look at. You go on vacation to a country just because it’s beautiful to look at, but you don’t LIVE there. A country’s gotta have more than that. I mean, if people really are dying for the country, as described in the verse I like, then I sure hope they’re not just dying for the country cos it has some nice scenery. Am I right?

I’ve also been thinking a lot about how my two independence days will be celebrated in the future, when hopefully I’ll be an Israeli citizen but still also an American. At first I thought that’d be confusing and that I’d feel guilty for celebrating the national holiday of a country other than the one I’m living in, but then I realized that at least in my case I can agree on both sides that no one likes the British. And if I still think my situation is confusing, I can look to two of my friends: one has British, American, and Israeli citizenship. On the Fourth of July does he celebrate his country’s independence….from his country? On Yom Ha’Atzmaut, does he do the same? But if he thinks THAT’s bad, he can look at our other friend: A German who has British, American and Israeli citizenship. How the fuck does one reconcile that???


Anyway, there was one person who tried to share my happiness with me. It was very sweet, but a little bit bizarre. Today at work Astrology Bitch asked me if I was homesick, and I said that sometimes I am and that today I am just because it’s Independence Day. And we were speaking English, so she said, “Oh yes, that’s right, I forgot! Congratulations!” I didn’t quite understand why she was saying “Congratulations” so I gave her a confused look. So she said again, “Congratulations. …..Mazel tov.” But I was still confused. Why was I being congratulated? What hard work had I done? Yes, I personally declared independence from the British back in 1776. Yes, I personally spent that harsh winter with George Washington (was it Valley Forge?), and I personally dressed as an Indian and dumped tea into the Boston Harbor. My brothers and father personally fought in the Revolutionary War, and I was that Molly Pitcher or whatever lady. I tarred and feathered loyalists, and it was me who made a midnight ride screaming “The British are coming!” When I wasn’t sitting at home stitching my sampler like a good colonial woman, I was refusing to give lodging to a redcoat and at the same time inspiring one of the rights in the Bill of Rights.

But you know what? I kind of like it. “Congratulations.” It made me feel like, though I didn’t have anything to do with what happened over couple hundred years ago, I had something to do with the US’s success and existence just by living in it. And, well….that’s kind of cool. And I think hopefully it’d be the same for me in Israel. I’m gonna live here and maybe even be a soldier, and on Yom Ha’Atzmaut maybe someone will tell me “Congratulations!” and I’ll be like, “DAMN STRAIGHT, SON!”


Anyway, there’s this New York lady who has lived on the kibbutz for many years who just got transferred to work in the laundry room like two weeks ago. She’s really annoying because her table is in the path of the AC so she’s always cold. But if you turn off the AC or lower it so that it’s not cold for her, the rest of the room feels like a sweaty bat ass. But she refuses to put on a jacket and instead insists that the AC is either turned off or turned to a temperature that is comfortable for her and only her.

So I’ve been getting really sweaty at work. I’ve been wearing short sleeves and sandals and such, though it still is too hot in that room, but I can’t very well show up to work in only my underwear—I understand that Israel is extremely casual, but I’m sure they draw the line somewhere.

So today she shows up and insists that we turn off the AC again, and French Bitch reluctantly complies. So I turn to the American woman and talk to her in English (as a matter of principle I do not speak in anything but English to other Americans just because it doesn’t make any fucking sense to speak to each other in a language that neither of you are good at. I mean, this lady has been here for a while but she still isn’t as good at it as she is with English. I have made exceptions though, for example when I’m in a group of people where there are some Americans and some non-English speakers I’ll speak Hebrew because otherwise it’s rude).

So anyway, I say to her in English in my most polite/sweet/whatever voice, “Look, if the AC bothers you, I don’t mind switching with you. You can sit at my table where you’ll have a comfortable temperature and I’ll sit at your table—which would be great for me because I’d actually prefer to be a bit chilly! What do you think?”

And then she looks as though her head is about to explode. She looks like she has OCD. She bursts out in this crazy voice, “No, I’d really prefer to sit here, OKAY???” And she’s like shaking a little.

Holy fuck, what did I do?? I was trying to be polite, I was trying to do something that would make everyone happy and comfortable!
Clearly this woman is crazy, I thought to myself. Clearly.

And I was right.
A couple hours later the lady burst out crying. Like sobbing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a grown woman cry like that, not even my mother. Like lady had a total breakdown. In the middle of the fucking laundry room. I mean, I’ve had many breakdowns since coming to this country, but I at least had the grace to wait until AFTER I got away from the Women of the Wash to completely freak out, with snot running out of my nose and my eyes all bloodshot and everything. The lady was sobbing so hard I thought she couldn’t breathe, and there were tears everywhere.

The Women of the Wash tried to comfort her, and she kept repeating, like a broken record and a broken woman, “I can’t do it anymore!” Total mess. I just sat in the back of the room and tried to be as small as possible because I honestly had no idea what I was supposed to do. Eventually the woman’s husband came and she plowed right into his arms and sobbed all over him. He stroked her hair and led her away, hopefully to the loony bin.

I think the lady’s breakdown had something to do with the laundry room and aliyah. She’s gotten progressively worse (sadder and quieter and such) since coming to the laundry room, and the Women of the Wash aren’t too nice to her. Also, she’s been here for years and even has Israeli children but her Hebrew still isn’t that great and she’s still VERY VERY American, and the Women of the Wash frequently talk to her in English even though she responds in Hebrew. I think that must be really rough on her.

So she had gone and there was this horrible silence. There have been very few times where I’ve seen Israelis awkward and silent, but this was one of them.

Well, it’s been an interesting day to say the least.

woot

Two things:

I love my job (not towel folding). You don't know babysitting until you've babysat in a foreign language.

On the kibbutz there's a huge Christian tour group here for a month. The vast majority are Americans, and the vast majority of them have southern accents. I've been listening to them in the dining hall (and right now in the hotel lobby) and I've been watching them with fascination. It's made me realize that, yes, maybe I'm not the most "Jewish" Jewish girl in the world, but there is NO WAY IN HELL that I have anything in common with these people!

Get used to it.

It's been an "interesting" day to say the least.

The suicide attempter (who is back from the hospital now) announced to me at lunch that he is moving back to France. Where he faces spending pretty much the vast majority of the rest of his life in prison for a number of things, among them arson, attempted murder ("attempted" seems to be a common theme with this guy....is that a sick joke?), fleeing from the police (why he's in Israel in the first place), and some other shit too. I told him that I wasn't encouraging him to evade justice or anything, but I told him I didn't want him to basically decide to put himself in jail for the next G-d knows how many years just because he's feeling depressed now. Cos prison ain't gonna make it better! If he wants to take the punishment for what he did, then I want him to make that decision with a sane mind (or as sane as possible because clearly this guy is crazy. Always).

Then, of course, there was the attack in Jerusalem. I only understood part of what the radio was saying (basically I understood that some serious shit had gone down in Jerusalem involving a terrorist attack, a bulldozer, East Jerusalem, a soldier, a bus and 'Shaarei Tzedek Hospital'), so I asked one of my co-workers to explain. It really freaked me out because I walk past the spot where it happened like at least twice a week. I then called my parents even though it was the middle of the night because I knew that they'd wake up in the morning and immediately read the news like they always do and then they'd freak out. I know it seems weird to call your parents and say, "I wasn't in Jerusalem today," but when you're thousands of miles away it actually makes sense. It's pretty damn obvious to me that I wasn't in Jerusalem today, but it's not at all obvious to my parents.

So I called my mom, it's like 3 in the morning or something and I start by saying, "Hi Mom, it's your daughter, I'm really sorry I'm waking you up--I just wanna say that I'm at work and I'm absolutely fine but that there was a....a....a..."thing" in Jerusalem today, but there's no need to worry when you wake up and read the news tomorrow."

This was followed by 15 minutes of my mother freaking out--thanking me profusely by doing the right thing by calling her even though she was asleep, but still freaking out and telling me to come home. Finally I calmed her down and we got off the phone.

I went back to work and a few minutes later BOTH of my parents called me back and started freaking out and insisting that I come home. They said they couldn't go back to sleep and that they were reading all the news stories and that they wanted me home now now now. We argued for a bit, and finally they were just like, "Well just stay on the kibbutz for a while then, don't leave it!"

(I'm probably going to Jerusalem tonight.)


Fuck though. I'm sick of this shit. First off, to quote Astrology Bitch today as she screamed at the radio : "WHO USES A TRACTOR TO KILL PEOPLE?? REALLY. WHO DOES THAT?" And second off, to quote Astrology Bitch again: "They think if they keep rocketing us or exploding us up or shooting us or......or hitting us with tractors!....then we will leave and go to a different place. I don't have a different place to go! I don't have another home! Where am I expected to go?! This is it!"

Why can't everything just NOT suck for a couple days

So everything was starting to look up. I'm gradually easing my parents into the whole "I'm joining the army!" announcement. I don't know when the final announcement will come, but I'll be sure to keep you posted. Then I was going to devote a post to how happy I was because today I went to play with/quasi-babysit these four kids today. It really was awesome.

But then I come back and find out that the Frenchman, the guy that tells solely me everything (in French), tried to commit suicide. He was in the hospital. And the sad thing is, people: had he succeeded, this would have been not the first but the SECOND time that someone that I was kind of close with and who had shared EVERYTHING with me and only me had offed themselves. And let me also tell you, people: three years after the first instance, the guilt STILL hasn't gone away. It's definitely something I think about every single day of my life.

I can't help but wonder why every single time I try to be kind and there for people, it always ends up going horribly wrong for me. I know I'm being very selfish by saying that, but let's think about it. Clearly my being friends with this guy and devoting the vast majority of my time to hearing him pour out his feelings and whatnot isn't making him happy, because otherwise he wouldn't have tried to kill himself. In fact, the only thing that's coming out of this is that I'm becoming less happy. And, G-d forbid, if he had succeeded, he'd be nothing and yet I'd be left with another dose of unbearable guilt for the rest of my life. But if I had just stayed the fuck away and not lent an ear, he would still be just as miserable and he'd probably still try to kill himself--but the difference is that in that instance, he'd still become nothing but I wouldn't have intolerable guilt.

G-d, that's a horrible thing for me to say.

My roommate and I were talking about this, and she was just kind of brushing it off and saying I shouldn't get so upset about it, that yeah it was a big deal but that I shouldn't be angry and I just wanted to yell at her, You don't know what it's like to see someone's coffin and think to yourself, "I didn't do enough to stop that."

Jesus, I'm sick of this shit. I don't want to talk to this person ever again, but I know that if his situation becomes worse because he no longer has a friendly ear, I'm going to feel even worse. Well, fuck. I wish I were a mean person.

Sorry to bother you two or three readers out there with all this heavy shit. Maybe you came here hoping to read some silly story about pudding, or how I yelled at someone in Hebrew....and I whip this crap out on you. I'm sorry. I'm not sure what my point is in putting this post out there and making what I'm saying public, but at the same time I feel like this shit needs to be said. You wonder what the reality of making aliyah is, and I have to tell you that this is what it is. No, I'm not saying that people are trying to kill themselves all the fuckign time when they make aliyah, and I'm not saying that this kind of shit doesn't happen in the U.S. or anywhere else abroad....but at the same time, I have to point out that this guy is in the same boat as me: stuck on this fucking kibbutz all the time, in a foreign country with absolutely no family, etc etc. And I know all that played a HUGE part in what made him upset. A huge part. So yeah, aliyah's great cos you get to do Zionist shit or whatever, but it also takes a huge toll on you emotionally. And sometimes no matter how much you love the idea of Israel, and no matter how much of an idealist you are, sometimes even that isn't enough to counter the horrible loneliness and stress and fear and whatever that comes with making aliyah. Just wanted to put that out there. Just something to think about.


Good night, y'all.

I'm going to have a neon green fucking beret!

Yeah. I'm going to have a neon green beret. You know what that means? Nachal.

No, I haven't had my army interview or whatever yet, but the program I'm doing is such that you can ONLY go into Nachal. So the guy in charge told me, "Samantha, you're going to be in Nachal! Are you excited??" And, well, to be honest I don't know a fucking thing about the Israeli army so i don't know if I'm supposed to be excited or not. I'm wikipedia-ing Nachal and I'm still not sure I understand. I don't understand the US Military, so this whole learnign about a military in Hebrew is going to be a fucking bitch. Even when the people there spoke in English, it was like "brigade this" or "company that" or "unit whonanny" and "platoon doobie" and I couldn't keep track of it all. Fuck, I'm goign to be the worst soldier ever.

So today I had to sit for five hours to learn about Nachal and the army in general. Holy fuck.

So I learned that most of the boys in the program go into combat, while the girls will probably end up being instructors of some sort. So I guess that's what I'll be doing for my army service.

I was told that next week I'll get to go to the army induction center place, and then a couple days later I'll know where I'll be put (tentatively), and then a week or so after that I'll get finalization and whatnot.

Holy holy fuck. Holy fuck. It was terrifying because they kept referring to Nachal as "YOUR Brigade." Holy fuck. I have a brigade??? I HAVE A BRIGADE!!!

On the way back from Tel Aviv, I kept seeing Nachal soldiers (on the bus, in the bus station, etc) and I was like, "HOLY FUCK I'M GOING TO BE ONE OF THOSE!"



The most scary part of all of this is telling my parents. I was telling my mom today on the phone that I went to Tel Aviv, and I hinted that I talked to "some people from a Jewish organization" (some soldiers from the IDF are people from a Jewish organization, right?) about some "potential programs" I could do in Israel. I really wanted to tell her about how my army plans were becoming more firmed up because it is both exciting and scary, so I casually said, "So you're still against the army idea?" And my mother flipped out and said that OF COURSE she still doesn't want me to join the army. So......fuck........I'm not sure how or when I'm going to tell her and my dad. It's just really difficult because it's terrifying to feel so absolutely alone. I have to figure out how a foreign army works, and I have to find a place to live, and etc etc.....


SEND ME LOVE!

(or chocolate.)

Okay, so I'm not 100 percent Irish, but I think 50 percent is good enough

Funniest thign just happened: waiting for the bus at the bus stop, I find myself next to a group of 5 American and Canadian guys. Christians. Here to learn Biblical Hebrew. All just a couple years older than me.

The guys for some reason start talking about Irish people. And they got into an argument which ended with them all concluding that there are no Jews of Irish descent.
They started talking about how crap and racist and whatnot Israel is.
They started bitching bitchign bitchign bitching.
They started talking about how bizarre Jews are, and how bizarre Israel is, and how Jews are this, and Jews are that. Israel is racist this, Jews are weird that, blahblahblah, I want to marry a good CHRISTIAN woman because they're the only good women int he world.
They came back to the subject of the non-existence of Irish Jews, and they started laughing and making suggestions of what such a person would look like.
Then they started talking again about how weird Jews are.

I sat in silence. I briefly called my roommate, but spoke only in Hebrew so as not to give away that I was American and fluent in English.


We were waiting forever and my neighbor, the soldier who likes MIKA, saw me waiting and offered me a ride.

One of the Americans: "Oh, I think that guy's offering her a ride to Jerusalem."
The Canadian: "Oh, well let's see if we can come too!"
American: "No, he's probably only offering it to his girlfriend."
The Canadian: "Well, let's be nice to the girlfriend, maybe she'll let us come, too!"
American: "Should I go flirt with her?"
The Canadian: "No, she probably doesn't understand English."



Finally after we had waited for a ridiculously long time, the Christians called over to me, asking in deliberate and slow (and LOUD) English, "IS . THE . BUS . NOR-MA-LLY . THIS. LATE?"

I considered answering back in my regular accent, but I wanted them to know that they had fucked with the wrong person, that they had fucked with an American. So I put on a slight Southern Accent, cos there's not a chance in Hell a foreigner would talk like that, and I called back, "No, it doesn't normally come this late."

The Christians were absolutely appalled. Their jaws dropped. They tried to make peace talk. They asked if I was Jewish and if I had moved here. Then the Americans asked, "So why did you choose to make aliyah?"

So I stood up and said, "I made aliyah because as YOU people said, you people from my own native country said, I'm weird for being Jewish. And by the way, that guy's not my boyfriend, Oh, and by the way: I'm a Jew of Irish descent. THIS is what we look like."

And I walked off.