Nice Ass!

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

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

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

But I assure you—it DID happen.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Four.”

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

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

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

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

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