Oh shit son.

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

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

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

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

Bad news?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also, my roommate is cray cray.

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

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