The Soccer Injury Salsa

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

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

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

Now you understand what kind of people I work with.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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