Three things

Three things I need to tell you about: The Negev, kibbutz healthcare, and cleaning floors.

1) I used to think that maybe one day I'd like to be a follower of Ben Gurion. Maybe one day I'd be one more person to settle in the Negev and continue to make the desert bloom. Before our tiyul to the desert I thought this. And then I went there.

Holy. Fucking. Balls.

I seriously don't think I've ever experienced heat like that. And it's not even summer yet.

I guess the moral of the story is that you should never plan on living somewhere where there's a major campaign to get people to live there...

2) I felt sick today. Nothing too serious, just a pretty bad headache and general shitness, right? Back at school when I had these symptoms I would just stay in bed or maybe miss morning classes, and just sleep it off. And by the end of the day, or at least by the next day, I'd usually be just fine.

So today I woke up feeling shitty--you know, weak and shaky and with a headache...slight fever--but went to class. After a couple hours I realized that I had made a mistake and that I should have stayed in bed and gotten better. So during the break I approached the teacher and asked if I might be excused to go home because I wasn't feeling very well.

I was told that, no, I couldn't just go back to sleep because if I want to miss class because I'm sick I have to go to the fucking kibbutz doctor and sit around to be examined and then he has to diagnose me with something and then I have to take medicine and only THEN can I just go back to bed. Why do I need this? I know I'm not deathly ill, I know that the thing I need right now is to just take it easy. Why do I have to go to a doctor for just having a headache and general crumminess?

It's not like I'd have to pay to visit the doctor. THe healthcare is included in the program. My not wanting to visit the doctor is not a money issue, it's a matter of principle. Why the hell is it necessary to go to the doctor for something as minor as this? if I ever need a Band-Aid here, am I going to have to go to the doctor for that as well??? Is this an Israeli thing or is this just my kibbutz being retarded?

3) I had to clean the ulpan room's floor with my teacher and with my roommate. My roommate's father is Israeli so she's been well-exposed to and well-practiced in the Israeli style of floor cleaning. And my teacher IS Israeli, so I'm guessing she's pretty familiar with this too. I, on the other hand, visited this country for the first time in my life only five months ago, and I find this method of cleaning floors to be interesting from the outside but absolutely ALARMING while doing it. My teacher kept yelling at me to do this/that in Hebrew, but I didn't understand what the fuck she was talking about because I didn't know the words for crucial things like "rag," "mop," "broom" or "that weird squeegee broom thing" in Hebrew. Normally when I don't understand certain vocabulary words I just use logic to figure out what they are, but since I had no idea how the fuck one normally cleans floors in Israel, it was a pretty hopeless exercise. So there I am, hearing, "SAMMY, USE THE XXXXXX TO AAGLKALDKJGLSDG THE BLBLBLBLB NOW!" And I'm just standing there, panicking because I can't understand what the hell I'm supposed to be doing, and meanwhile I'm struggling to swim because I'm almost up to my neck in the soapy water that my teacher has flooded the room with (okay, that's a stretch...).

Anyway, it's over now. But I think I'll be talking about this in therapy years from now....