One day I'll be promoted from stupid tourist to THAT STUPID FUCKING IMMIGRANT

Today was a totally shit day. I thought I was gonna cry from folding more and more towels (oo, i got upgraded to pants today!), but instead I cried from something different.

I am the only non-fluent Hebrew speaker who works in the laundry room. I am the only person there who speaks English as my mother tongue, so most of the day I sit in silence and try to listen in on other people's conversations. Because I rarely open my mouth and because I'm so bad at putting sentences together orally, most people in the laundry room assume that I understand no Hebrew. This is not true. There is A LOT of Hebrew that I don't understand, but there is also quite a bit that I do understand.

This afternoon, while I was busy folding, the Women of the Wash were on a break. They stood only a couple yards away from me, completely within earshot--even if they were whispering I could have heard. And they started shit talking me. Right in front of me, they started shit talking me in Hebrew. Saying how bad I was at folding, saying how long it takes for things to get through to me, and my head boss started making fun of me because she constantly asks me to drink water and I never do. My boss was telling the others that she was just sick of it and was giving up on me because it was so frustrating for her. The ladies then continued to make fun of my folding skills....

First of all, it goes without saying: if I ever become as good at folding as these rancid bitches are, I'd consider my life to have somehow gotten fucked up along the way.

Anyway.... well, the fact that these women were shit talking me right in front of me was really upsetting. They just looked at me as if I weren't there. And they just laughed. So I started crying. Not terribly, not sobbing, but definitely tears.

It was really one of the most....dehumanizing...experiences I've ever had. I felt like the fucking wall. These ladies thought I was a fucking wall.

It's so frustrating to be in this country and want SO badly to live here long term. Because getting citizenship doesn't mean that people are going to automatically assume that they need to stop talking as if I'm a wall. Then I'll just be the stupid immigrant.

Maybe I'm being incredibly dramatic, but even after spending so much time completely alone in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with no friends, without understanding so much of what is going on, THIS is the one thing that makes me feel like the lonely outsider.


Anyway, they stopped talking about me and started talking about the hot American boy who works in the laundry room next door (all day they talk about him in Hebrew, and then they ask me in English, all non-chalant, everythign I know about him...and I just pretend that I didn't hear them talking about him). After a few minutes, I had stopped crying and shortly afterwards my boss spouted somethign out in Hebrew, telling me to take a break, get a drink, and then start working again in a few minutes. And one of the ladies who was also shit-talking me started to translate for me into English, and not just English but talking to me as if I'm some kind of baby--a retarded, mute baby. I held out my hand to interrupt her, and I gave her a saucy/bitchy look and said simply,

"Hevanti."

Which, for my American friends, means "I understood."
And the bitch had SUCH a shocked expression on her face.....oh G-d, it was wonderful.

later I went to Jerusalem with a friend, and I couldn't stop thinking about how I'm always going to be an outsider here. I feel like an outsider in most of the US for being Jewish, so to be an outsider in Israel leaves me homeless.

GGGAAAAA! I just need a nice long cry. I hate being this worthless idiotic outsider, who's stupid and doesn't know when people are shit talking her right in front of her. Part of me feel like, well, if I'm always gonna be the outsider, then what's the fucking point?


http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3539750,00.html

Basically, the above article also illustrates what upsets me about how, even if I want to be a part of this country, I'll always be an outsider. It's about Michael Levin, an Israeli who was raised in America but came to Israel and died in 2006 during the war. On the ynet website, the headline is "Story of a Jewish-American hero." And, on the topic of things that are upsetting me today, it upsets me that they classified him as "Jewish-American," and that "Israeli" did not appear in the headline. I mean, this guy wanted to be Israeli more than anything--he even died fighting for Israel! And yet his main classification is not as "Israeli?" It just really upsets me...


P.S. I thought I hated the two French girls here, but one of them has the same job as me on opposite days--I told her what happened (we speak to each other a lot cos I'm the only other ulpan student, besides the one other french girl, who can understand her), and she told me they made her cry on the first day.....so now i feel a little better. or like a little bit less of a baby.