Rambling

I’m listening to “The Final Countdown” right now. Basically if my brother and I had a song, this would be it. When I was a junior in high school and he was a senior, every single day after school as we drove home we’d roll down the windows and put “The Final Countdown” on as high as it would go. On our last day of school that we’d ever have together, his senior year, the two of us sang an impromptu a cappella version of it in the student center…. Oh man. Nostalgia sucks. You know what though? Given enough time I’ll eventually have lots of nostalgia for things that happened in Israel.

Actually, it’s already starting to happen. For example, when I turned back on my Israeli cell phone for the first time in 4 months, I found that I had a song on it that one guy on the kibbutz would always play. I think it’s called One Sign or something by Galleon…. Anyway, not only was it this guy’s ringtone, but he’d also walk around the kibbutz blasting the song from his phone. And he’d just strut around like he was about to go to a club. He was totally serious, but I thought it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, especially since I would see it at least twice a day—like not even with a different song. Same song, same guy. So now whenever I hear that song I think back on the things at the kibbutz that were funny and heartwarming or whatever. No, it’s not quite the same as memories of brothers or family or whatever, but it’s fond nostalgia all the same.

I think years from now I’ll hear songs from Grease and I’ll think of my current roommate singing completely incorrect pseudo-English lyrics to “Summer Lovin’” as she never tires of doing right now, and I won’t be able to stop smiling.


Okay, my big problem of the moment? Europeans and South Americans. Oh. My. G-d. Please stop touching me. I had the same problem on the kibbutz, but now I’m going through it all over again. Seriously, you do not need to hug me and do the MWAH MWAH cheek kiss thing just because we haven’t seen each other all day. If you want to do that after I’ve been stranded on an island for 10 years and suddenly see you again after being rescued….okay, maybe we can work something out in that case, I’m totally flexible. But on a day-to-day basis I don’t need to be hugged and touched and whatevered by people. Also, I’m having a lot of problems adjusting to how close certain people from certain cultures get when they’re talking to you. Certain people feel like they have to get close enough that they could whisper a secret, when really they’re just talking about what they did today or asking a question about how my day was.

Also, I gotta say that I’m really thankful I’m a lone immigrant. I know that sounds weird, especially since on this blog you’ll never cease to “hear” me complain about how lonely things like Shabbat are for people like me…..but living in this absorption center here and being surrounded by a lot of immigrant families, I’m so glad I’m doing this on my own. All I have to worry about is getting ME around a foreign country. I don’t have to worry about my children adapting and getting them around and dealing with all their shit on top of my shit. All I have to worry about here is if I am happy, not if my husband or one of my children is unhappy. If I want to stay, I can stay, and if I want to go I can go, and I don’t have to worry bout where anyone else wants to be.

Weird Work Story? So today a woman comes in and starts trying to get things accomplished in Hebrew. I can tell from her accent that she’s English, but because I know how hurt I get when people answer to me in English after I worked up the courage to speak Hebrew, I stuck to Hebrew. So after a couple basic sentences, the woman switches into English, and I follow her into English. She initially looks surprised, but we continue our conversation…. So we’re talking to each other in English for maybe 5 minutes, and at the end as she’s walking out she stops and turns around. And she asks in her cute little English accent, “I must ask, are you from England as well?”

WHAT? WHAT???? I mean, it’d be different if a Canadian asked me if I was also from Canada, because we have similar accents. But an English person asking me??? EXCUSE ME?? Do you not hear my nasal, harsh American accent? Do you not hear how I actually pronounce my R’s, instead of pretending that they don’t exist like you folks do?

I figured that if I told her that I lived my entire life, all my 20 years (except for four months in Israel), in the United States, she might get embarrassed that she had done such a horrific job of placing my accent. So instead I said, “Well, I was BORN in the United States….” Which, if you ask me, is slightly ambiguous. Sure, it’s a totally true statement, but the emphasis I placed within it suggested a lie. By placing the emphasis on “born” I somehow suggested that I had roots in the United States, so I was not in fact English, but the emphasis also suggested that I had lived most of my life elsewhere, making her mistaken accent placement an easy mistake to make. It did NOT suggest, however, that I had made aliyah all of two weeks ago.

Of course, I have NOT lived most of my life elsewhere, so I’m not sure why this woman thinks my accent is anything less than American…

I seriously don’t understand these Americans who think I’m an Israeli who doesn’t speak much English, or now these English people who think I’m one of them (G-d forbid!). Or even more bizarre was a French friend from the kibbutz who, during the first few months of our knowing each other, was absolutely convinced that I was pure German from Germany. See, I think I look, sound and act American. I don’t think there is anything about me that is un-American even in the slightest, except maybe for the fact that I no longer live in the US (but I think the concept of immigration and learning to deal in a foreign society is an important concept in the history of the US).

I remember I was on a school trip in France in high school, and a bunch of us Americans were sitting around deciding which ethnicity everyone looked. It was like, “Oh, so-and-so, you totally look Greek!” or “You DEFINITELY look French, so-and-so.” I guess that’s the special thing about being from a place like the US, where everyone is the descendant of immigrants and everyone’s kind of a mutt, so you get to try to place where everyone’s from. Maybe it’s the same in Israel too since it’s an immigrant society. Anyway, my turn came and I eagerly awaited to hear which nationality I looked. And what was the unanimous response from the group?

“American.”
“Oh yeah, definitely American.”
“Yeah, I agree, American.”


So you can imagine that I find it extremely confusing when people don’t immediately recognize me as American.


Anyway, the best part of this story from work was that I even told it to my roommate and her response was the French equivalent of, “How the hell could anyone think YOU are English???”

My roommate continued, “Are you sad about it? It’s not good for Americans to be called English, eh? Don’t worry about it, she drank, she drank. She was drunk, it’s not a big deal.”