Antsy-ness unto the Lord

You know what I don’t get? The religious people in my class, like all of us, have so much trouble sitting through class. We’re all antsy, bored and eager to get out.


But these religious people pray three times a day (at least the men do), and they devote large chunks of their weekends to sitting through incredibly boring services—and much of these services are the same EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK. And these religious people have no trouble sitting through these services….yet put them in a class where every single day is different and we learn and read new things, and they can’t stand it.

So why does an inability to sit through class make me pick on the religious people in particular, when I myself am guilty of 1st degree antsy-ness? Because they’ve actually proven themselves to be capable of sitting through something long and boring, whereas my inability to sit quietly in class is hardly surprising, given my track record. I mean, let’s get it straight, I love G-d, but that doesn’t mean I want to wake up early on Saturday mornings and go to synagogue for Him until the afternoon.

Maybe there’s the whole fear issue that motivates them through services as opposed to Hebrew class.
But surely the fear of G-d is not THAT much greater than the fear of spending the rest of your life sounding like a retarded 2 year old.

Frankly, to me the potential to be humiliated by Israelis mocking my accent or word choice (or lack of word choice) is a lot scarier at this point.


Another* person mistook me today for a German. I was speaking Hebrew to the lady ringing me up at the supermarket, and she asked where I was from. When I said I was from the US, she looked surprised so I asked where she thought I was from. And she told me she was certain I was German! WHAT? I gotta say, it was exciting not to be assumed to be American for one time out of every 5000, but perhaps being considered German is kind of a downgrade in this country…

*This has happened a couple times this time and the last time I was in Israel, but it is still EXTREMELY rare. For example, the French arsonist on the kibbutz who I knew and talked to for several months in French made some reference to my being German after he had already known me for like a month. So I don’t know what the deal is. I think maybe the problem is that when I really make an effort to speak with an Israeli accent, I miss the mark and I come out with a German accent? No? Most of the time though when I’m trying to speak relatively fast I won’t always remember to make an effort on accent, so I come out as 100% pure American.




Also, today I researched how to advance the date of my army enlistment. Granted, I haven’t gotten an original date anyway, but I figure I’m going to want to go as soon as possible. I figure that any enlistment date after August is too late, and seeing as it’s likely that my enlistment date will indeed be after August, I want to be prepared to change it. I checked online on Hebrew chat forums regarding the army and the impression I got is that it’s unbelievably difficult to change your enlistment date, and that the army only does it if you have like serious family problems (one website said something in Hebrew like, “You basically have to come out and say ‘My parents beat me,’ “ and since my parents aren’t in this country that’ll be a hard one to pull off…) or you want to study in a university immediately after being released. And this is really making me panic, because I get out of this program I’m in right now in June. What if I get assigned an enlistment date in December or (G-d forbid!) something in 2010?! I’m scared of having to live in Israel outside of a program. I don’t want to have to live for a few months or a year on my own, trying to make my own way, doing some crap dead-end job, and having no support structure. Also I’m already gonna be older than the other girls, and so waiting even more time seems appalling. I don’t want them calling me Savta or anything.


Wow…we got like THE most massive storm last night. Someone told me the other day that this weekend we were gonna get a huge storm, and so when I went to bed on Friday night and it still wasn’t raining, I said to myself, “FALSE!” But at 2 am I was woken by this heart-stopping crack of thunder, and when I looked outside it looked like the apocalypse had come. The palm tree a few yards from the building (right in view of my window) was shaking like crazy, like it was going to snap in half, and there was this blinding rain. And meanwhile there were these constant bright flashes of lightning that lit up my entire apartment, followed by deafening thunder. Oh man. It was pretty awesome. This morning has been less impressive, as it’ll be 30 minutes of no rain, but then a cloud will come and it’ll be torrential rain for like 15 minutes, then stop.

This weather report was brought to you by Aw Eff.
(P.S. Someone told me there is a meteorology unit of the army. WHAT?)