Today during class we all got a chance to say in Hebrew what we hated about our jobs. And I said in Hebrew that I hated my job because the people are mean and that they think I left all my family behind, dropped out of school, and left everything I knew behind in order to come to Israel to fold towels. My teacher told me in Hebrew that it won't be so bad and that sometime during the next five months I would get used to it. And for the first time in my life, i didn't have to think about speaking Hebrew. All of the sudden, I burst out in Hebrew, "But I don't WANT to get used to it! What kind of life is that, folding towels all day???" It was pretty exciting....
Another boy who works in the laundry room (not in my room, but in the room where they wash the clothing) came up to me after class and told me that he was being mistreated by his people too. He said that his boss was mean to him and sat on her ass all day while he worked. He also complained that she just didn't have basically friendliness towards him, and then he ended it by saying, "I just want to tell that woman, 'You know, you work in a fucking laundromat.' "
Which is true. What does that woman have to be smug about. She works in a fucking laundromat.
Today I tried to talk to the head of the ulpan. He showed me into his office, offered me a seat. We settled down in silence, and finally I took in a deep breath. Then I said in the most polite, calm tone I could manage, "I absolutely hate to complain, but is there ANY way we could look into switching my job?"
And the head of the ulpan said simply, "No."
That was it. Just "No." I have to fold laundry for five months. With bitches who hate me and talk about me as if I'm not there. Just "No."
I kind of just stared at the guy in shock. I don't know. Most people would at least say, "I'm sorry you're having trouble with your job, but we can't switch jobs." Most people might even add, "But tell me what's bothering you and maybe we can fix it without changing jobs." But this guy just said "No." When he saw that I was looking at him in shock, he motioned that I was free to leave his office. So I just slowly gathered my stuff up and walked out of the room...
Thanks to my agreement with my parents that I wouldn't come to this country with citizenship immediately, I cannot leave the ulpan. if I leave the ulpan, I have no way of supporting myself because I cannot legally get a job in this country yet. So basically I have to stay here until I get my citizenship. Which could be a few months. So fuck.
Oh well. Other than my shit job, I'm making some nice friends here. And tomorrow when I'm folding towels and the Women of the Wash bitch about me, in my head I'll just keep telling them, "You know, you work in a fucking laundromat."
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Vocab
Postponed my journey into Jerusalem until Tuesday. At least I think it'll be Tuesday. I can't fucking figure out what day of the week it is at any given time, because this whole "Sunday is a workday thing" confuses the shit out of me. Today is Sunday, right? I keep thinking it's Monday. I think that even if I'm here for the rest of my life, I'll never get over the fact that Sunday is now a workday.
We postponed the trip until Tuesday because my friend is going on Tuesday and he wants to daven at the kotel--he would have gone today with me, but if I was gonna go to the kotel I didn't want to wear pants. [Edit: I did want to wear clothing in general!!!!! I meant that I wanted to go to the kotel in a skirt and not pants!] So we postponed.
Anyway, I have to share with you my vocabulary from today: engine, to enjoy, treatment, to agree, guide, because of, interior, to bring, to prepare, a form, poverty, stress, a craving, to divorce, a weekly paper, an atomic facility, to bomb, a bomb, to be bombed, to explode, the media, to photograph, to return something, intelligence agents, connection, to call, ceasefire, to announce, to release someone/something, a spy, rockets, cemetery, tombstones, border, region, damage, and the phrase "there were no injuries." Jealous any?
Edit: Also, (and don't read this is you take offense from everything) I forgot to mention that my friend and I came up with an acronym for this very nice Arab guy we talk to in the dining hall every single day. He studied in an Oklahoma high school for a couple years, and he walks like someone shoved a stick up his ass, so we call him our RAFFO: our Raped Arab Friend From Oklahoma.
Also, yesterday I went into an Arab village with three American boys. We wanted meat and everything was closed for Shabbat, so we hiked over to the nearest Arab town, the town whose calls to prayer we hear several times a day--they have two mosques, so we think the two mosques try to compete with each other over who can be the most annoying, loud and disruptive with the calls to prayer.
Most people were really nice to us, in terms of giving us directions and calling out to us "Shalom!" and saying nice things in Hebrew, but this little girl spat on me! (Well, to clarify, she tried to spit on the boys, but it landed on me.) First a Haredi boy spits on me, and now a little Arab girl spits on me! Seriously, is there somethign about me that just screams, "SPIT ON ME!" ???
Maybe if I could somehow introduce the spitting Haredi to the spitting Arab girl, they would fall in love over their mutual love of spitting on people. Peace would prevail. Single-handedly, I would solve all the problems in this region...
Anyway, we came back and had a good ol' traditional 'merkin bbq, with an oleh chadash from Miami grilling up for everone hot dogs that we threw into pita and drenched in ketchup. All of us--the Americans and the Germans, Russians, and Hungarians who joined us--were having a great time, but this boy from South Africa kept telling us how everything's better in South Africa, and how American BBQ's can't compare to South African bryers (or however you spell it). And all of us Americans got pissed off because you don't insult American BBQ! All the Americans are like, "what is this, are you like from Texas or something? Saying how everything's bigger and better in Texas? You're not in fucking South Africa anymore, so get over it!"
I think that's an important thing to keep in mind when in a foreign country--whether you're there for a long term stay or just a vacation. Wherever you're from, you're not there anymore so get over it!
P.S. I just looked up what the South African guy was talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braai
It looks fucking nasty! How could you eat that shit, and how could you call that shit better than a regular bbq???
We postponed the trip until Tuesday because my friend is going on Tuesday and he wants to daven at the kotel--he would have gone today with me, but if I was gonna go to the kotel I didn't want to wear pants. [Edit: I did want to wear clothing in general!!!!! I meant that I wanted to go to the kotel in a skirt and not pants!] So we postponed.
Anyway, I have to share with you my vocabulary from today: engine, to enjoy, treatment, to agree, guide, because of, interior, to bring, to prepare, a form, poverty, stress, a craving, to divorce, a weekly paper, an atomic facility, to bomb, a bomb, to be bombed, to explode, the media, to photograph, to return something, intelligence agents, connection, to call, ceasefire, to announce, to release someone/something, a spy, rockets, cemetery, tombstones, border, region, damage, and the phrase "there were no injuries." Jealous any?
Edit: Also, (and don't read this is you take offense from everything) I forgot to mention that my friend and I came up with an acronym for this very nice Arab guy we talk to in the dining hall every single day. He studied in an Oklahoma high school for a couple years, and he walks like someone shoved a stick up his ass, so we call him our RAFFO: our Raped Arab Friend From Oklahoma.
Also, yesterday I went into an Arab village with three American boys. We wanted meat and everything was closed for Shabbat, so we hiked over to the nearest Arab town, the town whose calls to prayer we hear several times a day--they have two mosques, so we think the two mosques try to compete with each other over who can be the most annoying, loud and disruptive with the calls to prayer.
Most people were really nice to us, in terms of giving us directions and calling out to us "Shalom!" and saying nice things in Hebrew, but this little girl spat on me! (Well, to clarify, she tried to spit on the boys, but it landed on me.) First a Haredi boy spits on me, and now a little Arab girl spits on me! Seriously, is there somethign about me that just screams, "SPIT ON ME!" ???
Maybe if I could somehow introduce the spitting Haredi to the spitting Arab girl, they would fall in love over their mutual love of spitting on people. Peace would prevail. Single-handedly, I would solve all the problems in this region...
Anyway, we came back and had a good ol' traditional 'merkin bbq, with an oleh chadash from Miami grilling up for everone hot dogs that we threw into pita and drenched in ketchup. All of us--the Americans and the Germans, Russians, and Hungarians who joined us--were having a great time, but this boy from South Africa kept telling us how everything's better in South Africa, and how American BBQ's can't compare to South African bryers (or however you spell it). And all of us Americans got pissed off because you don't insult American BBQ! All the Americans are like, "what is this, are you like from Texas or something? Saying how everything's bigger and better in Texas? You're not in fucking South Africa anymore, so get over it!"
I think that's an important thing to keep in mind when in a foreign country--whether you're there for a long term stay or just a vacation. Wherever you're from, you're not there anymore so get over it!
P.S. I just looked up what the South African guy was talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braai
It looks fucking nasty! How could you eat that shit, and how could you call that shit better than a regular bbq???
Saturday, May 3, 2008
The IDF Disco.
Next door to me lives a soldier. A soldier who REALLY likes Mika. A soldier who REALLY likes Mika and wants the entire world to know. I like Mika a lot, so having the IDF’s discotheque next door is no problem. The problem though is that the discotheque is not next door—the music is so loud that it’s like a dance party in my head. In fact, I think the music is so loud that terrorists in the Gaza Strip are setting down their weapons (temporarily) to groove to this physically overwhelming bass and the deafening singing. Meanwhile entire communities along the shores of the Dead Sea (which will be called “The Sea of Death” soon after this song is over) are being wiped out by terrible tsunamis caused by Mika’s catastrophically powerful rumbling bass. All over Israel, from Rosh HaNikra to Eilat, Israelis are being informed by Mika that big girls are beautiful, that Mika can be multiple colors, and that in any other world we could tell the difference.
Oh well. He’s a soldier, so I’ll forgive him. As soon as he gets out of the army though, I’ll kill him. (Hahaha, just joking…..or not….)
Anyway, more reasons that I love this country:
With extremely little effort, I was able to get an Ivri Lider song as a ring tone on my cellphone. I love this country!
I also like that I’m sitting in a hotel lobby and the desk clerk’s cellphone went off. And its ringtone was a song that was basically just a list of every offensive word in English the singer could possibly come up with. Like, it was offensive to the point where I let out a little gasp. And the desk clerk looks like an extremely polite and refined woman, yet she was not embarrassed in the least to have this ringtone. I love this country!
I also really like the yogurt containers where you just rip off the top and you bend the container in the middle so that strawberry/chocolate/chopped-nut goodness pours into your yogurt and you get to mix it yourself. I like this more than pre-mixed yogurt because I get to decide exactly how well-integrated I want my added ingredients to be, and this is extremely important to my happiness. Because some days you want your strawberries in a layer on top of the yogurt, but some days are days where you want the chocolate to be well-mixed in every bite. I’m sure something like it exists in the US but since I didn’t discover it until I got here, Israel gets the point for this one. (Am I keeping score?)
Also: I friggin love my Hebrew class. My Hebrew vocabulary is starting to get enormous. Well, maybe “enormous” is stretching things, but I’m still excited. In addition to talking about folding towels and murdering people, I can now talk about joining the army, weather, cleaning things, medical experiments, ceremonies, managing a soccer team, orphans, childhood, being desperate, and having a broken heart. All extremely crucial to daily life. Aaaaa, I love ulpan! I just want to be in ulpan all day for the next few years and not come out until I stop sounding like such a dumbass in Hebrew. Well, that might take a lifetime…
On the subject of what I brought up yesterday about being sad that I have no family here: I had an interesting conversation with someone yesterday. It was kind of a difficult, broken conversation because neither of us really speaks the other’s language, but here was the gist of it. She asked if I was staying in Israel after ulpan to live here as an Israeli, and I told her that this was my intention. I asked her if she was going to do the same, and she said that she wanted to live in Israel forever--more than anything else in the world in fact--but she couldn’t because her parents don’t live here and don’t want to move here. She said something about how my parents must be moving to Israel with me. And I said, no, I’m the only person in my family who lives here or who is going to be living here in the near future—in fact, most of my family hasn’t even ever been to Israel. And she just seemed horrified, and asked how I could do that—it wasn’t like what I was talking about yesterday about how people feel bad for me that I have no family here. This was her basically thinking that I was some sort of heartless monster for abandoning my family. Shit. I feel like such an asshole.
Oh well. Tomorrow I am going to Jerusalem for the afternoon, so I’m quite excited. I’m not even going to tour around—I’m just running errands—but I’m still excited. If I ever stop being excited about going to Jerusalem, will you please kill me? I may have already said that on this blog, but I think it’s worth repeating. It’s kind of a more severe version of the whole “Jerusalem, if I forget thee….blahblahblah” thing. And, on a broader level, if I ever stop being excited about being here in Israel in general, please kill me then as well.
Thank you in advance,
Sam / Semi / SemenTAH
P.S. Where—which radio stations or music stores--does one find country music in Israel? (Country, as in Garth Brooks or Brad Paisley) Is this just something I’m going to have to learn to live without?
Oh well. He’s a soldier, so I’ll forgive him. As soon as he gets out of the army though, I’ll kill him. (Hahaha, just joking…..or not….)
Anyway, more reasons that I love this country:
With extremely little effort, I was able to get an Ivri Lider song as a ring tone on my cellphone. I love this country!
I also like that I’m sitting in a hotel lobby and the desk clerk’s cellphone went off. And its ringtone was a song that was basically just a list of every offensive word in English the singer could possibly come up with. Like, it was offensive to the point where I let out a little gasp. And the desk clerk looks like an extremely polite and refined woman, yet she was not embarrassed in the least to have this ringtone. I love this country!
I also really like the yogurt containers where you just rip off the top and you bend the container in the middle so that strawberry/chocolate/chopped-nut goodness pours into your yogurt and you get to mix it yourself. I like this more than pre-mixed yogurt because I get to decide exactly how well-integrated I want my added ingredients to be, and this is extremely important to my happiness. Because some days you want your strawberries in a layer on top of the yogurt, but some days are days where you want the chocolate to be well-mixed in every bite. I’m sure something like it exists in the US but since I didn’t discover it until I got here, Israel gets the point for this one. (Am I keeping score?)
Also: I friggin love my Hebrew class. My Hebrew vocabulary is starting to get enormous. Well, maybe “enormous” is stretching things, but I’m still excited. In addition to talking about folding towels and murdering people, I can now talk about joining the army, weather, cleaning things, medical experiments, ceremonies, managing a soccer team, orphans, childhood, being desperate, and having a broken heart. All extremely crucial to daily life. Aaaaa, I love ulpan! I just want to be in ulpan all day for the next few years and not come out until I stop sounding like such a dumbass in Hebrew. Well, that might take a lifetime…
On the subject of what I brought up yesterday about being sad that I have no family here: I had an interesting conversation with someone yesterday. It was kind of a difficult, broken conversation because neither of us really speaks the other’s language, but here was the gist of it. She asked if I was staying in Israel after ulpan to live here as an Israeli, and I told her that this was my intention. I asked her if she was going to do the same, and she said that she wanted to live in Israel forever--more than anything else in the world in fact--but she couldn’t because her parents don’t live here and don’t want to move here. She said something about how my parents must be moving to Israel with me. And I said, no, I’m the only person in my family who lives here or who is going to be living here in the near future—in fact, most of my family hasn’t even ever been to Israel. And she just seemed horrified, and asked how I could do that—it wasn’t like what I was talking about yesterday about how people feel bad for me that I have no family here. This was her basically thinking that I was some sort of heartless monster for abandoning my family. Shit. I feel like such an asshole.
Oh well. Tomorrow I am going to Jerusalem for the afternoon, so I’m quite excited. I’m not even going to tour around—I’m just running errands—but I’m still excited. If I ever stop being excited about going to Jerusalem, will you please kill me? I may have already said that on this blog, but I think it’s worth repeating. It’s kind of a more severe version of the whole “Jerusalem, if I forget thee….blahblahblah” thing. And, on a broader level, if I ever stop being excited about being here in Israel in general, please kill me then as well.
Thank you in advance,
Sam / Semi / SemenTAH
P.S. Where—which radio stations or music stores--does one find country music in Israel? (Country, as in Garth Brooks or Brad Paisley) Is this just something I’m going to have to learn to live without?
Friday, May 2, 2008
Aren't you standing a little too close to me....?
Two posts in one day! Aren't you lucky??
I just have to get something out there. And this isn't a complaint against Israel, rather it's something that I find extremely unsettling that is common to many other foreign cultures. I'm talking about the whole personal space issue. Today I was using my computer, sitting on the floor with another person when someone came up to tell us that we couldn't be in the room. Instead of just standing there and talking in our direction, this person chose to sit directly in front of us, learned towards us and lectured us in such close proximity that we could almost feel his beard stubble touching our faces. Okay, that's exagerrating, but not by much. I leaned back because I felt extremely uncomfortable, and this asshole took that as a cue to lean even more forward.
Even more unsettling is the practice of some of the students here to kiss everyone upon seeing them for the first time in the morning and seeing them for the last time before going to bed. I mean, they're all extremely nice people and I'm looking forward to becoming friends with them, but I completely freaked out when, at the end of the first day before going to bed, some girl from a country with this practice grabbed my face and kissed my cheeks. I did not outwardly freak out, but it was a desperate inward struggle to stop myself from spazzing out as much as my dog does when you turn her over onto her back.
I'm not really sure what I'm going to do. I mean, I come from the school of thought that the only people you kiss upon seeing are old friends that you stumble upon at a party or who have come to your house for dinner (and this is only if you are true adult, not when you're in your early 20's), and that all conversations should be conducted with enough space in the middle to fit a football field. Maybe that's why Americans are known for being so friggin' loud.
I just have to get something out there. And this isn't a complaint against Israel, rather it's something that I find extremely unsettling that is common to many other foreign cultures. I'm talking about the whole personal space issue. Today I was using my computer, sitting on the floor with another person when someone came up to tell us that we couldn't be in the room. Instead of just standing there and talking in our direction, this person chose to sit directly in front of us, learned towards us and lectured us in such close proximity that we could almost feel his beard stubble touching our faces. Okay, that's exagerrating, but not by much. I leaned back because I felt extremely uncomfortable, and this asshole took that as a cue to lean even more forward.
Even more unsettling is the practice of some of the students here to kiss everyone upon seeing them for the first time in the morning and seeing them for the last time before going to bed. I mean, they're all extremely nice people and I'm looking forward to becoming friends with them, but I completely freaked out when, at the end of the first day before going to bed, some girl from a country with this practice grabbed my face and kissed my cheeks. I did not outwardly freak out, but it was a desperate inward struggle to stop myself from spazzing out as much as my dog does when you turn her over onto her back.
I'm not really sure what I'm going to do. I mean, I come from the school of thought that the only people you kiss upon seeing are old friends that you stumble upon at a party or who have come to your house for dinner (and this is only if you are true adult, not when you're in your early 20's), and that all conversations should be conducted with enough space in the middle to fit a football field. Maybe that's why Americans are known for being so friggin' loud.
I am a fucking American.
Someone told me I speak Hebrew “like such an American.” They didn’t say it, they spat it, as if speaking like an American was the worst thing they could possibly imagine. They made fun of the way I pronounce my vowels in Hebrew, as if I’m the very essence of redneck standing right before them—even though by American standards I have a neutral accent, so I don’t know where they’re getting the redneck thing from….
Everything that comes out of my mouth in Hebrew is hilarious to this person because I sound “so fucking American.” I tried to just brush it off, but this person just kept saying stuff like that. Finally, last night I snapped and I yelled at the person, “Of COURSE I sound like a fucking American—I AM a fucking American!”
What does she want me to sound like? French? I mean, French people don’t speak English with Danish accents. French people speak English with French accents because they ARE French! So I’m going to speak Hebrew with an American accent because—holy shit, now this is a news flash—I am a fucking American!
I think the problem is that the other Americans in the group have the attitude that they are Israeli now, and they’ve disowned America. So some people (including this person who makes fun of my pronounciation) think that I too want nothing to do with the US, that the worst thing on the planet for me would be to “sound like an American” when I speak Hebrew. That’s ridiculous. Sure, I may want to speak Hebrew with as little accent as possible, and sure I may want to live in Israel as an Israeli citizen (my proof of Judaism is on the way from LA right now!), but I can’t just pretend that I didn’t spend the first 19 years of my life in the US. Even if I wanted to, more than anything else on the planet, I’m never not going to be American. I don’t know if that’s a curse or blessing or something neutral—I guess it’s just something that simply is. To say, “I’ve decided that I’m not an American anymore” after living there for your entire childhood is as stupid as saying, “I’ve decided that I’m not allergic to peanuts anymore.” That decision is simply not up to you!
Anyway….so we just got dismissed for our Shabbat break from learning/working. And you know what I noticed? Everyone in the ulpan has family here. You think I’m exaggerating, that surely I’m not the ONLY one? Let me repeat: every single person in the ulpan has a family member in Israel—except for me. Everyone is going to Shabbat dinner at their father/uncle/cousin/brother’s house. People ask me, “So who in your family is in Israel?” And I tell them that I have absolutely no family in Israel, not even a distant, distant cousin. And then they give me the most horrified expression they can possibly muster, as if they feel such unbearable sorrow for me. Their expression always conveys such heartbreak, shock and pain that it almost makes me feel even worse. The fact that everyone here acknowledges that it is totally shit central not having family within 5000 miles of here makes it even more shit central.
Someone tried to make me feel better, so he said, “Aw, well, you’re lucky because I have to spend Shabbat at my frum cousin’s house, and it’s so weird cos he’s frum.” It was sweet of this person to at least try to make me feel better, but right now I would pay good money to have a frum cousin in Israel. I’d kill a man for either a Klondike bar or a frum cousin in Israel.
Oh well. The good news is that I'm actually having a pretty nice time--there are many nice people here, and I'm learning a shit ton of Hebrew vocabulary. As for the shit that's going wrong.....well, the most important thing that I keep trying to remind myself is that I really want to be here. And hopefully simply wanting to be here so badly will make everything else fall into place—eventually.
Everything that comes out of my mouth in Hebrew is hilarious to this person because I sound “so fucking American.” I tried to just brush it off, but this person just kept saying stuff like that. Finally, last night I snapped and I yelled at the person, “Of COURSE I sound like a fucking American—I AM a fucking American!”
What does she want me to sound like? French? I mean, French people don’t speak English with Danish accents. French people speak English with French accents because they ARE French! So I’m going to speak Hebrew with an American accent because—holy shit, now this is a news flash—I am a fucking American!
I think the problem is that the other Americans in the group have the attitude that they are Israeli now, and they’ve disowned America. So some people (including this person who makes fun of my pronounciation) think that I too want nothing to do with the US, that the worst thing on the planet for me would be to “sound like an American” when I speak Hebrew. That’s ridiculous. Sure, I may want to speak Hebrew with as little accent as possible, and sure I may want to live in Israel as an Israeli citizen (my proof of Judaism is on the way from LA right now!), but I can’t just pretend that I didn’t spend the first 19 years of my life in the US. Even if I wanted to, more than anything else on the planet, I’m never not going to be American. I don’t know if that’s a curse or blessing or something neutral—I guess it’s just something that simply is. To say, “I’ve decided that I’m not an American anymore” after living there for your entire childhood is as stupid as saying, “I’ve decided that I’m not allergic to peanuts anymore.” That decision is simply not up to you!
Anyway….so we just got dismissed for our Shabbat break from learning/working. And you know what I noticed? Everyone in the ulpan has family here. You think I’m exaggerating, that surely I’m not the ONLY one? Let me repeat: every single person in the ulpan has a family member in Israel—except for me. Everyone is going to Shabbat dinner at their father/uncle/cousin/brother’s house. People ask me, “So who in your family is in Israel?” And I tell them that I have absolutely no family in Israel, not even a distant, distant cousin. And then they give me the most horrified expression they can possibly muster, as if they feel such unbearable sorrow for me. Their expression always conveys such heartbreak, shock and pain that it almost makes me feel even worse. The fact that everyone here acknowledges that it is totally shit central not having family within 5000 miles of here makes it even more shit central.
Someone tried to make me feel better, so he said, “Aw, well, you’re lucky because I have to spend Shabbat at my frum cousin’s house, and it’s so weird cos he’s frum.” It was sweet of this person to at least try to make me feel better, but right now I would pay good money to have a frum cousin in Israel. I’d kill a man for either a Klondike bar or a frum cousin in Israel.
Oh well. The good news is that I'm actually having a pretty nice time--there are many nice people here, and I'm learning a shit ton of Hebrew vocabulary. As for the shit that's going wrong.....well, the most important thing that I keep trying to remind myself is that I really want to be here. And hopefully simply wanting to be here so badly will make everything else fall into place—eventually.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Maimonides poh baaretz????
I’m starting to speak with an accent. English. I speak English with an accent now. The problem is that my roommate is Australian and I spend most of my time hanging out with her, a person from Manchester, a guy from India, and a girl from Chile who speaks close to no English. I have much less exposure to Americans than I’m used to, and so my American accent is not being reinforced. This could get interesting, seeing as I’ll be here for a while…
All the Israelis who run the program call me “Samantha.” That’s a lie. They call me “SemenTAH!” That’s the closest way I can write out how they are pronouncing my name. They think that since they have difficulty with the “th” sound, they should just kind of shout a regular “t” and that will make up for it. It’s bad enough being called Samantha, because that’s what my dad calls me when I am in trouble, but to be called a bastardized form of Samantha is almost unbearable. Every time they address me I think they are calling me a more feminine form of “cement.” The one Israeli here who doesn’t call me SemenTAH is my ulpan teacher. She decided my name is “Semi.” Which I’m fine with, because my family calls me “Sammy” and so her pronouncing it as “Semi” is pretty damn close. So I guess in Israel I will be “Semi” to Israelis but “Sam” to the English speakers—my roommate, who is also in my level, has decided that I shall forever be “Sam” to her. A question please, to any Israeli or American-Israeli reading this who is familiar with transliterating: how does one spell Semi/Sammy in Hebrew in such a way that it is clear how it is pronounced?
I have to tell you now what happened on my first day. The woman who is our “House Mom” randomly came up to me, and without introducing herself she thrust her fanny pack into my arms and announced in Hebrew that she had “peepee.” She then ran off to the bathroom. I just thought that needed to be shared… Hearing a grown woman use the word “peepee” when she was not addressing a small child was worth a room full of gold.
Also, I just wanted to say that I love my job. It’s not that I love it actually, it’s just that I know that it could be worse. One of my friends has a job picking up dead chickens. Literally, his job is to pick up dead chickens in the chicken house. And then every few days or so his job gets more exciting, since they have to slaughter chickens to eat on the kibbutz. Holy fucking balls. I’m so fucking glad that all I have to do is fold ratty t-shirts and sheets with mysterious stains. It's actually really interesting. With every shirt I fold, I try to imagine the person who wears it. Their family, their job, their likes and dislikes......as I like to say now, "Every stain tells a story."
Today was Yom HaShoah, so they had an air raid siren go off this morning. The entire morning, before the siren, all the Women of the Wash kept saying, “So, you probably do not know, but it is holiday today.” And I wanted to be like, “Yes, of course I know. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but there ARE Jews outside of Israel…” I also wanted to say that, before moving to Israel, I was planning a Yom HaShoah event with my student group at school. But I just said yes. Then the Women of the Wash kept saying, “When siren sounds, you just stand. You do not work.” And I said, I know, and I assured them that I would stand at attention like them. But they would not fucking drop it. Every two seconds in the hour leading up to the 10 o’clock siren, some Woman of the Wash would come up to make and tell me that I had to stop working and stand at attention at 10.
10 finally came. And it was the loudest, scariest thing I have ever heard in my entire life. I felt like such a baby because I started crying—not because I was remembering the victims and the heroes, but because the sound of the air raid siren absolutely terrified me.
Immediately after the siren stopped, this woman I work with ran up to me and started bitching me out about how I was folding fucking towels. So I thought I was gonna start crying even more. Instead I diagnosed her with “Stick-up-the-ass-itis.”
Not everyone I work with is a bitch. Most are pretty nice, and two of them kept saying how impressed they were with the fact that I could understand what they were saying to each other. One of them suddenly asked my zodiac sign, and I told her “Cancer” and then she just ran away. I have no idea what the fuck that means…
All the women I work with are constantly asking me if I have eaten. Actually, EVERYONE here is constantly trying to feed me. Do I look hungry or something? When I say I already have eaten, they offer me cookies.
I learned a lot of words in the past two days. I learned magevet, lkapel (I think), tekes, and I shit ton of words for murder, kill, die, shoot, etc etc…..So I guess ulpan is worth it. Now I can talk to Israelis about folding towels and killing people. Um….
Finally, I just want to say that today during work I kept hearing people talk about “Rambam.” And after a while of hearing it again and again, I finally blurted out, “MAIMONIDES IS HERE?!?!?!” And everyone started laughing. So I got really embarrassed and just kept my mouth shut after that. I just looked it up and I think they were talking about a hospital or something. Shit….I’m such an artard.
All the Israelis who run the program call me “Samantha.” That’s a lie. They call me “SemenTAH!” That’s the closest way I can write out how they are pronouncing my name. They think that since they have difficulty with the “th” sound, they should just kind of shout a regular “t” and that will make up for it. It’s bad enough being called Samantha, because that’s what my dad calls me when I am in trouble, but to be called a bastardized form of Samantha is almost unbearable. Every time they address me I think they are calling me a more feminine form of “cement.” The one Israeli here who doesn’t call me SemenTAH is my ulpan teacher. She decided my name is “Semi.” Which I’m fine with, because my family calls me “Sammy” and so her pronouncing it as “Semi” is pretty damn close. So I guess in Israel I will be “Semi” to Israelis but “Sam” to the English speakers—my roommate, who is also in my level, has decided that I shall forever be “Sam” to her. A question please, to any Israeli or American-Israeli reading this who is familiar with transliterating: how does one spell Semi/Sammy in Hebrew in such a way that it is clear how it is pronounced?
I have to tell you now what happened on my first day. The woman who is our “House Mom” randomly came up to me, and without introducing herself she thrust her fanny pack into my arms and announced in Hebrew that she had “peepee.” She then ran off to the bathroom. I just thought that needed to be shared… Hearing a grown woman use the word “peepee” when she was not addressing a small child was worth a room full of gold.
Also, I just wanted to say that I love my job. It’s not that I love it actually, it’s just that I know that it could be worse. One of my friends has a job picking up dead chickens. Literally, his job is to pick up dead chickens in the chicken house. And then every few days or so his job gets more exciting, since they have to slaughter chickens to eat on the kibbutz. Holy fucking balls. I’m so fucking glad that all I have to do is fold ratty t-shirts and sheets with mysterious stains. It's actually really interesting. With every shirt I fold, I try to imagine the person who wears it. Their family, their job, their likes and dislikes......as I like to say now, "Every stain tells a story."
Today was Yom HaShoah, so they had an air raid siren go off this morning. The entire morning, before the siren, all the Women of the Wash kept saying, “So, you probably do not know, but it is holiday today.” And I wanted to be like, “Yes, of course I know. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but there ARE Jews outside of Israel…” I also wanted to say that, before moving to Israel, I was planning a Yom HaShoah event with my student group at school. But I just said yes. Then the Women of the Wash kept saying, “When siren sounds, you just stand. You do not work.” And I said, I know, and I assured them that I would stand at attention like them. But they would not fucking drop it. Every two seconds in the hour leading up to the 10 o’clock siren, some Woman of the Wash would come up to make and tell me that I had to stop working and stand at attention at 10.
10 finally came. And it was the loudest, scariest thing I have ever heard in my entire life. I felt like such a baby because I started crying—not because I was remembering the victims and the heroes, but because the sound of the air raid siren absolutely terrified me.
Immediately after the siren stopped, this woman I work with ran up to me and started bitching me out about how I was folding fucking towels. So I thought I was gonna start crying even more. Instead I diagnosed her with “Stick-up-the-ass-itis.”
Not everyone I work with is a bitch. Most are pretty nice, and two of them kept saying how impressed they were with the fact that I could understand what they were saying to each other. One of them suddenly asked my zodiac sign, and I told her “Cancer” and then she just ran away. I have no idea what the fuck that means…
All the women I work with are constantly asking me if I have eaten. Actually, EVERYONE here is constantly trying to feed me. Do I look hungry or something? When I say I already have eaten, they offer me cookies.
I learned a lot of words in the past two days. I learned magevet, lkapel (I think), tekes, and I shit ton of words for murder, kill, die, shoot, etc etc…..So I guess ulpan is worth it. Now I can talk to Israelis about folding towels and killing people. Um….
Finally, I just want to say that today during work I kept hearing people talk about “Rambam.” And after a while of hearing it again and again, I finally blurted out, “MAIMONIDES IS HERE?!?!?!” And everyone started laughing. So I got really embarrassed and just kept my mouth shut after that. I just looked it up and I think they were talking about a hospital or something. Shit….I’m such an artard.
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