First Few Days In Jerusalem

Let me just start by saying that I love it here. I won't be living in Jerusalem for another four months or so, but I've started getting to know the neighborhood here, and I absolutely love it. I can't wait.

My program still hasn't started, so I'm still living with Debbie, who is one of the senior staff members for Aardvark. While arriving in Israel early seemed like it might be a bit of a fiasco, it's actually been really cool to get to go to work with Debbie. I spent yesterday in our apartment building in Jerusalem helping the madrichot (counselors) move furniture, clean, and generally get the apartments ready for people to move in on Wednesday. The apartments are much nicer than I expected, and I hear the Tel Aviv ones are even nicer!

Today, I helped out in the office in the morning, but then the staff told me I should get out and do something fun, so I wandered for about 20 minutes over to Emek Rafayim, which is one of Jerusalem's best known streets for shopping and restaurants. I already knew the area, but when I was there last summer I was with my program and we didn't have much time to explore, so today was my chance to experience Emek Rafayim as something of an anthropologist rather than an obnoxious American kid on a summer program.

So if you were an anthropologist looking to observe the behavior of Newton citizens, where would you go? The Newton Center Starbucks, right? Well today, I sat for two hours in the Aroma (which is like Israel's version of Starbucks... but with better food) on Emek Rafayim, watching the world go by and soaking in everything I could. The first thing I learned was that given the choice between sitting inside in the air conditioning or outside under an umbrella, Americans will choose the air conditioning, and Israelis will choose fresh air. Unsurprising. The second thing I learned was that at least one New York real estate mogul is looking to profit from the new settlements in East Jerusalem, and expects to make a 12 to 13% profit by the year 2012. Odd. The third thing I learned was that while walking down the street by myself, as long as I keep my mouth shut, I apparently look Israeli enough that a lost American yeshiva boy would ask me for directions, in broken Hebrew. The poor kid had no idea where he was. He was from Michigan, too, actually. Anyway, I actually managed to direct the kid the right way (in English), and was really proud of myself. I'm so excited to live here.

Later I met up with one of my best friends in the world, Neta, who I met on my program last summer. She lives in Jerusalem, actually fairly close to the Aardvark building, so I'm really excited that I'll get to see her often this year. Her family is taking me in for the major holidays that I have off, starting with Rosh Hashana next week. They're the best.

Now I'm back at the office; we're just finishing things up here and then heading over to the Central Bus Station to pick up another student who just arrived from the UK! I've loved hanging out with the staff and with Debbie's family, but it'll be really nice to hopefully make a friend my own age! Everything is complete chaos right now trying to get ready for the program to start, but I'm having so much fun helping out and getting an inside view of how the program runs! I have so much appreciation for all the staff after these last couple of days. This is seriously hard work!

I'll try to post some pictures soon...

P.S. They have Ben & Jerry's Phish Food frozen yogurt here. That's like my favorite thing ever. Life is so good.