Real Life In Tel Aviv

Shalom chaverim!

I haven't posted recently, simply because I've been really busy just living everyday life here. I've finally in the past couple of weeks started to really settle into my routine here, and it's.... interesting. I get up at 8:00 every morning (which feels like the crack of dawn), eat greek yogurt and granola for breakfast along with a cup of Elite instant coffee (which I still find disgusting, but have had to learn to deal with), and dash out the door by quarter to 9 to get to work. I've been throwing myself completely into my volunteer work; I LOVE it. I'll get into it more later, but it's really fulfilling, and I usually stay late, which means I have to race home for a quick lunch around 1:30 and then run to school for 3 or 4 hours of classes, depending on the day. Most evenings we have activities starting around 7, sometimes including dinner, sometimes starting later. We have a regular movie night on our roof every Tuesday, and Torah study with Rav Fivel every Monday night. Other activities range from sushi night to Israeli dancing to speeches and lectures. I usually don't get to bed until around 12, and then I get up the next morning and do it all over again!

Interesting stories from recent weeks:

-We heard a speech one night last week by a British immigrant named Sergeant Benjamin Anthony. He runs an organization called Our Soldiers Speak, which aims to portray the IDF and its soldiers in a more positive light than today's left-wing media tends to. The speech was nothing I wasn't aware of or hadn't heard before, but it was very well-delivered and very powerful, and I was in tears throughout most of it. I have close friends in Israel who are now in the army, in combat units, and the idea that at any moment Israel could go to war, and hundreds and thousands of these eighteen and nineteen year old boys, my friends, could be put in serious danger just terrifies me. Although I am a self-proclaimed left wing freak, I acknowledge that I do not and have never had any problems with the IDF or its soldiers, simply with the government that controls it. The same goes for my feelings about the United States military. As far as I'm concerned, the men and women (and boys and girls) who defend this country, the country I now live in, are heroes, and I am constantly bothered by the media's attacks on the IDF. I think that every person who reads the New York Times and learns about Israel's alleged war crimes in Gaza should also hear Sergeant Anthony speak about the other side of the story. He travels all around the world spreading his message, in synagogues, community centers, and on university campuses. For more information.... www.oursoldiersspeak.org

-I was walking down Florentine St the other day on my way to the grocery store when I suddenly saw a familiar face, and then literally walked right into my old friend Katie Simon, who I went to middle school with and worked with in Minga for years! I don't know if anyone who's reading this blog knows or remembers her, but it was totally crazy for me! We went to the beach together the next day and caught up for several hours. She's taking a gap year this year and traveling around the world by herself, learning and exploring and meeting people and having a ton of fun. She's in Tel Aviv for a few weeks healing from a bad bout of some sort of pancreatic illness in Kazakhstan. It's actually amazing that I ran into her, because she's currently stuck living in a sketchy hostel in a sketchy area owned by a sketchy Arab man who is creeping her out, so I brought her home to meet my roommates and starting tomorrow, she's going to be sleeping on my couch for a couple of weeks! Crazy! This kind of stuff only happens in Israel, I swear...

-Last night my friend David and I got really, really bored, because there's really nothing to do on Sunday nights, so we built a fort in my living room, the old fashioned way, out of sheets and chairs and pillows and a standing lamp. It sounds kind of lame now that I wrote it out, but the fort was epic, I promise. We sat inside and told ghost stories, and then had cookies and milk. We may be 18 and legal to drink in this country, but we're secretly still 5 years old on the inside. :)

-I've started a new tradition, wherein I go to the produce stand down the street every week and buy some type of fruit that I've never seen before. Then I take it home, research what it is, document it on camera, and taste it. This week the fruit in question was this crazy pink spiky thing, which I researched and found out to be a dragon fruit (also called pitaya). On the outside, it's hot pink with green spikes, but on the inside, it's literally fluorescent magenta with these little black seeds in it. You eat the flesh with a spoon; it's a mildly sweet flavor, and the seeds have a little bit of an acidic kick when you bite into them. It's basically like a glorified spiky pink kiwi. Worth the experience of trying (and also the hilarious color of one's tongue after eating it), but in the future I'd rather just buy kiwis.

-Yesterday I had the immense privilege of spending forty five minutes in the local branch of the post office trying to pick up a package from my mom. The Post Office of Israel (Doar Yisrael) still works, to some extent, on the old Socialist system, in that when you go to the post office, you're met with the chaos of Israelis filling out tax forms, making their mortgage payments, applying for passports or the necessary teudat zehut (government-issued ID cards), sending and picking up letters and packages, and, of course, yelling at each other and failing to wait in lines. It was quite the ordeal just to pick up one little box from America. Anyway, forty five minutes later I ripped open my beautifully decorated box to find a care package full of clothes, Gatorade, band-aids, Trader Joe's pumpkin bread mixes, and lots of love. My family is the best. Thank you, Mommy!

-I promised to describe a little more what I'm doing at my volunteering. I'm still working for Windows: Channels for Communication (people ask me all the time if I work for Microsoft Windows... do I look like a Windows person carrying around my MacBook?). The organization is quite small (although full of wonderful, sweet, amazing people), so they have no qualms about giving an 18-year-old volunteer pretty major responsibilities. And that's how I've come to be basically the liaison to North America. I run all operations on Facebook, I'm responsible for filling out grant applications and doing fundraising related research, as well as writing the volunteer research manual and directory, overseeing donation packing, picking up the mail twice a week, repainting the walls in the office, and also writing programming to bring North American youth into Windows, starting with the Aardvarks. It's a lot to take on, but I love it. Our opening event for the year is this Friday, so this week in particular is really chaotic. I bring my laptop to the office so that I can work on my own computer and then bring it home with me, and when I can't sleep at night I work. My roommates think I'm nuts, but I really love what I'm doing. It gives me a purpose here. If anyone has any ideas for me as to how I can get organizations in the Boston area involved with Windows, please let me know!

-Finally, last but not least, I want to wish a very, very happy birthday to Nancy Liverman, my favorite second mommy in the world! I miss you so much (not just for your cooking), and I hope you have a great day and a wonderful year!

Okay it's definitely my bed time now. I have to be up really early for a field trip tomorrow!
Laila tov!

P.S. I should have better picture-posting capabilities soon, and then I promise to put some up. I just need to install some software (thanks to my mother for mailing it to me) on my computer...