I must say that I am extremely shocked by everything at TAU regarding preparedness and the dorms. The program did warn of "substandard" living so I thought it meant at least within same level as Haifa so I was willing to deal with that. Shlomi and Maayan gave me a ride to the dorms and helped me get in and with my bags. I entered in the apartment by myself and my jaw dropped. The tiny kitchen was on my immediate left, followed by a tiny bathroom, and then a large room consisted of two beds and two desks. The fridge was on the patio... because there wasn't enough room in the kitchen for the fridge. No joke.
Dear Mother, I am wearing flip flops in the shower for the next four weeks because the bathroom was beyond description. Absolutely beyond description that the picture below can say 1,000 words. I asked the two counselors who stopped by this evening to check on me if all bathrooms were like this and they said yes. I'm still horrified. I'd rather have clean bathrooms than internet in the dorms!
After getting over myself, I went back out to find the orientation on campus. When I found the building and there was nothing in the room that I was supposed to meet the program people. I called the office and that's when I found out that I had the wrong day. I thought immediately, "You know what? At least you can get everything done today and be all set!" So I wandered around the campus for a bit in search for a post office to mail out some postcards and change in my travelers checks.
I found the sports center- woohoo! It took some searching for the main entrance... good grief with the construction next to it. A woman named Shani found me and asked if I needed any help. Then she offered a tour and I was all sure, why not. Almost immediately as we walked around, she noticed that I had difficulty seeing the ground (as I always do with new territory) and asked about it. She was really nice about it and helped me get around. The sports center had three freakin' pools- two indoor and one outdoor (complete with lounge chairs!). Everything was pretty good with plenty of air conditioning so I expect to do a lot of my runs inside. The walks around Ramat Aviv were made of brick so they're not great for my injury prone joints. When we got to her office, she explained that a couple people had already stopped by and wanted to join as well. As it turned out, they had only a year-long membership fee and we would be required to write a letter to the manager along with a letter from the program confirming our enrollment to ask for a monthly fee of 250 shekels. Alright, fine, fine.
Afterwards, I set out to find the post office and the mall as my phone wasn't working properly. The mall was ridiculously nice with lots of cafes. As it turned out as Maayan explained later, this was the heart of little Ramat Aviv. If you wanted to shop, you shopped here or in Tel Aviv. If you wanted to dine, you dined here or in Tel Aviv. No movie theaters though. The next few hours consisted of me getting impatient waiting for two women to finish up with the customers at Cellcom, asking for directions to the post office (shockingly, the first 5 Israelis I asked had no clue were the post office was), spending half hour at the post office for my travelers check to go through the system and getting stamps, eating lunch, and going back to Cellcom and waiting again. The woman who could speak English couldn't figure out what was wrong with my phone and said I should go back where I originally got the SIM card from. Are you kidding?! I spent the next hour looking for a damn bus back to Herzliya before I decided it was already close to time for Shlomi to leave work and I would ask him to give me a ride back at least.
He and Maayan did and they thought my story at Ramat Aviv mall was stupid as well. I eventually got it straighten it out in Herzliya with a couple of keystrokes to change some settings. The guy mutted that it's the whole Blackberry thing.... I gave him a glare and resumed to figure out what hidden control Verzion must still have over my Blackberry. I realized that I would have to learn to memorize the last 7 digits of every phone number as when I press speed dial, it adds 1 in front of the whole number which was incorrect for the Israeli phone system. Fantastic. Did I mention that a good number of Israelis now have a touch phone (generally Samsung)? And still no Blackberrys!
Finally, I took the bus back to Ramat Aviv and actually went food shopping. Breakfast was covered for the rest of the time. Whoo hoo.
I came home and met my roommate. She had a fairly thick Eastern European accent so I asked her where she was from. "Belorussia." she said. I told her that my great great grandparents were from there but the town's probably destroyed by Shoah anyway. I look forward trying to get to know her more. This was her second time in Israel. I had to pause for a minute before responding to her that I had been to Israel 4 times when she asked in return. She seemed really excited about the whole Yiddish program so I hope that some of it will rub off on me.
I gotta say, there's something about these Israeli malls. They're almost refreshing in a way with different stores, some imported American and European stores like Zara and Nine West, and cafe and restaurants. Everything you need is there- real cellphone booths, a supermarket, a booksore, a drugstore, and all other things. It's also a little weird for me to see people sitting around in the middle of the mall sipping their cappaccinos away while conversing and reading newspapers. I'm not saying that I feel like I've been transported back to America but the whole atmosphere is a lot more peaceful.
Whether it's a good thing or not, I'm afraid that I will be spending awfully a lot of time in that Ramat Aviv mall.
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