Jerusalem Ulpan

I am doing the Jerusalem ulpan to solidfy my Hebrew and to stay in Israel longer.

A lot of things have changed in my life in the past month that have created some difficulties- physically and emotionally. For most part, it has been dealing with friendships with best friends going off to the States. Also, though I have found my niche in Israel, it is a matter of trying to acclimate to the Israeli society by increased frequency in speaking Hebrew. Now, Hebrew is part of my daily language mixed with English. I automatically say basic Hebrew even though my answers are supposed to be in English like ken, lo, toda, akshav, le, meh, ha-yom, ma and so forth. I put together stories and personal accounts in my head as I walk along on the sidewalks. I conjugate the verbs while I'm preparing to speak in Hebrew.

Anyway, I got awesome new roommates for the ulpan. They were estatic to see a fully-furnished kitchen and bathroom. Here's the run-down of who they are:
Meredith K- Ohio State '08, Cinnancati, tried to hook up wireless using my DSL in the apartment but didn't ultimately work out, been to Israel once
Meredith M-Graduate, Utah, mormon, never been to Israel, has 80ish first cousins and knows them all, 5th child out of 10
Rebecca- Orthodox, high school graduate, plans to do yeshiva for the year, St. Louis, never been to Israel, has brother at Techicon (Israeli MIT)
Danielle- Orthodox, high school graduate (Exeter), plans to do yeshiva, been to Israel 3 times, volunteered for the Army and will do again in August until her yeshiva starts, Seattle

I like hanging out with them all. Tonight, I am taking most of them for chicken schwarma down in Emek Refaim (Germany Colony) where my family went. They are so excited! To be honest, I do laugh at them a bit quietly when I recognized typical American diet behavior such as breaking small bits of food in half, buying fat-free dairy products, and a few other things. I've learned that moderation is really the key as I haven't gained or lost any weight since I've been here. (I don't buy anything fat-free except for milk) Honestly, indulge yourself to dessert everyday if you wish as long everything else has been low in calories or fat.

I'm actually in alef shmone, the most advanced of all Aleph classes. I'm not bothered at all as I felt uncertain about moving up to bet after having so much trouble with the past tenses. I can focus more on mastering the vocabulary that I didn't before and getting everything down pat. My class itself is good. The teachers, Bosmat and Dana, are great! They're incredibly patient and I can see that they're serious, especially Dana, in getting us to solidfy our Hebrew for the level exam. I try to communicate with them in Hebrew when I have questions. The students are either A) high school graduates or B) Europeans. There are 2 guys from London, 1 woman from Belgium but studying at University College- London, 1 woman from Switzerland, and a bunch of French. There is no bell curve to describe an average ulpan student that's for sure. Very few people are in my position- American college student. So basically, the graph would look like a two-hump camel.

I just have to say that after being taught by 6-7 Hebrew teachers, there are no bad teachers in RIS's Hebrew language program unlike RIS's regular English program. They all just make you want to keep taking Hebrew there. The time can really fly by in class (of course, unless I'm really tired)

I am trying to look at my calendar for the rest of my time in Israel- trying to see my "families" and friends again before one of us go back to the States and just making the most of my time in continuing my assimilation to the Israeli society with Hebrew and Israeli behavior.

Oh, I have a funny cab story. I was all the way over to Giv'at Shaul, which is on the other end of the city and is a black-hat neighborhood. It has a delicious bakery which I found while looking for the computer service to have my laptop fixed. Anyway... after picking up my laptop, I walked over to the nearest main road to pick up a cab. I caught one and told the driver "'l'Har Hatzofim. l'sholishim hamesh shekelim." He nodded and motioned for me to get in. Wow- I lucked out since the other 3 drivers would only take 40 shekelim. So we drove and went on Begin North, which is an expressway like the Inner Loop in Rochester. He got off Begin North and drives up to Har Hatzofim industrial area. He pulled over to the left lane and began asking where to turn- "Here?" "iser! iser!" "Here?" "Iser.... iser..." "Where do you want me to turn?" "iser l'universitah iverit! You know.. Hebrew U??!?!" He went all "but there are two Har Hatzofims!" I muttered loudly enough for him to hear, "Every other cab driver knows that when someone my age asks for Har Hatzofim that they mean the university." He was nice enough to drive all the way over without charging me extra or anything. Phew.

Last Two Days of Vacation!

After the zoo, Juliana got in touch with two guy friends of hers who were at the Malka Mall, not too far. We walked over there to meet up with them- I didn't know that one of them was a soldier so he was wearing his uniform (pretty hot!). Then we took a ride over to their house in Efata, which is a settlement very close to Hebron. Actually, I didn't feel as if I was in danger at all. It was a pretty isolated area along the valley- very beautiful. Their house was just gorgeous.

Believe it or not, I was actually glad to be out of Jerusalem like that because there was a gay pride parade going on that evening. It is a very controversial event in Jerusalem because many people don't feel that Jerusalem is the right place- that it is too special and all the religion there basically condemn homosexuality. So every year the haredi community post threats of violence against the parade and the gay people. Last year was nearly canceled because of the Second Lebanon War and instead of the streets, the parade was held inside the stadium down in Giv'at Ram (one of Hebrew U's campuses). The night before the parade, at least 50 people were arrested for hostilties. The city was putting out a force of at least 7,500 security officers to handle the crowd while the parade marched from the center of the city towards Liberty Park. Just before I went into Juliana's friends' house, I received a call from Linda asking if I was planning on joining the parade. I told her, even though I support the gay parade, I wouldn't do the Jerusalem one- I'd rather do the one in Tel Aviv. She said it was a wise choice. I thought that was interesting that she called but I know that she's into demonstrations and such. Then a couple minutes later, Juliana booted up the computer to JPost.com site to find that a haredi man was found with a bomb. I texted my friends and new roommates right away not to go downtown that night- it was just not safe at all. When I finally came up, the JPost reported 19 arrests and one of my friends called and told me that cab drivers were charging 50-60 sheklim no matter what. I thought this whole scenario was insane-even more so than Yom Ha'atzmaut with the whole security and cabs thing.

Friday, Paige and I hung out at the beach for the entire day again. We took sheruts instead of the buses considering it was Friday and being a big travel day. Israel is a small country- I saw Moti and his friend, the same shady hotties from the week before, again towards the end of the day. At first I liked them but now I think they're definitely sketchy. This week, my friends and I will have to move to a different area of the beach! Especially that his friend kept asking where was Hilary (at work, making up a sick day).

For Shabbat, I "crashed" at the hotel with the ulpan dinner. I met several new people from different parts of the world. I can't generalize an average student.... I did meet a lot of smart kids from Ivy League schools- including several from Yale. Scary!!!!

I'll talk about my awesome new roommates in the next post. :)

Biblical Zoo!

As silly the idea of college students going to a zoo, people raved about it over the semester. So I sort of just waited around for someone who might want to go with me. And Julianna called on Thursday morning to see if I'd like to join her. I was so excited- I hadn't seen her in two or three weeks! I love her- she's a sweetie. So we coordinated the timing of the buses so she'd get on the same bus as me since she was living in Ramat Eshkol in her grandmother's apartment.

The ride felt like forever but it wasn't too bad, only a little over half hour to the other end of Jerusalem to this pretty isolated area in the valley. We paid our way in with our student IDs. First, we saw little animals like little monkeys, snakes, rodents, and the like. The next exhibit contained my least favorite animals- birds. I have a huge phobia of

birds, especially if they're just sitting on something other than the ground or flying. I tried not to look at the pretty parrots- they were bigger than I thought. I shuddered. I read up their information instead and here's a very interesting one.

This is the bird who was supposedly Winston Churchill's. Juliana tried to get him to curse the Nazis by saying "Nazi" to him.

Then we saw more animals like Persian cheetahs, lionesses, elephants, polar bears, chimps, etc. There were two sauctaries- tropical and avian which I certainly did not go through. Juliana and I were patient with each other over my fear of birds. We loved seeing all the baby animals- I had a theory that there are so many baby animals because this is Israel where population is encouraged and a place for rebirth. We went through an "African safari" which wasn't really what I expected. We saw a rhino and some gazelles and a few zebras. The visitor's center was built like Noah's Ark- pretty cool.

We didn't actually finished the entire zoo since we were getting to be late for lunch (like around 3-3:30) and we didn't want to be starving. While we ate our sandwiches, we watched the workers set up a huge catering party for zoo donors. It looks like it would be a fancy one.

The day was soooo hot that we finished our water nearly before our lunch break. I really like the zoo because it was simple- the information about the animals weren't overwhelming and we didn't feel pressured to see the entire zoo because there weren't that many animals as say, in Bronx or the National Zoo. I was kind of disappointed that there weren't any information about the babies- I would've loved to know about their ages and when were they born.

Countdown to America

Pretty ironic considering the fact that I love living and being in Israel but let's put it this way, there are just some things that Israel can't buy that kind of happiness of being in America. And vic e versa- only that Israel is worth millions more than America.

Things I look forward to and plan to accomplish within my first month back:
1) Driving the Audi and VW- sorry, Dad, not quite the Land Rover.
2) Mom's coleslaw
3) Real iced coffee from Starbucks. Made with real coffee, no milk or sugar or anything that makes iced coffee resembles coffee ice cream
4) Running on the pavement along the canal and the backroads of Hamilton
5) Netflix- endless string of DVDs in English with English subtitles
6) Salvatore's pizza and Wegmans' sushi
7) Sailing on the lake with GP and sleeping on the boat
8) Deli restaurants on Long Island
9) Wearing maroon and white, showing off Colgate spirit (Israeli students don't have school spirit at all)
10) Baking challah, making chocolate chip cookie dough, and grilling veggies
11) Reading labels in English
12) Using my nice cellphone with pretty layout and clearer connection... and unlimited text messaging
13) Screaming at Bank of America for leaving me nearly stranded without money for two weeks because they couldn't get my cards here fast enough and were unhelpful with customer service when I reported the cards stolen and issuing new cards.

This entry might get updated every once in a while....

Diaspora Museum

Today I went to the Jewish Diaspora Museum (Bet Hatefutsoth) at Tel Aviv University. The whole thing took me about 90 minutes-ish. I thought it could use more light... I felt really unsettled in there when they introduced the Jewish people... how despite it all, we are still about community. They had some amazing models and several beautiful art pieces.

The biggest kick was the exhibit on models of synagogues from all over the world- from Cocohin, India to Worms, Germany to Newport, Rhode Island to Amsterdam to Venice to Florence (wow!). They were beautifully done and I wish I could take one of them with me back home (except for Elkins Park, PA one- the architect is Frank Lloyd Wright- ugly!).

There was another exhibit that really made you think. It came at the end of a quick history od the Diaspora- זכור (Remember) in big and bold letters on the wall preceding the exhibit. It contained the book called Scrolls of Fire, filled with poetry and writings with metaphors to different Jewish catastrophes accompanying by paintings and drawings. Of course, the first thought could be either the Holocaust or the destruction of the Second Temple. But no, Scrolls of Fire is all about martyrdom. Somehow the thought of 52 pieces of work for each week of the year made me swallow a bit. My forefathers survived so much. Would I be willing to uphold an act of martyrdom for my Jewish people? I felt like the Museum suggested that even though ultimately it is the person's choice on whether to commit this act or not, s/he should think about how many people sacrificed their lives for others (in other words, it wants to make you feel guilty) This is what Judaism is supposedly be about...dying so others can live and to peserve one's honor and dignity. Of course, one must ask the question about the Holocaust... the answer for it will never get resolved. There are so many scholarly debates. What about fighting in the IDF? Especially when your enemies want to wipe you and your fellow Jews off the map. So it was a moment that I kind of wanted to scream like if I had seen a spider.

I'm still disturbed over the fact that the Museum was so dark- no light. I didn't feel that it was truly celebrating the Jewish people- only that it asked for respect to all the achievements, accomplishments, and memories that the Jews have created over the past 2,000 years. The exhibits were definitely well done but... either it's the way the curator wanted or the place needed renovation like the Museum of American History (so old!). I think that Yad Vashem and the Israel Museum did a better job of celebrating the Jews with their architecture and interior layout.