to start it all off: sar-el. i and nine other otmzanikim packed up our giant hiking backpacks with enough clothes to supposedly last us a month and boarded a rough and tumble army style bus.
one of many adventures on the tiyulit...ie the KING OF THE ROAD. this beast was intense, its in essence a flatbed truck with a bus sitting on it, but no regular bus, its got like a tumble cage surrounding it and bullet proof windows (of course the top section of the windows arent bullet proof, so you just hope hezbollah doesnt get a good angle!)this is where shaked comes in, oh shaked (it means almond if you care).
shaked was one of our two madrachot (counselors/guides *read - in charge of us*) shaked is 18. shaked speaks perfect english because she lived in the states for 10 years, well cinncinati, so i mean its america but no where too important or anything. shaked loves hip hop dancing, black men, getting her nails done, the color pink, colorful markers to decorate her diary, going to bed at 8 o'clock and chuchi. shaked does not like spiders...well any bugs, holding guns, cutting her hair, electronic music, the sound guns make, asking appropriate questions, or army food. again read - she's in charge of us, all of "us" being older than her.
4 hours later, and after a necessary stop at a shopping center so dayna and i could pick up some hot sauce (cholula, we werent impressed, too much smoky tomato spanish flavor and not enough harif{spicy} - this doesnt mean we didnt use the entire bottle in the span of 3 days of course) we arrived at our first of many bases. we quickly piled our bags into our bunker and headed down to the makzan to get our unis!!! everything fit like a glove! im lying, the crotch on my mens, 1991-issue, bet style uniform pants came down to my knees, it was easy to walk in. needless to say i wore some shorts underneath in the hopes that when my pants inevitably lost their footing i wouldnt be too horribly embarrassed. for evidence please refer to figure 1a 
(figure 1a)
meals in the idf consist of dairy breakfast, meat lunch and dairy dinner every single day. i hate keeping kosher, i hate dairy meals, because they dont have meat, and i hate meat meals because not only do they not have dairy they are also some gross over calculation of either salt or pepper no matter what youve been blessed to have. breakfast is generally burnt eggs, tomatoes and cucumbers, a selection of cottage cheese, spreadable cheese and yogurts, oh also chocolate milk out of the bag MMM. lunch was either chicken schnitzel, beef patties or chicken schnitzel with some sort of brothy even saltier soup. and dinner was mainly noodles or israeli couscous (ie ptitim) in tomato puree with hardboiled eggs and the selection of cheeses. i must have consumed 300 jaffa oranges in three weeks, cause i could count on them, and their thicker than normal oranges skin made me feel like they had been protected from how gross everything was. surprisingly, or at least to my surprise, that while the hot sauce generally seemed to help on everything it had a somewhat adverse effect on the oranges. just ask dayna. we were also able to upgrade our sauce the next week
if you were concerned (franks red hot!) - oh i did forget to mention that because it was chanukah we did get oodles and oodles of sufganiot (donuts) because here in israel instead of latkas we eat homemade donuts as our fried food.
im sloppy :(
lots and lots of sufganiot followed us every where we went for those eight crazy days (even to the arsim* kibbutz party we went to)
*This word comes form the Arabic for pimp and refers to young guys who are generally at the bottom end of Israeli society. Typically they will have short hair and are the most aggressive and confrontational of Israelis which is really saying something.(i stole that offline) ie they are basically israeli guidos, dont talk to them
as for the volunteer work i think i might just post some pictures...dont be too impressed
sarah and i bringing some pain to the brush and weeds in my stunning sar-el tee!
doing a smidge of weeding overlooking the med DUH
flag raising 8 am sharp obviously
oh you know cleaning the bathrooms with almond!
keeping ISRAEL SAFE!!!
there are tons more but blogger takes too long to load them and i can only assume youve already lost interest (if you havent check out my facebook). just know that 1. im currently listening to high school musical songs and im not embarrassed 2. i got to shoot a m-16 it was interesting 3. my other madricha was named zoe, she made aliyah from england when she turned 18 2 years ago, she thinks there are 53 states in america, one of which is boston and she is under the impression that detroit is in chicago...its not a problem 4. i genuinely did love both girls, they were super sweet and its interesting to see how people so young can command so much respect, keep our attention and handle a level of responsibility i cant even imagine.
when sar-el ended we had a week chofesh break. i was the first one off and headed to the "hotel" first, it was in tel aviv, what should have been a quick bus ride over from jaffa but not surprisingly trying to get into the central bus station with four pieces of luggage was difficult, and israelis dont as a general statement like waiting. whatever i still got there first and they let me check in early, which means that i got 5 blissful hours of ALONE time. something id almost forgotten what it feels like. i soaked that up as best i could, watching tv reading and napping, talking to myself out loud...whatever! eric jen and kate came down later and we enjoyed a nice traif non-kosher meal together. that basically sums up my vacation. sleeping and eating as much traif as i could find. cheeseburgers, calamari, shrimp, steak and cheese, drinking PITCHERS of american beer at mikes place watching football (and when i say football i mean FOOTBALL G-D Damnnit). i was there for christmas, and like the good jew ive started to become i went and saw a movie, it was wretched michael clayton with g. clooney, id suggest not seeing it. i also got the opportunity to meet up with family friends for the day which was extremely nice and comforting to see a familiar face finally, and they just happened to have some treats from the states for me (like i needed more things to carry around), they invited me out for a nice traif meal as well...i obviously enjoyed that. the next day i had to get back up to jerusalem for the last session of my building future leadership seminar for three days with eric. it was nice, i forgot absolutely everything they told me already; but i did get free meals and hotel, got to hang out with some cool katz not associated with otzma, a plaque! and most importantly they took us on a team building trip to a nature reserve that only has plants and animals dating back to biblical times and we had to herd goats and sheep. i know it got a little fantastical right there, youre saying wait now anne this cant be true, surrounded by ancient plants overlooking tel aviv a very modern and western city you were herding animals...lies! well ladies and gents i have proof, and as we know the proof is in the pudding ( i just wanted to say that)
as soon as the seminar ended we headed back to tel aviv for our last few days, and new years. eric and i were blessed to be invited out to dinner by the katzermans, and while i love my family i wouldnt exactly turn them down if they offered to adopt me. it was one of the most enjoyable meals ive ever had with another family, i dont have much else to say about it outside of the fact that they were so deliciously real and fun and american, daynas family also graciously took me out to lunch with kate and that was also equally as pleasurable. i miss my mommy and daddy but it is nice to get see some real american families here. eric and i of course keep up our traif traditions for the rest of break. and then came new years, or sylvester day or whatever dumb thing they call it here. geeze israel hates all the fun days im used to, lame...anyways eric lauren aaron and i, as well as leore and her boyfriend seth were all invited over to lyndsey and ericas place for the evening. we started the day out with a nice little breakfast, me paying 60 sheckel to get my hair styled for no reason other than that im too lazy to do it myself (its interesting when you and your stylist dont speak the same language) then lauren and i hit american apparel DUH (help that economy) picked up a couple things for the evenings festivities. her aaron and i got ready at the hotel and headed to meet eric at moon, this swank little sushi joint on pinsker and dizengoff. its even got the uber trendy conveyor belt. although i do have to admit it was a little disappointing, the miso soup was foul and the sushi was just sub-par (but whatcha gonna do), it was still lovely company and good times had by all. then we trekked the 35 minute walk to lyndseys, hit up a liquor store bought a couple bottles of champagne to toast our new lives and a semi-dec bottle of vodka. lyndseys was a breath of fresh air, her friends are also americans here in israel, but with two major differences. 1. they live in tel aviv 2. they are here for med school and the atmosphere is completely different. their stresses are so totally different than ours, so it was easy to just shrug them all off for the evening. met up with some acquaintances and made some new ones. had lots of laughs and too many cigarettes (i quit i promise), toasted the new year with my best friends here - and forgot that sometimes israel is just too hard and too much pressure. at a little after 1230 we tried to head up to some club in central tel aviv with other otzmanikim. that certainly was a balagan. eric hopped out of the cab at one point, insisting on meeting us there because he just had to throw up. we let him go, we are good friends. we didnt see him again *hes alive dont worry*. we got to the club and everyone was already leaving, if i remember correctly there were some tears and some fighting....ahh now i feel like im back on otzma. that one month break from everyone was officially over, such a fitting end. HA, whatever it was fine. lauren aaron kenny and i grabbed a cab, unfortunately it turned out to be the same guy leore and seth had taken earlier, more specifically he was from eilat and didnt know tel aviv at all. that became apparent when we were driving through jaffa. i refused to speak to him in english and was offering up incorrect translations of what he was saying to kenny and lauren who both speak hebrew. he told us not to pay, i did anyways...we walked home from wherever he dropped us off. i slept on the floor because im strange. *pictures to come later when lauren gets internet* woke up the next morning and got the best bagel with turkey and cheese!! and things were all better again. break was coming to an end, the next morning i had to gather my now five pieces of luggage and head back to beer sheva for the night to gather my things and finally MOVE TO BET SHEMESH
needless to say we made it, were all moved in. the apartment is cute, although quite possibly the coldest place in all of israel (and that is saying a lot theres snow up north). i snagged some snazzy sheets from the cabinets that fade from pink to white with crocs, hippos and giraffes on them... did you know that safari animals are "cool all the time" well now you do, and i have the distinct pleasure of using a super old school vintage ass mickey mouse blanket, although its thickness reminds me much more of a baby blankie, but whatcha gonna do right. the kitchen is the most intense thing ive about ever seen, color coded and two of everything for our meat and dairy. i obviously eat on paper napkins and use plasticware so as not to ruin everything, especially not since i heard re-kashering things apparently includes burying them, boiling them or blow torching. im going to try to not touch anything ever. ill get pics of both my bed and of the kitchen as soon as possible.
last night our first, and mandatory, shabbat here jessica (my new roomie!) and i went to a local womans house for dinner. she referred to both of us as jessica all night and i got the burning suspicion she was trying to set me up with this random young man who had also been invited over for dinner...maybe thats because she asked if i was single, giggled and then drilled me with questions, and jessica suggested it might be happening as well - but i could always be wrong. i of course lost major points when i stupidly asked for milk in my coffee after our meat meal, i guess ill just be alone forever, DAMN! this morning aliza and her boyfriend made us a lovely shabbat lunch. i think ill get settled in here relatively easily, i get my volunteer schedule tomorrow, it sounds like its going to be intense ill post that for yall to read up on duh! and we have our first day of work in tel aviv so that should be nice.
i really should be studying for my bat mitzvah im being forced into having or applying to colleges so i have a future, so i think ill finally tear myself away from this. hopefully this wasnt too overwhelming for you...remember im the one that had to write it.
ENJOY!!!!
Anne PE Alexander
Still waiting for the pics to load, but thank you for the MASSIVE update. Really enjoy reading this and I missed you while you were "on the front."
ReplyDeletelove, Auntie Em (and Toto, too)