First things first… October 5, 2008

Saturday night. Another Shabbat in Jerusalem, which is only significant because of how boring it can be!
 
I’ve been in Israel a bit over three weeks, and so much has happened that I don’t know where to begin describing my life here.
 
I spent the frist two weeks here living with my mother’s two retired friends in Rishon LeZiyyon, which is about a half hour away from Tel Aviv by car, but about an hour and half away by bus, thanks to traffic and roundabout routes. Russian Jews abound in this city, and the ones surrounding it. Every other person is Russian, and I mean leopard-print-is-a-girl’s-best-friend Russian. The clothing shops outside the malls are a mix of the ones I remember seeing when I was in Russia, mixed with the neon Brazilian summer styles on Steinway in Astoria, except much more expensive.
 
My mother’s friends fight all the time. The husband is over 70 years old. As a young child, he was in the ghettos during WWII, lost a parent and a sibling, but no one knows if he was in a concentration camp because he won’t talk about it. He is grumpy but kind, white haired, blued eyed, carries a globe of a gut, and refuses to wear his dentures. He has tried to teach me many life lessons, ones about trusting people (or mainly, not trusting Arabs) down to lessons about banks, money, and negotiating salaries during job interviews, and he did so while looking at me dead in the eye and shaking his finger, as if it were a wand that would transport his wisdom on to me. He also liked to tell me what an asshole my father was for what he did to my mom before and during the divorce, over and over again. And then he would gain a certain amount of satisfaction from telling me how he told my father off last time he was in Israel.
 
The wife is in her early 60s. She is short and round, with orange hair, and intense blue eyes. She walks very slowly, but she keeps going. When she visited New York (without the husband), I walked with her. A block stretched out before us without end. I noticed things about buildings in the city I never did as I took one step to her three. We walked from Herald Square to Lincoln Square, and night fell by the time we ended our trip. I don’t remember eating or walking into any stores, but we did grab a cup of coffee. She loves New York and travelling in general, but doesn’t go very often because the husband doesn’t want to. She complained to me about a great package deal to Turkey he doesn’t want to take. She told me she likes to go out to eat, but he tells her, “Why, when we have food at home?”
 
Because the husband has little patience for errands, the two of us took buses to take care of things I needed during those first two weeks. I would walk with her, aggravated, while I tried to breathe through the humid air and felt my skin tan. “You’re tired, aren’t you?” she would ask with genuine, motherly concern. “I’m fine,” I replied although I thought, “I’m just trying to stay awake while walking so slowly!”
 
She took me to get my Israeli ID card, and to Jerusalem so I could start getting things ready for the dorms. Then she took me shopping for bed sheets, toiletries, and food. When the husband came along with the car, they would argue non-stop, setting up each other and egging one another on. If someone would cut him off on the road, he’d exclaim, “Oh, those damn Israelis!” The wife would bark, “It has nothing to do with being Israeli! People all over the world do that!” “Those Israelis…” he would mumble, not ready to give up but unable to argue. I should have counted the number of his “yop tvoi myat”’s from the beginning to the end of every trip.
 
Being with them made me feel like a kid again. Not only was I going through my own little crisis while adjusting to a new life outside of New York, but I think they were secretly happy to have someone to take care of, so they would make me food and call me over for meals, and talk to each other about what’s good for me in front of me. I’m sure they think I’m partially retarded or just stupid, because I didn’t even bother trying to explain myself or give my opinions on some issues because I knew that would just add fuel to the fire. You can’t change the opinions or ways of people their age! I just reminded myself it was all temporary.
 
I’m making my time with them seem rather sad. They’re great people, and helped me so much, and I often watched Israeli and Russian TV with them, and we joked, and a couple of times I drank a passion fruit liqueur with the wife. She poured out two shots, and we cheered. I downed mine, and I looked over and saw she took just a sip of hers and put it down on the table. “Oh, that’s how you drink it.” “No, it’s ok. Do you want more?” “No.. well… ok…” I think the husband drank, because there was a bittle of vodka in the fridge (which drove the wife nuts because of the shelf space it took up), but he didn’t drink around us. I bought him a bottle of vodka from the duty free store during my Vienna layover, and he thanked me, then opened the liquor cabinet to reveal 5 other unopened bottles of vodka. When their daughter came back from a trip to Berlin a few days into my arrival, she gave him three more bottles of vodka.
 
Ok, that still sounds sad. I don’t know. I find most older Russian people to be rather tragicomic, so maybe that’s why. All I know is that my bed in their apartment was comfortable, they fed me well, and they had internet, so I was content overall.
 
However, when it was time to get to Jerusalem, I was ready to be surrounded by people my age. The first dorm room assigned to me at the University was filthy, with huge trees and butterflies drawings and pen scribblings in broken English directly on the wall. Not my age. I asked to change my room, and got a cleaner one. The set-up is 10 singles with a shared bathroom (three toilets), and three showers. There is a common area, although I’ve only seen the campus cats congregate there. Otherwise, the rooms are separated into three clusters of three rooms that branch out form the common area, and one single room closer to the bathroom and kitchen. The rooms come with their own fridge and sink. The girls in my area are mostly Arab, and I think they are all friends. I don’t usually see anyone, not even in the bathroom or kitchen. I do hear them often, though, because they blast music and bring over their boyfriends, who smoke in the common area although it’s not allowed. One girl’s door is covered in pictures of Cinderella and other female Disney characters, which makes me question her sanity.
 
I’ve realized my friends will most likely not be in my dorm hall, which is fine with me. I want to find an apartment sooner than later, anyway. Because the semester begins on November 2nd, the campus is a ghost town. I’ve met people waiting on lines to see advisors, waiting for buses- students waiting at the central bus station often ask other students to share a cab ride to campus- and on the buses. One guy started talking to me on the bus because he said I don’t look Israeli because I was dressed too nicely! Granted, I was coming back from a job interview that didn’t go very well, but it was funny to hear coming from an Israeli.
 
During Rosh Hashanah, I was with my mom’s friend’s daughter’s family. They have two kids and a dog who stays on their terrace and peers in through the glass doors with sad eyes. The kids seem to like me, although I can’t communicate with them very well. The son is 4 1/2 and adorable. He always wants to take my hand, but is too shy to try to talk to me. He just puts his hand out and looks away. The daughter is 6, very talkative, and very much curious about me and my mysterious arrival into their lives. I think I make her feel smart when she teaches me Hebrew words.
 
And ah yes, Israelis. So far, the Israelis I have met have been friendly, helpful, and supportive. Of course some are cocky and crude, and many don’t know how to wait in line, but I’ve been pleasantly suprised overall. My friend just came back from a “Jewish leadership” trip here, and she loved everything but Israelis, whom she found rude beyond belief, but I haven’t seen anything to warrant that yet, nothing that can’t happen anywhere else in the world… however, it has only been three weeks.
 
Ok, well this is my first post, and I’ve washed over much of my first weeks here, but I just need to get something out before I start on my hopefully more regular, more specific, and more interesting posts about my life here. Photos to come, too!