back in the saddle again

not much to report. got lost briefly on the way to the market. took some photos (will edit and post soon). bought some fresh food for cooking eggplant parmesean and pasta for alli tonight or tomorrow. it is soooooo fucking hot. i got tired so i jumped in a sherut taxi, only to have the driver stop 1 minute later after i realized that i passed my stop. shit. i pick up alli from the airport in an hour and a half, from which we will come to the house where we'll be living since it's ready. my guitar and the rest of my clothes are there. so sweet. i can cook dinner there. also, i finished editing some photos from LA, the rest of which are on my flickr:





www.flickr.com/photos/blackmarketfunnelcakes

good day sunshine

my frist morning in ramla, and i feel hot. like super hot. sweaty. 'cham' means hot. i use that word a lot. anyway, last night naama told me of her travels and i got me the itch. she spent 4 months traveling around china, laos, burma, and thailand. and i think i may do something similar once i finish my program. who knows? i'm just going to envision myself with a lot of money and see what happens. in the meantime, i'm going to the wednesday market, which apparently is HUGE here. and very colorful. and the owners will try to cheat me. but i will be too clever for them. "i'm a volunteer', i'll say, "and if you give me a good price, i'll bring allllllllllllllll my chaverim to you". i'm in like flint baby.

ok, off now. more later.


love,

sally

don't stop believin'

after our last meeting, i slept at inbal's until 2pm the next day. i was so beat. it was amazing though. after we woke up, we drank coffee and took the bus to the mall in downtown hadera (inbal's town) and walked to inbal's parent's lottery shop. it was really cute. i like her town. her neighborhood reminds me of los angeles, pacific palisades a little. it's very cute and quaint. i like her family very much also, so i hope i will spend time while i'm here. after we got back from the mall, we hung out and ate freshly homemade hummus (i watched inbal's mother make it, so that i can also --- dad, tell gammy for me). then, inbal drove us in her car to tel aviv university to pick up alysse (one of the girls from my trip). after some frustrating navigational delays, we finally found alysse and went on our way to a pub near downtown tel aviv called freeland's until the boys (max, cameron, and adam) called us to meet up at 1AM. we had a couple of beers and some fabulous conversations about religion, philosophy, atheism. mostly about being jewish. inbal told us about her brief stints in kaballah and as a messianic jew, and her current obsession with 'the secret', which i'm vaguely familiar with. alysse, like me, leans more towards atheism and has a hard time understanding how people can believe most of the things involved in religion (esp. christianty, etc.) but that after this trip, she identifies with being jewish in a way she didn't before. this is exactly what happened to me. this conversation just reinforced my pride in being a jew, as my culture and upbringing and heritage as well as my non-belief in a supernatural force. it was cool.

anyway, we left the pub and about 2 hours later (ridiculously frustrating trying to find this club on the beach, it was just silly), we found the boys at this stupidly douche-y club on 'cheech beach', that inbal describes as full of 'arsim'. arsim are basically a kind of guy that we in dallas would refer to as 'uptown/ghostbar' people. we convinced the boys to leave the club as we couldn't get in, and we walked to a really cool bar that was on the beach, bought some beers, and sat outside in the soft sand. i walked to the water, where people were still swimming at 3 AM, and just watched the tide come and go. it was really nice.

max decided to come with inbal and i back to hadera, so we drove back at 5 AM, got there at 6AM, slept for 2 hours, and then woke up. we figured out that i should go ahead to ramla, the place i'll be living for the day/night, so i packed up my things, we all got on a bus into tel aviv, and i said goodbye to max and inbal as i took my bus to the central station, where after some confusion and lots of bad hebrew questions from my direction, i caught a 'sherut taxi', or shared taxi, to ramla. 30 minutes later i arrived in ramla, where naama (one of the directors of my volunteer program) met me.

now, i've heard some sketchy things about ramla from israelis. mainly because ramla is a mixed city, meaning that jews and arabs both live here. also, it is an area of considerably low socio-economic status in some places. of course, this is why we are volunteering here. so i'm driving in the taxi and looking out the windows trying to judge for myself whether this place looks dangerous, and at first it kind of does, but the closer i get to the center of the city, the less nervous i become. it's just like any other city, and it's quite pretty actually.

so i arrive at the entrance to ramla (called tromet akerach) and waited to meet naama. she found me and we walked about 5 minutes to her parent's house where she lives, for lunch. i just want to take this opportunity to say that i've never experienced such hospitality like i have in israel in the last few days. it is overwhelming. i have been treated like family anywhere i meet someone. they've invited me to stay, given me food, showed me the kittens that they rescue (apparently, naama's mom is the dr. doolittle of the neighborhood, taking in a fixing stray animals), tell me about their lives. it is wonderful to be here. and i got to speak to naama about the program on the walk to her house and i am so excited to be here i can't even express it. she just talks about all the exciting, creative ways we can contribute to the kids' lives here. i can teach them photography, show them how to see in a new way, give them a passion. i can even teach a mixed class with arab and israeli children together at the youth center. they can see each other finally. there are subsidized classes that i can take for 150 sheckles a month (bellydancing, pliates). i can buy a bike to ride from one end of the city to another. i get to live in a sweet apartment or a house. i can cook every night fresh fruits and vegetables from the market that i can walk to. and it's CHEAP. and i may not want to leave.

i am excited. and i am starting to learn hebrew. i have a little notebook that i'm writing all the new words i hear. i'll start an intensive ulpan (hebrew lessons) so i can catch up really quickly for conversational purposes. fuck, i am bursting. i can't wait for each day. i just get to be brave with my photography, because the opportunities here are amazing. everything is so interesting and the visual textures are fascinating. i might even start a band with inbal and some of the other people in my group (inbal is a drummer, so she can possibly leave her drums in the house and we can practice there and gig on the weekends). i found out that our weekends are free, so i can travel to other countries. FUCK, i'm so excited.

i miss everyone. pictures soon soon. i need to get a converter for my laptop charger. i just wrote a novel. enjoy. i love you.

sally

feelings, man

well, i am officially a resident of israel. no more touristy bullshit. and i am endlessly excited, but spending the day walking around chadera (inbal's town) with inbal makes me realize i have a long way to go linguistically and culturally before i'll feel totally comfortable here. but maybe that's a good thing. it'll keep me on my toes and present to my situation. also, i'll pay very close attention to the language and words so i can learn them. luckily, all the israeli's i've met (mostly soldiers from both my trips) are happy to teach me. i really need to post photos that i've taken so far. i feel like i haven't taken very many at all, since i was staffing. 1. i was working and paying attention to the group and 2. i had already taken photos of most of the things we saw the first time i was here. but i think i'll probably be taking lots from now on so i can remember the places i am and how i feel each step of the way during my transitional process. i'll keep you posted.

love,

sally

the final countdown

my birthright trip is finally over after a crazy last night in eilat at a beach bar and then back at the hotel (won't forget that), as well as an emotional final session with momo (owner of brithright). ofir (the director of ISC) was at the final session so i got to talk to him about what i should do with my stuff/where i should stay before my volunteer program starts. he took my big suitcase and guitar to the oranim office, while i took the rest to the airport and said goodbye to all my group. for some reason i wasn't as emotional saying goodbye to them even though i know i'll probably never see some of them again. but you never know. it was an amazing, frustrating, stimulating, exhilarating, educational, lovely, debaucherous, hilarious, bonding, special 10 days. thanks guys.

anyway, inbal (one of our israeli soldiers) invited to stay with her 40 minutes from tel aviv. so we took the train with yakir, one of the other soldiers. her house is absolutely lovely and it was so nice to sleep and shower in a place that was not a hotel or a campsite. we made a sweet little dinner of eggs with sundried tomatoes and sweet onions with mango and apple almond salad. it was "gizi", which means "groovy". i video chatted with josh and his family and went to bed. i seriously didn't wake up until 2 in the afternoon. but i guess i needed it. inbal and i are supposed to meet up with some people in my group at the beach today, so more later.

love,

sally

lots o shit

i'm in eilot right now. i have done a lot of shit. here's some lists and some writings. all together now. i'm tired. my birthright trip ends tomorrow and i'll get picked up from the airport and go SOMEWHERE?. then i'll have about a week to hang out before my program starts. i have met some really great people that i hope to hang with while i'm in israel including our medic/security guards zur and gitit, israeli soliders galore, and another girl in my program that is staffing a birthright trip from chicago. so here's lots of random shit that i've done for the past week. sorry it's not all written down and some is purely associative but i haven't had internet/time to write shit. photos soon, i totally promise.

love,

sally

___________________________________
sunday aug 9

be a history maker vs bystander (neil lazarus)
yell at family (why we yell at israel for doing dumb shit, because we're family)
tsha be av (the day all the bad stuff happened to the jews)
scared spiral (one person got scared, then half the group)
debate split (we debated for fucking ever)
wall (finally got to the kotel for Tsha Be Av)
david talk (talked politics and middle east with one of my group, smart kid)

_________________________
monday august 10

when i left you i was in jerusalem after tsh be av (ninth of av). the next day, we got our second security guard and drove to the golan heights and the military outpost on the border of lebanon. it is always so interesting to hear about the israeli rules of engagement as told by phillip, a crass, good ole atlanta boy turned israeli soldier. after the military outpost, we drove to the campsite where we would raft the next day and eat smores. it was too late to raft that night. we played an enlightening little game called kill-fuck-marry, in which one person picks a male or female from a circle of participants, then picks three other people that the victim has to choose whether to kill, fuck, or marry. hypothetically of course. very cute as you can imagine, but it was pretty funny. i played some songs and one of the guys in our group wrote a rap about BR 1044 (our birthright group), which was brilliant. we went to bed super late after hanging out with each other all night. woke up the next morning after not much sleep and went rafting finally in the jordan river which was pretty low, even though the water is the highest in the morning. i guess since it's summer, all the water levels are generally low. i had a lot of fun and didn't do too badly, leaving last and arriving at the end point about halfway through the group. yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah holler. after we finished "kayaking" (really "rafting" translated from hebrew much to the dismay of my group) we drove to the mystical "cradle of kabballah", tsfat which is a beautiful old city in the mountains which houses many artists. we visited one, avram, who had amazing pieces that i absolutely loved. i really want to go back there to buy some art for my family. i actually wasn't expecting to be so impressed since the last artist i saw on my birthright trip was very intelligent and fabulous to listen to, but i wasn't really a huge fan of his work. avram, on the other hand, made beautiful art, but i thought his talk on kabballah was a little bit contrived, with lots of talk about god and souls and blah blah blah. but what really got me was when he said something about how there are no coincidences in life (which i don't believe) but that we all ended up in israel together and we're like family. at that moment it hit me. i really missed my family of course, but i realized that when i first met my group in LA, i had no idea who any of these people were, but being here together on this trip, i am slowly getting to know them and really finding things about each of them that remind me of traits i would identify with my own family. i am getting annoyed with them, and they drive me fucking crazy at times, but i love them and will very much miss being their group laeder when this whole experience is over. they even call me 'mama bear'. i am glad that i came on this trip, even though i was so resistant to it. i find that i am most resistant to what ends up being the most rewarding. anyway, we left tsfat and we drove to a hotel located on a kibbutz near jerusalem so that we can go to yad vashem, the israeli holocaust museum, in the morning. we ate dinner, and afterwards i went exploring outside and found an absolutely wonderful vast grassy outdoor area on a hill inside the hotel grounds that has an amazing view of the city. i just sat in the grass, worrying about the little things, like i always do. but then i told myself, out loud, to "just be". to just enjoy this lovely place. and i closed my eyes. i am going to have to remind myself to do that often while i'm here. actually, as i type these words, i'm sitting in the grass on the hill overlooking the twinkling lights of the city. alone. there's sounds of children playing nearby and i just breathe. i found out earlier in our group meeting that the elderly people that we've been seeing since we checked in are all holocaust survivors that are here for a month-long vacation. it hit me really hard when i heard this, and i immediately thought of my gammy ,who i haven't spoken to since i arrived in israel. after the meeting, one of the guys in my group sat down with a gaggle of the holocaust ladies playing cards who had taken a liking to him. it was such a sweet encounter that i teared up a little and went to my room to call gammy. she was so happy to hear from me that she excitedly told me everything that's been going on at home and that she misses me very much. now, my gammy is a sharp cookie. she is very smart and funny, but she has a hard time expressing love and affection in traditional ways, as many that grew up in her generation do. i always tell her i love her in an almost goading way to force her, jokingly but not, to say it back. she has a hard time. but as we were about to say goodbye, she said, "i love you to pieces". she'll be 90 in about 3 weeks. and in typical gammy fashion, right before we hung up, she interjected, "meet a nice jewish boy. and leave him there."

_________________________
wednesday august 12

yad vashem (holocaust memorial)
mount herzl
soldiers (israeli soldiers joined our group-soooo hot and hilarious)
dinner
mason (saw a guy i was in BBYO with in high school/big hugs!/hung out with him) partying/guitar/singing outside with yakir - israeli solider)
learning hebrew
hanging out
intelligent conversation (new york group/ miss good conversation not about drinking) hooking up (everyone did, not me of course)
sleep.

tevi shachta = let me hit that
tevi esh = give me a lighter
ben cama atcha = what is your name (male)
bat cama atach = what is your name (female)
labriut = bless you
ken = yes
lo = no
ani oevet otcha = i love you (to a male from a female)
ani oevet atcha = i love you (to a female from a male)
efo = where
ma = what
culam po = everybody here
ma achuva lemashmaut shelachaim = what is the meaning of life
yalla = come
ani = me
ata/at = you

_________________________
thursday august 13

tel aviv independence hall (booooooring, but where israel was declared a jewish state)
jaffa (hot as fuckkkkkk, but pretty cool)
camels (drove to bedouin camp to ride them)
beduin tent (slept in, kind of)
guitar (played and sang by the bonfire)
made smores and played 'chubby bunny'
germans (sang along to my songs)
yellow subamrine

________________________
friday august 14

hiked masada at sunrise (woke up at 3:30 AM)
lots and lots and lots of orthodox men praying very enthusiastically (really amazing)
hike down (ouch knees)
horrible giftshop (too expensive, very cheesy)
jealousy and bad things that i try to talk myself out of (mmmm feelings)
eilot
chill down
club
dance
boys
goldbarg
traveling boys (cute)
jennifer (dancing on the bar)
lost roee
sleep

and that brings us up to thew present. tonight will be our last night together. i love everyone and will miss them very much. i can't explain how much i love this video:



love,

sally

shabbat sha-home

man, what a day. after dinner, our group bussed it to the cotel for shabbat. there were SOOOOOO many people there. it was insane. not only that, but the men's side of the wall was COMPLETELY filled with singing, dancing, percussing gentlemen. it was raucus! anyway, we started the night with a little circle service for our group, then went our own ways until it was time to go. i of course, went to the women's side, which was much quieter and sort of took in the scene. one thing that wort of bothered me was the fact that the wall is separated by sex, and not only that, the men are so rowdy and having a great loud time, while little girls stand on chairs on the women's side watching the spectacle, wishing they could be there with their fathers and brothers. at least that's what it seems like. i mean, i think the cultural phenomenon of the separation is very interesting and symbolism intriguing. but as a women who consiers gender equality very very very important in this modern world, it's a little disconcerting to say the least. i want these jewish women to be empowered, not discouraged from anything they want to be. but i digress... anyway, it was much more impactful being there at night with so many other jewish women of all ages, just totally enthralled with this moment of spirituality. now, i'm not religious, but for some reason i got a little choked up seeing all these women standing in the same place praying. i didn't even know why. i think it also reminded me that i was so far away from home and my family, but all these jews were still sort of like family to me. i don't feel like israel is home necessarily, but there is a definite bond with the people here even if there are cultural and emotional walls up just like everwhere else. after i savored that moment and feeling, i walked backwards away from the cotel (you're not supposed to turn your back to it) and went and sat alone on the ground to reflect in front of both sides of the wall from above. i spotted a group of girls dancing and singing with their arms around each other. i got very emotional seeing this because they were just as rowdy as the men and just having the time of their lives with each other singing in unison. it was beautiful.

but i'm back at the hotel now. we walked all the way back from the cotel since we can't drive: "i don't fucking roll on shomer fucking shabbas!!!" (took about an hour and a quarter). so i'm super tired. great day, and we get to sleep in tomorrow. i'm going to wake up late and swim in the gorgeous pool on the roof. goodnight.

love,

sally