Rewind and A New Home
So for the next few month, I have absolutely no excuse for not checking my email. That's right, folks, I've got internet!

However, I've completely deserted you the past couple weeks from the email updates which I'm sure you desperately await every waking moment (and some of the dreaming moments, too). So, if you're okay with it, I'd like to backtrack for a bit. And if you're not okay with it, then just skip down to paragraph eleven.

With a cab and a bus ride, Ashkelon was left for a [possibly] final time. I headed up to Jerusalem lugging All-My-Stuff (okay, not All-My-Stuff, but All-My-Stuff for the next two weeks plus All-The-Stuff I forgot to pack when putting the bags containing the remains of All-My-Stuff into storage). Huffing and puffing the remaining couple miles from where the bus dropped me off, I headed to friend's place to crash for the night. Thanks Dorit!

That morning, I lugged All-My-Stuff to the Sheraton where I met a group from the South Palm Beach County Jewish Federation. I spent that day with them. We listened to an interesting lecture in the morning, then preceded to tour Jerusalem. We saw some interesting stuff, but I wasn't terribly attentive because I'd seen all those things numerous times before on other trips and tours of Jerusalem. The trip ended much later than I had expected, and part of All-My-Stuff was accidentally left on their tour bus. No worries, I was able to get it four days later. Besides, the Federation are the ones who are sponsoring me to be on Otzma for this year, so I can't complain a peep. Thanks Federation!

I met Becky at the hostel and we spent Shabbat together. It was amazing and incredible and wonderful and magnificent. We had a great walk that night, followed by a great meal, followed by wonderful sleep, followed by incredible services at Shira Hadasha, followed by the-most-wonderful-lunch-ever. And! Also staying at the hostel was a guy Becky and I both knew during college, but hadn't seen in nearly two years - he's volunteering on a kibbutz for the next five months! So that night, we went out and all hung around, good times. All in all, a most amazing Shabbat. Thanks Becky!

The next few days are quite a blur. All of Otzma joined 6000 others (mostly American Jews) for the annual General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities of North America. In summation: speeches, concerts, workshops, tours, booths, marches, free everything, and shmoozing, shmoozing, shmoozing! It was all quite wondrous. But we had to dress-up as grown-ups and pretend to be all adult and stuff, so that wasn't too fun. It made me a bit nervous to have to eventually join the real world and get a job and stuff. Yuck. Oh well, I can still avoid thinking about that for the next few months, right?

Wednesday night, wandering in the Old City with my friend, I recognized a boy I'd met at the conference. I struck up a conversation and a couple minutes later asked if he had any plans for Shabbat. He told me them and then asked if I needed a place to stay. I said I did and he said he could arrange for me to stay where he was staying. I said that would be great. I called the next day to finalize the plans. Thanks Daniel!

Thursday morning the conference was over and, having put even more of All-My-Stuff into storage, I hit the streets. I wandered downtown Jerusalem for a bit, checked my email, bought a shawl and some lunch, and then met up with a friend and helped her go apartment hunting. That night I had part one of a seminar in Jewish education. I met some really neat people and after the lecture, asked this girl if she had a couch I could crash on. She said sure. So I went to her home, met her husband, talked for a while and fell asleep on their futon. Thanks Suzanne!

After part two of the seminar the next day I wandered around and eventually ventured over to the place where I'd be spending Shabbat. The girl whose apartment it was was super nice, and Daniel was staying there, too. After services we had an amazing dinner, read, and then fell asleep. The next morning Nikki and I slept in. There were more guests over for lunch, then more reading and napping. Before I knew it Shabbat was over and I was totally rested. Thanks Nikki!

The next couple of days involved two more hostels and some lectures. Next thing I knew we were on a bus to Beit Shemesh. [Quick background: Track two of Otzma is supposed to place you in the partnered city with your North American community. My partner city is Kiryat Bialik, but since I'm the only Floridian and they didn't want to put me alone, I'm in Washington DC's partner city - Beit Shemesh.]

Our place here is awesome. Compared to where we lived in Ashkelon [reminder - roach-infested, two rooms for four people with little more than four beds and some cupboards all on the seventh floor], this place is heaven. For the five of us there are five rooms, six beds, two couches, and carpeting. We have a TV with cable, a computer with fast internet, a huge kitchen, a washing machine, and it's on the ground floor. Talk about luxury!

We don't actually start volunteering until Sunday, so right now we're just lounging around, shopping for apartment supplies, decorating, and getting to know the city. My roommates are awesome, we all seem to get along splendidly, and I have a feeling this is going to be the most exciting track.

Happy Thanksgiving to all you Americans!
Sarah....
- posted by sarah @ 11/26/2003 01:12:00 AM

 
Saying Goodbye to Little Addis
Our time here in Ashkelon is coming to an end. As we begin to pack and empty out our cupboards, I thought I'd try to give you a more detailed picture of life here in Little Addis (Addis Ababa, you may know, is the capital of Ethiopia).

Walking into our fenced and gated off compound (that doesn't stop the children from jumping the fences all day and night anyway), you're faced with three towering buildings, three squat buildings, a muddy field, and some playground equipment. The three squat buildings house the classrooms, offices, and meeting rooms. The three tall buildings are the apartments. After a long day of class/volunteering/laying on the beach, all you want is to flop down on your bed in your room. Easier said than done.

All the Otzma-niks live in building three, the furthest away from the entrance. Unless it's two in the morning, walking across the muddy field is childcare worker's dream. If you were able to make it through the gate alone, don't worry, within a few steps you'll have a snotty child in each hand and one on your legs. After convincing the children that you need to go to you apartment but you'll be out to play later (in mutually broken Hebrew), you make it into the entrance of building three.

After waiting for the elevator for ten minutes, you come to the unfortunate conclusion that it is broken once again. [This is not necessarily a bad thing. The incredibly slow elevator shakes continuously, especially when passing the third floor. It is crawling with small roaches and there's generally a puddle of urine on the floor.] With a sigh and a deep breath, you begin the arduous task of climbing the endless stairs. The handrail, of course, is coated with both unidentified stickiness and unfortunately identified snot. All of this notwithstanding, the stairs are one of my favorite parts of living in the absorption center. They are somewhat spiral-y, so that the door to every apartment faces the stairwell. This means that on the climb to the seventh floor, thirty-six apartment doors are passed. During the daytime, many door are open and about a half dozen children are playing on each floor. This means more slimy hugs and grinning "Shalom!"s. By the time you reach the seventh floor, 126 steps later, you're grinning from ear to ear. It cannot be helped. That much love given out so freely can have no other affect.

Walking into the mostly bare white walls and fluorescent lighting may not be the coziest welcome home, but luckily there are bound to be other people in your apartment. These people are generally not your roommates. That's okay, you'll find someone. All the Otzma-niks are on floors five through eight, making it easy to start opening doors and looking for someone with whom to make dinner. Our dinner creations can vary from rice with hummus to a four-course meal you'd actually want to eat, even without a rumbling stomach. The variety is due in part to our creativity and in part to our budget. After all, we paid money to volunteer for a year so we could pay money to buy our own food. Therefore, fruit and vegetables become a staple - yesterday I bought four clementines for 22 cents total.

As it gets colder and rainy, the beach stops becoming the place to see and be seen. At nights we frequent a few favorite bars or clubs. Budget once again being an issue, many of us buy drinks at a makolet (mini-mart) to take to the bar - shh don't tell. Night is also the time to sneak into the computer lab. At night there are less children running and screaming all around. Although there are 23 computers sitting on desks, about six of them actually work. Therefore, the key is to get emailing done when no one else is around, namely at night.

So as I sit here in relative quiet, I bid you farewell from the Beit Canada computer lab.

Take care,
Sarah...

PS - Though I don't have a digital camera, some of my friends do. Here's a few of the pictures they've taken of our time in Israel so far.

Beit Canada - our lovely absorption center home.
http://images.ofoto.com/photos480/7/20/58/86/77/0/77865820705_0_ALB.jpg

Some of the hundreds of Ethiopian kids who live at Beit Canada.
http://images.ofoto.com/photos480/6/99/99/26/69/0/69269999605_0_ALB.jpg

One of the many sunsets over a marina two blocks from our home.
http://images.ofoto.com/photos480/6/99/7/9/56/0/56090799605_0_ALB.jpg

Our beach in Ashkelon - you jealous yet?
http://images.ofoto.com/photos480/1/90/16/94/30/4/430941690103_0_ALB.jpg

Shfaram, the Arab village - Becky and I are standing, second and third from the left. (Note the clean clothes, this is obviously the "before" picture.)
http://images.ofoto.com/photos467/1/11/0/63/78/4/478630011103_0_ALB.jpg

Due to our paint-splattered clothing, you may guess that this is an "after" photo.
http://images.ofoto.com/photos480/1/90/16/34/27/5/527341690103_0_ALB.jpg

Brian and Sarah painting in Kiryat Malachi.
http://images.ofoto.com/photos480/1/90/16/15/72/4/472151690103_0_ALB.jpg

Jukim AKA cockroaches - two of the many we face daily.
http://images.ofoto.com/photos480/1/90/16/35/14/2/214351690103_0_ALB.jpg

Relaxing in one of the apartments in Beit Canada post-painting.
http://images.ofoto.com/photos480/1/90/16/95/16/2/216951690103_0_ALB.jpg
- posted by sarah @ 11/13/2003 01:08:00 AM

 
A Surprising Weekend
So this week has once again been pretty blah, but let me tell you about last weekend, okay?

The week before last we had a "meeting" with some students from Tel Aviv University. Throughout the year, we'll been having activities with them, partially as a way for us to get to know people from different cultures on an individual and personal level. Most of us Otzma-niks thought the whole idea was pretty dumb, seeing as we'd already met Israelis and were reasonably comfortable interacting with them. And after that first "meeting" our fears were mostly confirmed. We were put in small group with a facilitator and played silly get-to-know you game from elementary school for an hour. That was it. Also, a number of the Tel Aviv students seemed somewhat boring .

Anyhow, this past weekend was the second encounter we were to have with them. Both groups would be meeting in Jerusalem to spend Shabbat together. Needless to say, we were less than enthused. After all, why would we want to spend our second to last weekend before moving roped into some dumb two day encounter with boring people doing dumb workshops from seventh grade? But, it was required, so we went.

Somehow, everything was wonderful. Again, we were divided into small groups, but this time I had a wonderful facilitator. The same small groups met for different discussions throughout the weekend, and the sense of consistency was wonderful. We talked about some very intriguing subjects (well, it wasn't the subjects that were so intriguing as much as our discussions). We discussed how different it is to be Jewish in Israel and in the Diaspora. The Israelis had a hard time imagining what it might feel like to walk through a specific neighborhood and purposely tuck in a Jewish star necklace. The Americans were baffled by the concept of learning Talmud in a state "secular" high school.

Friday night, I went with a group of girls to a congregation called Shira Chadasha. Now, I've been to at least a dozen synagogues in the past three months, and yet this one was far and away my favorite. It's a super-liberal Orthodox minyan, so although the men and women are divided, the mechitza (separation-y-thing) is lacy and straight down the middle. Also, a woman leads the parts of the service that are psalms and not obligatory (Kabbalat Shabbat and Psukei D'Zimra). But what I loved most about it was not the feminist nature of the community, but the singing. There was so so so so much of it, and it was all so beautiful. Most of the melodies were familiar to me (many Carlebach), but the way the congregation sang together, harmonizing everything, was incredibly moving. Now I have to decide whether or not I want to continue trying out new minyanim (congregations), or just settle with what I've fallen in love with.

Anyway, the weekend with the Tel Aviv students continued. As we got to know each other, we discovered that maybe our early judgments were too harsh. Everyone mingled more and more with each other, and started to form some friendships. By the time Shabbat was over, it seemed like everyone was sad to go. Even though we hadn't wanted to come, we had had such an amazing time and discovered that the other students really weren't boring at all.

Actually, that night at dinner I heard about a ceremony that would be taking place that evening in Tel Aviv. In commemoration of the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, there was going to be a huge memorial in the square where he was shot. An hour later, I was on the bus with six other Otzma-niks and thirty Israeli students, heading up to Tel Aviv.

We knew we'd be running late, but we didn't care. By the time we got to the square there was only about half an hour left of the ceremony. But even so, we were there. In Kikar Rabin, with 100,000 others, marking the eight year anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination. (Some of the papers the next day even said 150,000.) And so maybe it was more political than anything else. And so what if we got there late, only in time for two speeches and three performances. We were there for the minute of silence. We were there for Aviv Geffen. We were there for Hatikva.

That night we grabbed a late sheirut and came back to Ashkelon.
[Kikar Rabin - Rabin Square. Aviv Geffen - famous Israeli performer. Hatikva - Israeli national anthem.]

This week has been thankfully uneventful. I say thankfully because there was supposed to be a huge, awful, terrible strike. The strike turned out to last only four hours for one day. So all the gloom and doom the newspapers had been promising (no buses, schools, ATMs, governmental offices, electricity, water, banks, on and on and on) was for naught. In the end, very little was affected. However, when we went to volunteer at the National Park that day, after paying for our cabs to get there, we were informed that due to the strike we couldn't volunteer. None of us understood this since, (a) there were at least three workers present in the park anyway, (b) we're volunteers, not government workers, so why should we strike, (c) we were there and wanted to work, and (d) since we'd already worked there multiple times, we didn't need any supervision, just some spades and pitchforks. Stupid socialism. We took more cabs back.

This weekend, I plan on meeting some relatives I never knew I had, though apparently I met them when I was five years old. I'm excited and ready for an adventure!

Be Well,
Sarah....
- posted by sarah @ 11/06/2003 01:09:00 AM