First Days

So I've now been in Israel for three days, and it's been great so far.

Thursday:
After an 11 hour flight where I only slept about 2 and a half hours (even after a sleeping pill that was described to me as being very fast acting and strong... woops), I landed in Tel Aviv, went through customs, got my baggage, and went outside to find a sherut. A sherut is basically a ten person taxi and it takes people from Tel Aviv to anywhere in Jerusalem for about 12 dollars. This is about a 50 min ride, but when you have to wait for multiple people to get dropped off all over the city.... it takes a quite a bit longer. For anyone that doesn't know, Israeli drivers are insane! I honestly though we were going to crash (either into other cars, bicycles, or people) at least once every five minutes. I did end up making it to my apartment which I did completely in Hebrew. It was great to see that I was able to get back into Hebrew mode after not really using it in a while.

So besides from being insane drivers, sherut drivers aren't necessarily the most accommodating people. When I got to my street, we couldn't see the building numbers but knew that it was somewhere close. The driver did help me get my stuff out, but put it on the opposite side of the street from where I needed to be, and as it turned out about four houses/buildings down from where I needed to be. This wouldnt have been a problem if I didn't have a ton of stuff, but I had 2 GIANT duffels, a big rolling carry on, a backpack, and a purse. No one person is capable of handling all the stuff I had at once. Luckily my landlord's husband happened to be home, came out to the street, found me, and helped me with my stuff. While I've not had a lot of landlord experience before that I can go off of; that definitely gave him a lot of points.

I ended up jumping right into stuff as soon as I got here. My orientation starts the 12th and then I start ulpan (intensive hebrew program), and then regular class a couple weeks later. There have been about 15 students here for the past month doing a pre-ulpan for people that needed more help with hebrew, so I met up with a bunch of them as well as some other people that had just arrived for dinner at one of their apartments about five minutes away from me. I live in a really cute area called Rehavia. I have a lot more exploring to do, but from what I've seen there are a lot of cute coffee shops and stuff around. While I've been to Israel four times before, and knew my way around parts of Jerusalem very well, I had no prior conception of where Rehavia was. Turns out it is amazingly convenient to just about everywhere I would need to go and a lot of other students live near by. I managed to stay pretty awake functional during the dinner and made myself stay up till about 11 so I could get on the right time schedule. I ended up waking up at 4:30 the next morning so that didn't work out too well.

Friday:
Sundown on Friday is when Shabbat starts, and since Jerusalem is a very religious city, everything shuts down by an hour before Shabbat. I had a lot of stuff that I needed to get before everything shut down so I planned on going to the store. I have two other roomates; Ari and Andi. Andi has been in Israel for the past year so she moved her stuff in, and went back to America for a few weeks, so I was basically the first one to be at the apartment this week. Ari got in in the morning, so when he got here we went to the Supersol (name of the grocery store) with one of my other classmates and picked up some essentials.

One of my favorite things in Jerusalem is the shuk (basically a market that has tons of fresh produce and many other food items). Friday afternoon before Shabbat is when EVERYONE goes to buy the food that they will cook for dinner. It is absolute chaos and i love it! Since it closes right before Shabbat, the merchants are desperate to get rid of their produce so you can get amazing deals. In past trips I often took advantage of getting a melon for a shekel (slightly more than 25 cents). Since I needed food for the weekend (shabbat lasts from sundown fri to sundown sat) I went to the shuk to stock up. At this point I still didn't really know where my apartment was in relation to everything. I met up with a friend to walk there and asked for directions (in hebrew!) as we headed out. The first guy I asked looked at us like we were crazy and told us it was 30-40 minutes away and would be a very long walk. We kept going and asked some soldier/guards who also gave us kind of a weird look and said it was far. When asked they said about 20 mins away and recommended taking the bus that had a stop next to us. We gave in and took the bus, but on the way I realized where we were so I knew how to get back. Had a great time at the shuk, got a bunch of fruit (among other things lychee which is AMAZING and some tamarim which are dates), and even ran into someone I knew from the states. We decided to walk back home because it didn't seem like it would be too bad. I meant to time it but we got very side tracked by an artist market on the side of the road that apparently happens every week. The walk back was definitely do-able. It really made me question how much walking Israelis do because of how intimidated by the distance both looked when asked for directions.

I got back that afternoon, had a little bit of downtime and then went to services at Kol Haneshama which is a Reform synagogue in Jerusalem. Israel is basically under the command of a religious authority called the rabbinut who are ultra-orthodox. This means that religious organizations that are not orthodox such as the progressive movement are not at all supported, so it is really nice to find a vibrant reform community. While I've gone to reform synagogue my whole life, it has been in America so English as the primary language has been a big part in the service. Being in Israel where the primary language is Hebrew makes things much different because every thing is in Hebrew. It was a nice service but since I had been up since 4:30 and hadn't gotten a whole lot of sleep in what I think was the past 2 days (kind of confusing with the time change), it was extremely hard to stay focused. The good thing was that if my eyes started to shut a little bit, I figure it could have looked like I was just really into praying at that moment.

After services some of the students that had already been in Israel a while hosted Shabbat dinner, and I got to meet a bunch more of my classmates. It turns out the apartment I ate dinner in was actually a friend of mine's apartment when she did her year in Israel four years ago. What makes it a really small world is that I had actually stayed there with her my senior year of high school, and that happens to be the same friend I ran into at the shuk that afternoon.

Saturday (Today):
Today I went to campus for the first time since I've been here to go to morning services. It turns out I live a less than 10 minute walk away which is awesome. Another cool thing is that I am basically neighbors with the prime minister. His house is a couple seconds down the street from me, and I pass it along with many soldiers with extremely large guns on the way to school. I spent the rest of Shabbat relaxing. One of my classmates had people over for lunch which ended up being fours hours of hanging out. I just got back from Ben Yehuda Street which is basically a very popular/famous street with a bunch or restaurants, bars, stores, street performers, etc. At about 8:00 when Shabbat ends, everything opens back up and it gets swarming with people.

I am back in my apartment now which is great. Compared to all of the places I've seen so far, we definitely have the most common space. It has its odd downfalls like not having mirrors in any of the bedrooms, but I figure I can work that out somehow. I can honestly say I have never wanted I swiffer more in my life. Israelis seem to have different standards on the condition of a place that they rent, and while the apartment is great, there were unbelievable amounts of dirt and dust everywhere. It was actually shocking that so much grime could accumulate on a floor, but I really think that there is magical multiplying dirt in this country. I will take pictures soon and then post them on facebook. I will try to put them on here if i can figure out how to do that.

L'hitraot (good bye for now)