the times they are a changin'

Shalom (shaaaaalom)! Well I'm here, and finishing up my first weekend. It's only a little bit strange since it's only Saturday evening, but our madrich, Dan, who has lived here for over a year, says it still mixes him up every week, so I don't feel so bad. Well, maybe a little bit for him, but I digress.

The flights over here were great - who knew that a Continental overseas flight has power outlets at each seat, tons of seat reclining ability, and hundreds of free movies and tv shows to watch on your own personal screen? Of course, I slept the entire time so I couldn't really enjoy it, but still! I had planned to sleep the entire San Diego-Newark flight and the first few hours of the Newark-Tel Aviv flight, and it was going swimmingly. I woke up three hours into the second flight and decided to watch the Batman movies, but I only got about ten minutes into Batman Begins before the next thing I knew, they were announcing an initial descent. Oh well. My bags actually all arrived, and quickly off the claim belt, which was a rare pleasure. But then I had no idea what to do, so I stood in the middle of the baggage claim area like an Olimer (paging Sarah Weinstein?) for a few minutes until Bekah found me, which was a few moments of relief. We walked out and saw tons of people waiting to pick people up, but nobody for us. We wandered around for an hour (actually I spent several minutes trying to freshen up in the bathroom which took a wrong turn when I washed my face before realizing that the only dryer option was the airdryer, so I got some strange looks from the other people in the restroom when that had to happen) and then sat down and started just calling out the names of people we knew, hoping someone would come. It didn't work out so well, and I was taking another lap when I realized that a man had his computer out and was on the internet, so I ran back to get my laptop and used Skype to call our madrich, which was working out great until I said, "okay just tell us where to go and we'll stay there and wait for you" and he said, "sounds great!" and hung up, with no directions. But we found him shortly, and headed to Tel Aviv.

So the organization owns three apartments in Kiryat Shalom, which is in southern Tel Aviv, well actually about a 15 minute walk from a fun part of Jaffa and it's port, and just a short bus ride to downtown Tel Aviv and the beach. The bus comes on the corner, but I still have no idea how to tell when it will get there. The neighborhood is poor, but Bina has renovated our apartments so they are actually very nice! Air conditioning in all the rooms, everyone has their own large room with a large bed and lots of closet and dresser space. There are huge kitchens and living rooms, and even nice bathrooms. We're in the neighborhood that we're in because we're here to volunteer, and many of the sites are with underprivileged families/kids/people, so we're close to many of the sites and also getting a small taste of what living in those neighborhoods are like. To those of you familiar with the area, it's definitely a few steps up from the neighborhood around the Central Bus Station, but no Van Ness. Anyway, we were randomly assigned to apartments and rooms the first night, but now we're on the kibbutz (which I'll get to in a moment) and when we go back to Tel Aviv at the end of the month, we'll decide who wants to live with who, five people per apartment, and in which ones. Personally, I hope that I get my same room, but I'll keep you posted.

After arriving and settling in that first evening, Dan gave us, well, wrong, directions to get some food, which let myself and Bekah get to know another girl on the trip because we wandered around for over an hour completely lost. We did find a Bank Hapoalim ATM though, which turned out to be on our street corner, we just didn't know at the time, and it was great because it didn't charge me overseas fees. Then I saw Sarah across the street, and Jordyn was hiding in the bushes because she came from Jerusalem to surprise me! You'll have to talk to her to get the full story of how she found me, sans phone, because it's pretty hilarious, in a way that could only happen to Jordyn and me. I had only given her the street we were living on (Rachov Dick - hey David and Mom, remember Kfar Penis?), my flight information, and the name of the organization. Her story involved talking to a bunch of people from the organization, which will from now on be known as Bina, some buses, some public restrooms at both Central Bus Stations, hiding in the bushes, getting in a car with Dan who she didn't know, and a developmentally challenged elderly woman. It was great to see her! Jordyn, that is, not the woman.

The next day we took care of some office work at the Bina office in Tel Aviv, took a short walk through Jaffa, and then came down to Kibbutz Gal On, which was established on Erev Yom Kippur in 1945 by Hashomer Hatzeir. Now though, they say that many of the people who live here aren't actually members of the kibbutz, and those who are often don't work here during the day. The kids live with their parents and go to school in Kiryat Gat, so it's not really traditional anymore. There is, however, a South African restaurant which is supposed to be delicious, a chadar ohel (dining hall), a pub, and lots of cows, which we may get to volunteer with! The tricky part was that they wanted us to bring all of our stuff, which was really a lot, but they only got this one small bus and the luggage didn't really fit so it was an interesting ride. Again, I slept through most of it. Kibbutz Gal On is just outside Kiryat Gat, about an hour southeast of Tel Aviv and about 45 minutes southwest of Jerusalem, and that's the best I can do to describe really where we are. It's beautiful here, but the rooms that we are staying in are not. Now, I don't want to really complain since I have many friends who have lived in Tanzania and Uganda in the last few years, and compared to that, this is a five star resort. But Joanna once quoted The Perks of Being a Wallflower as saying something about your personal experiences are your reality, and that's all we can really ask of people to define as reality. It was obviously a lot more articulate than that, but I hope you get the idea, and forgive me because I'm sure you really didn't care to hear this back story. Anyway, there are three people to each tiny room with tiny midget beds, which wouldn't be too bad, but there is literally no space to put clothes or anything. Remember how they made us bring everything that we brought - bedding that definitely doesn't fit on these beds, winter clothes, the whole thing. This was a little bit of poor planning. There is one tiny dresser that wouldn't even hold my under garments (do we still call them that?) to share between us, but basically our clothes are folded into piles on the floor, my "under garments" are stored in my backpack, toiletries, chargers, and other small things I may need are stuffed into my duffel, and the clothes that I won't need are shoved into a suitcase that took some serious pushing to get under the bed. The bathroom barely fits one person at a time, and the shower is just a small curtained-off are of it. When you shower, the entire place floods, and as an answer, the kibbutz handed us a squigie, which on uneven tile, does pretty much nothing. Typical of an old kibbutz though, and using the bathroom has been quite the comical event. I'm definitely looking forward to going back to Tel Aviv and being able to unpack for real.

We arrived here on Thursday late afternoon, and for the most part since then we've exploring the kibbutz, sleeping, and doing more orientation-type activities. Last night one of the directors, a reform rabbi, graduate of the HUC Israel program, led a lovely kabbalat shabbat, followed by dinner in the chadar ohel, and an oneg on a huge lawn with all the families that live here. Then we (everyone in the group, which I suppose I should have mentioned before is 15 people, all in their early twenties, and half from California) sat around in our own little courtyard near the rooms and smoked hookah and shmoozed for a few hours until it was time to go to "The Silo Moooo Pub Party." This is an apparently infamous annual party that the kibbutz holds in the middle of their fields, about a ten minute drive from the main kibbutz. Asher, the man who drove us there in his pickup, told us that there would be anywhere from, "two or three hundred, or six" people there. He also said that the places he had visited in the States in 1984 were California, New York, Nebraska, and Louisiana. Interesting range of choices. The party was a hilarious mix of Madonna, Ricky Martin (I had to call Suzy for that part and she put the phone on speaker so her students could hear the ridiculousness), Soulja Boy, and lots of 90s pop. I peed on a hay bale behind a glow-in-the-dark outerspace mural, soberly accepted a drink from a man who warned Sarah and myself "nosh tooo geth tooo drunksh," and true to form, went back to my room early for bed (SB - be proud).

This morning we woke up early for a short teul (trip) to some caves in the Midras ruins. We drove through a national forest called "Great Britain," though nobody appeared to know why, and hiked up to a point overlooking the Elah Valley at the base of the Judean Hills, the pace where David slayed Goliath. An Israeli man whose name remains unknown, who works for Bina, was talking to us but I couldn't really understand most of what he was saying. Then he abruptly decided we were done there and walked off, back down the hill. We got in cars and drove along the road that connects Jerusalem with Ashdod and Ashkelon up to the Midras ruins, where we heard another story from the nameless guide, and then hiked up to the caves. They told us there wouldn't be room in the caves for our backpacks or water bottles, and boy they were not kidding! It was a hilarious experience of crawling, scooting, and snaking through tunnels. Every once in a while the space opened up and we were able to all sit together and talk. In one such location, we heard another story about Bar Kochba and the Romans trapping the Jews inside the caves (which apparently lead all the way to Jerusalem if you go the right way, but they are a huge maze filled with dead ends and turn backs, and completely pitch black, except the tea candles that Guide lit when we were in the larger areas) and lighting fires at the entrances, something about the Jews surviving for three years, and then I stopped paying attention. I think that eventually they were destroyed, but I could be wrong. So then Guide went first with his little flashlight, and there were one or two other flashlights toward the back of the line, but the order was Guide, Mike (who is very tall) and then myself, but it took Mike and I longer to get through the spaces, which included steps, drops, rearrangement of your body from head first to feet first, and all in complete darkness, and Guide had no interest in waiting for us, which also led to an incredibly entertaining adventure in the dark. After we found our way out and decided there was no way to get rid of the layer of limestone and chalk that we were all sporting, we moved on to another cave, this one more just a large pit in the ground. I think Guide said something about pigeons, but it's hard to say, and it smelled really bad. The last place we stopped was a family tomb, and Guide's English was poor and he told us that when people were "dying" they were placed in tomb, which was mortifying to all of us, and our exagerrated reactions caused some confusion between us, but we got it straightened out. Then we went back down to "have a coffee" and hang out under a large carob tree. The experience was really fun but a little too touristy and group-activity like for me, though they said that starting tomorrow we'll get into our routine with Ulpan and volunteering on the kibbutz, and then Tel Aviv, and it's not like that at all, so that's something to look forward to. We got back and I took a nap and now we're going to barbeque.

I'll try to post pictures as soon as I can. Well, as soon as I take some at least. To clarify, you can still reach me the following ways:
-Israeli cell phone: 011-972-52-525-5282 (from Israel it's just 052-525-5282)
-Skype: my regular old American cell phone number: 858-336-7175 (to which you can also send text messages!) or my Skype name is "abroida"
-Email: abroida@gmail.com
-Facebook
-Posting comments here!

Well tomorrow we start ulpan, our intensive Hebrew instruction, so that should be interesting. Probably not as interesting as this novel I just wrote for you, but interesting nonetheless.

Peace, love, and lots and lots of hummus.