Three Weeks? When Did That Happen!

I have come to the conclusion that no matter how many times you may walk a particular street, you never really know the terrain until you walk it with a 50lbs wheeled suitcase. The walk from Danny's apartment to the bus station is not a long one, but it's funny how curbs and uneven sidewalks don't really register until you've got an oversized suitcase trying to pull your shoulder out of your socket. Today I left Nachala'ot, the center of Jerusalem, to come to a kibbutz called Ramat Rahel which is in the very south of Jerusalem. I am really glad I chose to stay at Danny's apartment for as long as I did, I had a very wonderful time there for Shabbat and the new year, but it feels like the right time to move on and be somewhere new. Funny how 5 nights in one place seems like a long time, and I'm a week at Ramat Rahel - that's practically forever! I think the longer I stay in one place the more accustomed I become to it and the more difficult it is to adjust to the next place. Arriving at a new house with new people took me by surprise, I hadn't realized how comfortable I'd become with Danny and his roommates.
True to my word, I spent Thursday at the Israel Museum. If you are ever in Israel I would definitely recommend going there. There's a really great mix of history and art and relics and religion. There's something for everyone, and you can easily spend hours there. My favorite part was the contemporary art section; so many cool pieces of art and so many different forms of media. There were movies and paintings and photos and sculptures, and so many pieces combined some of these. My favorite piece I think was a three screen film called "Going Places Sitting Down" by a Japanese artist whose last name is Sawa. I'd give it a quick google if you have 8 and a half minutes to spare.

For any non-Jewish readers, Friday night at sundown until Saturday night at sundown is Shabbat, the day of rest. People will go to different degrees of respecting Shabbat, from just a nice dinner on Friday nights (my family's style) to turning off all electronics, not handling money, not riding in cars or other transportation forms, etc (Jerusalem's style). The whole city stands still for one day a week. No buses, no stores, no nothing. Danny and his roommates are all pretty respectful of Shabbat so we spent most of the day cooking food for Saturday (can't cook on Shabbat). What does cooking require? Ingredients. Where do ingredients come from? The shuk (market). Who else is trying to cook before Shabbat starts? Everyone. Who got to go to the shuk twice and face near death at the hands of small women and hungry men? Me. It's fairly terrifying in there. Picture yourself at a busy concert or in a packed group of people. Now imagine this group of people squished into an alley that's maybe 10 feet wide, and everyone's trying to go every which way. You've got vendors on every side screaming out prices of any type of food you can imagine and everyone's trying to get what they need which requires much veering from side to side of the market alley, with others trying to go up and down the path. It's completely ridiculous! And being Israelis, they want everything as fast as possible. So people are running and pushing and dodging; I happen to pride myself on the dodging skills I acquired on Friday. By the end of the second trip I could run and dodge and slither my way through the crowds with bags of groceries in either hand. So after getting everything we needed and spending a less than ideal amount of time cooking with a more than ideal number of people in the kitchen, we had all our food prepared for lunch the next day. Shazam.

I went to shul with Danny in the evening. It was my first time being in a synagogue that segregated men and women. So all the ladies and I were crammed in a small, cold room to stand the whole time. Not so peachy, but the music was nice and I knew some of the people there as Danny's friends. Afterwards we went to dinner at the house of a man who studies with Danny. He and his wife are, without a doubt, the most extraordinary people I've met so far. Especially his wife. She is my role model from this moment on. I can't describe her in a way that will do her justice, but there is such love that radiates off of her and aimed at people she'd only just met. When she looks and you and talks to you, you feel so wonderful about yourself. She's a psychotherapist, which is what I want to end up doing but with horses, and I have no doubts she helps everyone she meets with. She's so genuine and honest and interesting. She's one of those ladies who should be used to negotiate world conflicts because at the end of the meetings all the countries would walk away feeling good about themselves and the other. At the same time, they hosted a birthright trip. Birthright is a program where Jews who have never lived in Israel after a certain age or gone on any organized trip to the country can apply for a 10-day, all expense paid tour around the country. I applied for this, didn't get it, but came anyways (obviously). I really loved meeting all these kids because they were such a kind and intelligent group of people. I didn't get to speak to all of them but those I did were wonderful and engaged. It was undeniably my favorite Shabbat so far in Israel.

Saturday was a nice, quiet, electronics-free day. Around lunchtime a slew of Danny and his roommates friends came over for lunch. I was pretty tired and a little out of the loop, but nonetheless I enjoyed the food and the conversation was interesting. That night was new years and up until about 10 I had no idea what I was doing. One of the guys at lunch, Mori, had invited Danny and his roommates over but I wasn't so sure the invitation extended to me. Before I continue, instead of always saying "Danny and his roommates" let me actually tell you who his roommates are. There's Aaron, originally from Canada, who has lived in Israel for two years but mostly in Tel Aviv. He's the kind of person who genuinely smiles when he sees you as if he's truly happy to see you. Then there's Moshe who grew up in Boston and has only been in Israel for four months. He divides his time between Jerusalem and an organic farm in the north. He studied sustainable agriculture in school and he really enjoys working at the farm. He also has a supremely comfortable bed, which I got to sleep in for two nights while he was away. Hooray for tempur pedic! And finally there's Hovav. Except it might be spelled Chovav. I know how you would spell it in hebrew but basically in english it's that deep throated "H/Ch" sound. He's lived in Israel...all of his life? At least most of it. All of his family is here. He plays guitar and is kind of always on the move and running out to fetch things. So those are the guys I've spent most of this past week with, and I am so grateful to how welcoming they were, and are, I wouldn't be surprised if I end up there again before leaving. So anyways, I did end up going to Mori's with Aaron and Moshe and then Danny showed up and a bunch of other people. Various stages of drinking later and with midnight approaching, it was decided we would go to a bar on Jaffa Street. We ran into Chovav and his friend when we left Mori's, but then somehow everyone pretty much got divided. Magically we all ended up at the bar at exactly midnight, just in time for a drunken Mori to grab and kiss us all in turn to the tune of "What A Wonderful World" in the background. Danny and Moshe headed home not much later, Ariel Fisher from previous blog posts arrived and herded the remainders off to a soup only restaurant. I don't really know who wanted soup or why it was suggested but it was a sweet little place to hang out. Everyone sort of drifted in and out over the next few hours until maybe six of us were left and close to three we ended the evening. So I missed the beach ball wrapped in lights being thrown off a rooftop in downtown Bangor, but for some bizzare reason spending the night in Jerusalem was slightly preferable.

Sunday morning, a brand new year, time for me to go somewhere new. I am now at Ramat Rahel, as mentioned earlier. I had my reservations at first, just because Heather and John, old friends of my parents, are so to the point that it caught me a little off guard I guess you could say. But in the short time I've been here I'm really liking them and it's definitely nice to have my own room for a little while. Not to mention that I spotted Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, a Harry Potter mug, a book called Horse Heaven, and the fact that they have three cats...I think we'll be getting along just fine. So that's me up to the present moment! I hope everyone had a wonderful new year. Oh! Resolutions. Mine are to try to be interested more than I try to be interesting (taken from Danny), to not miss up any opportunities that might lead somewhere good, and to be like the woman I met on Friday night, I'm telling you, I idolize her more than is justifiable for the amount of time I've known her.

And I can't believe I've been here three weeks already! Seriously, when did that happen? And now I have exactly one month in Israel. I think I'm going to be pretty sad to leave. So I hope everyone is enjoying their new year and doing wonderful things and being the loveliest they can be. Shalom