First visit to Jerusalem

Saturday morning, Christina, Wendy and I headed out for the Old City.

Lucky for me, Christina and Wendy are old Jerusalem veterans, so I got a first rate personal tour. The excuse for our Jerusalem trip was Christina's need to pick up some French books from an Arab bookstore, so we parked in an Arab neighborhood outside the Damascus Gate. Arabic was spoken and heard all around, and the majority of the cars were conspicuously lacking the IL and Israeli flag that adorns Israeli license plates.

We entered the city through the Damascus Gate into the Arab quarter, which was an overwhelming amorphous mass of push-and-shove. Purses were tucked tightly under vigilant fingers and I kept a careful eye out for my buddies. Luckily, these two blondies stuck out clearly.

Damascus Gate.

One of many pawning her wares.

Swept along in the sea.

I look different.

More shopping in the Arab quarter.

Making our way to the Christian quarter.

Entrance to a church off an alleyway.

Alleys en route to the Jewish quarter lined with shops.

Sign for the Western Wall.

Unfortunately, because it was Shabbat, no one was allowed to take pictures. Entrance to the Western Wall area required airport-level security complete with metal detector and x-ray scan. Inside the Western Wall grounds, guards roamed to catch any rebel photographers and scantily-clad women. Women showing too much skin were given a cape/apron to put over their bare shoulders. The Western Wall itself is segregated by sex, the men's section allotted 2/3rds of the wall space. We stood outside of the barricaded prayer area watching people whisper their prayers to the wall and stick paper notes in the wall's crevices. I watched for 15 minutes to catch a devout worshipper shuffle backwards the entire 75-ish meters out of the prayer area.

Boys in boxes.

More labyrinthine alleys.

Back in the Arab quarter.


Shopping.

The store of Christina's go-to guy.

I bought this wall hanging.

I was always trailing behind doing my very best gawking and photo-taking.

Not a restaurant. Kinda restaurant.

Back outside the walls of the Old City.

Back at Damascus Gate.

On our way home from Jerusalem, we stopped by the moshav where Wendy lived for eight months. A moshav is a cooperative agriculture settlement where they pool their labor and resources. However, unlike a kibbutz, the farms on a moshav are individually owned. On Wendy's moshav, residents are allowed to work outside the settlement, provided they contribute their earnings.

Taking the tour.

The moshav is on top of a hill just outside Jerusalem.
Very peaceful. Beautiful view.

Because Brian thinks this blog makes things sound like they're going "swimmingly"

I stepped on a sharp rock today on the beach and bruised the bottom of my foot.

The end.

Weekend Update

After a long hiatus, I feel like I owe an update.

After school on Friday, two of the teachers hosted a nice little happy hour in their gorgeous 2-floor apartment. If there's one common interest among the American teachers at the school, it's drinking.

Post-happy hour, a few of us newbies decided to go out down in Tel Aviv. One of the younger newbs-- Hellen-- is really into salsa dancing, so we decided to head out to a salsa club downtown. Hellen is the first teacher that I met before coming to Israel (we met on the plane in Frankfurt). We have a lot of common interests and our personalities mesh really well, so we end up spending a lot of time together. Noone besides Hellen knows how to salsa dance, but we're a pretty adventurous group (what do you expect from people who move to Israel during a war) so we decided to give it a try.

Things in Tel Aviv don't start 'til really late. People generally don't head out for the night until at least 11pm, and bars stay open and crowded past sunrise. And it's not just younger people who go out. From what I hear, people from age 13 to 80+ are all out at 2am and later. This late-night schedule perfectly compliments my natural body rhythms.

So, like good little wannabe Israelis we got into Tel Aviv around 11.30pm. We followed the directions we pulled off the internet, only to find ourselves in front of a club with a large roof to sidewalk sign advertising "FETISH PARTY." We were a little freaked out. But, the Israeli salsa dance website stated that salsa dancing occurred at this club from 23:00-05:00 every Friday evening. How could the internet be wrong? The sole Hebrew speaker of the group went in to ask about the salsa lessons, and I started to follow. Suddenly, there was a finger in my face. "Not you. Just one." It was all a little sketchy. Needless to say, we took our business elsewhere.

Saturday night we had a welcome-back reception at the superintendant's, then the younger American teachers all went out to a beach bar. Sunday, I used my bike for the first time and headed over to a U.S. Embassy picnic, where we had a potluck and I met a bunch of Embassy folk, including my neighbors-- the Marines. They were pretty nice and friendly-- mostly Southern guys.

Today was my first day on my newly established schedule. I accompanied the 11th/12th grade HS counselor as she spoke to the seniors about college applications and personal essays. I am supposed to be a resource for the kids as they write their application essays. Later, I spent my first block with a class of seniors working on their graduation requirement of a senior project. The students put together a project on a topic of their choice, for which they write a research paper, and present their work to a panel of 3 critics. The students are so intelligent and enthusiastic-- they're fun to work with.

In other news, Neil bought his plane ticket to Israel last week. He's arriving September 20th and staying until March 1st. We're already brainstorming trip ideas. Neil's goal for his stay in Israel is for us to visit at least 3 continents, which I fully support.

I'm starting Hebrew classes soon-- can't wait.

A day of firsts

Today was a day of firsts: my first day as a teacher ("teacher") and my first time traveling alone in Israel.

The first first went pretty well. I helped out, and there weren't any crises. The students are very well behaved and enthusiastic about school. I sat in on a 6th grade classroom today, and the diversity of the students was amazing. There 10 students total. 3 students were new to the school. A couple students had British-sounding accents-- they could have been from England or South Africa or New Zealand for all I know. There was one South Asian, one East Asian, one or two Israeli, and the rest I didn't get a chance to interact with. The rest of the day I spent in the computer lab assisting the tech department.

The second first didn't go as well. I went down to Tel Aviv to meet up with a Yale friend who spent the summer doing research on the Ethiopian Jewish community. The first part of the trip went smoothly: a friend from AIS drove me to the train station, I hopped on a train-- it took all of 8 minutes, I met a girl on the train who was taking the bus I needed to take and she escorted me to the bus stop, walked me through the bus system, and rode with me to my destination. I met up with my friend in Tel Aviv pretty easily and we walked around the city and ate dinner together while swapping Israel stories. He had a lot of interesting stories to tell about his interview-based research, and his experience in Jerusalem. His experience has been vastly different from mine. Jerusalem is a politically and religiously tense area, which is markedly distinct from the liberal atmosphere of Tel Aviv. He had the opportunity to travel in the Palestinian territories, which was interesting to hear about. Also, he felt himself under extra scrutiny and sometimes even suspicion as an African American in Israel. It was great to see a familiar face-- the only familiar face in Israel outside of the AIS community-- and to hear such a different perspective on living in Israel.

After we said good-bye (he is leaving for the States early tomorrow morning from Jerusalem) things started to go bad. I was given the wrong directions for which way to take the bus, and I didn't realize it until we were way out in the country. **Note: from this point onward all signs, announcements, and maps were in Hebrew only and nearly all random passers-by, bus drivers, and guards did not speak English** I kept thinking we were going to circle around and head back into the city, but no such luck. I got off the bus after verifying with the bus driver that I was indeed headed in the wrong direction and jumped on the first one going back into Tel Aviv. Unfortunately, it was a 20 minute wait on the side of a dark empty road before a single bus came by. I was so desperate for a ride that I got on the bus even though it wasn't the one I needed. Of course it didn't go where I needed it to go, so I eventually got off after asking the driver what to do. I then wandered around some neighborhoods, asked some people at a bar where the nearest train station was, then finally located a train station. The ticket booth was closed, and I had to ask the guards to help me maneuver through the automatic ticket machine. Finally, after getting my ticket and asking three different people where the train to Herzliya was located, I found the right track and sat down to wait. Thirty minutes later, after 8 train heading the opposite direction passed by, my train arrived. I got on, got seated, got comfortable. Immediately after departing from the station, the conductor made an announcement. Thankfully, a guy that I had asked for directions earlier knew where I was headed and told me that this train wasn't stopping in Herzliya. We got off at the next stop, then boarded the next train to come by. Three stops later I was home, I hailed a cab, and I was home. The entire episode took nearly 3 hours. (The trip to Tel Aviv only took 15 minutes.)

Today's debaucle was my first solo experience in an environment where I was absolutely lost in the language. Every other experience I've had in a foreign country has been in a place where I have studied the language or where the language is easily decipherable because of its Latin roots. I absolutely cannot read Hebrew. My verbal knowledge of Hebrew includes only Hello, Good-bye, How are you, I am fine, Good job, Thank you, Thank you very much, Good night, Good afternoon, Go straight, and Cool. I don't even know the Hebrew alphabet. I have the Hebrew comprehension and speaking ability of a mentally challenged infant. I wouldn't have gotten home if it hadn't been for the kindness, good will, and English knowledge of about forty different strangers.

On the plus side, I have lost all shyness and reserve in talking to Israelis. I ask anyone and everyone for help whenever I have the slightest question-- directions, food recommendations, instructions on how to pick fresh Israeli fruits, what the color of a soldier's uniform means. As a result, I've met a lot of really interesting people and saved a lot of time and wondering.

I need to learn Hebrew ASAP.

Oh-- on the topic of learning Hebrew, one of the Israeli teachers decided that she's going to teach me one Hebrew phrase each day. Unfortunately, "one Hebrew phrase each day" has turned out to be several variations (speaking to a male, speaking to a female, speaking in the first person, speaking generally) of several different expressions each day. I've already forgotten what she taught me today. I'll have to look them up in my Hebrew phrasebook before I see her tomorrow.

OK-- gotta be at school in 7 hours. Good night.

A walk through my neighborhood

My house:
Hahoresh St. 57.

My neighbors:

the U.S. Marine house.

My daily 3-minute commute:
Stairs up to the park-- lined with green lemon trees (they're not limes).

Up close.

Path through the barren park.

Entrance to the school:
24-hour guard patrol.

I don't have any good pictures of the school grounds yet.

A beautiful billboard I made for a math classroom today.
I definitely needed a college degree for this.


Driving to the beach after work.

My bank.

My hardware store.

Pharmacy.
(This isn't even in my neighborhood-- I just think it's cool to see all the signs in Hebrew.)

Israel has tons of these traffic circles where everyone thinks they have the right of way.
(They don't.)

Coming up on the beach.
(I never have any good pictures of the beach bc I don't want to bring my camera on my run to the beach.)

Beachfront hotel.

Front door/kitchen area.
(The rest of the apartment isn't quite ready for a photo shoot.)

Tomorrow is the first day of school! So far I don't really have any set duties except to attend the full school assembly, be introduced, then help any 6th graders that are struggling with locating and opening their lockers. Apparently, these 6th graders have a lot of difficulty dealing with their new lockers-- it takes almost 40 minutes and some of them get so upset they cry. I don't remember witnessing that kind of trauma when I was in middle school-- maybe it's a private school kid thing. So, looks like my day is pretty much set.

I don't think I'll be expected to do any real work until all the classes are settled and they've identified the kids that need extra writing assistance. Also, the class rosters are up in the air because many northern Israeli families and diplomatic families are unclear about whether they will be in Tel Aviv for the start of the school year. I'll just have to wait and see and try to keep myself busy in the meantime.

Anyways, my clothes are all ironed and I'm all ready to go. I need to act like I'm a real teacher starting tomorrow so the kids take me seriously when I actually begin working with them.

Come 8am tomorrow I will be Ms. Kim.

Scary.

Unwelcome apartmentmates Part II

Not only do I have enormous cockroaches in my apartment, but my bathroom appears to be the breeding ground for a genetically mutated form of mosquito. It looks like a daddy long-legs with wings.

+ wings = my apartmentmate.

It seems that this land of resilient, persecuted people has passed along its ability to adapt and persevere even to its bugs. Or maybe these bugs made aliyah.

Unwelcome apartmentmates

Last night, at approximately 4am, I made a discovery. Lying on the couch, drowsy, waiting for my laundry to finish, I heard a strange skittering noise. I bolted upright as a small shadow darted under the table. Instinctively I pulled my feet up where I could see them.

It was a pair of cockroaches. Sweet. I'd say they were pretty healthy, based on their size. Each roach's torso was approximately the size of a milano cookie.

I squashed one as the other skittered away, then spent the next hour scrubbing down the floors and taking all the potentially roach-attracting trash and debris outside to the dumpster.

If I see another, I'll take its picture next to some measuring apparatus so you can see what I have to deal with.

Second real day

Woke up late today bc I stayed up til 2.30am last night. Came back from the beach late, cooked dinner late, a friend stayed over late, went online 'til late, read 'til late, went to bed late. Unfortunately, our full staff picture was this morning at precisely 8.15am. I ran into school around 8.17, and rounded the corner to the specified picture site to see the entire staff minus me and about three others.

Had a bomb drill, then a series of high school staff and department meetings. After this afternoon, I have a better idea of what I will be doing. The high school history and english departments want to use me as a writing tutor. In the past, the intern had to read, edit, and sign every single essay of every single student in these two areas. It sounds like the current departments want to return to that system, which should keep me busy.

Friday afternoons the American teachers go out to the beach together to swim, drink, and hang out, which I just came back from. When we were out on the beach, a pretty consistent stream of helicopters and military planes flew north on the coast, which is not normal. I guess it's all part of Israel's expanded offensive against Lebanon.

The highlight of my day was definitely at 2.30pm, when the school gave me my very own brand new IBM Thinkpad with this sweet fingerprint scan security feature. Rather than laboriously typing in a username and password to log on, I can just slide my finger against a small laser to unlock the computer. Very sweet.

I'm still having trouble with the whole military time thing. I know it's basic, basic arithmetic, but it still takes me a second to decipher.

I am soooooooo excited to sleep in tomorrow.

An emotionally exhausting day

Today was the first day of full staff orientation. It was a shock to expand from the intimate group of 12-15 newbies with whom I've been spending nearly 24 hours a day for the past week to the full staff of 75. There were far too many faces, names, nationalities, places of birth, places of residence, hobbies, subjects and levels taught, marital statuses, and numbers of children to remember.

After an hour and a half of introductions and a get-to-know-you game, we had a memorial service for a Kindergarten teacher who was tragically killed in downtown Tel Aviv at the end of July. Although I never met this man, it was clear that he was well-loved and his death leaves a deep void in the community. It was difficult to see my new co-workers struggling with their grief.

Immediately after the memorial, a regional security officer from the U.S. Embassy gave an extremely unsettling briefing of the current Israel-Hezbollah crisis. I'm not sure if he intended to give such an overly pessimistic opinion (maybe to prepare us for any one of the worst case scenarios), but his speech was very alarming and left all the new staff in a thinly veiled panic.

The regional security officer (from here on referred to as Mr. RSO) told us that he didn't have any advice as to how we could protect ourselves or our families from the rockets of Hezbollah. Mr. RSO told us that the situation was extremely volatile and impossible to predict.

"This is the Middle East. That's just the nature of this type of conflict," he told us.

If warning sirens were heard, Mr. RSO said, we had between 15 seconds and one minute to get ourselves into a bomb shelter. But even after the sirens stopped, there was no way to be certain we were safe, he warned.

"Once, one of our guys was stepping out of the shelter after the sirens stopped, and the bunker was hit with a rocket," he said. "There's just no way to be sure."

Mr. RSO had a few other uplifting anecdotes to share.

"A man was riding his bike to a bomb shelter when he was hit with a rocket," said Mr. RSO. "If he would have left 1 or 2 seconds earlier or later he would have been fine."

"You know, the Hezbollah have no system to aim their rockets. They shoot a few rockets, turn on CNN, see where they hit, and then adjust their direction. It's like a giant sling-shot," he explained.

Was there any possibility that nuclear or biological weapons could be used against us, a teacher asked.

"Oh, yes, those are definitely possibilities. If Syria and Iran get involved, you might want your gas mask handy."

Mr. RSO continued, "I'm sorry I don't have anything more helpful to say. The katyusha rockets come in at such low altitudes; they're difficult to detect. By the time the sirens start, a few rockets have usually already hit."

"If you hear some loud booms, I would head for the nearest bomb shelter," he wisely advised.

"But really, Israel has an excellent radar system," Mr. RSO finished.

Fabulous. At this point, I'm patting myself on the back for being too lazy to fully unpack my bags.

After the talk, however, the Israeli teachers confirm what many suspect. The man's statements are ridiculous, and there is no need to panic.

"If Hezbollah fires rockets to Tel Aviv, we'll know," a veteran teacher tells me.

But how will we know, I ask.

The teacher explains that the only rockets powerful enough to reach Tel Aviv are those powered by an engine, which would be detected and tracked by radar. Because katyusha rockets have no engine, they are difficult to track and thus their trajectories are impossible to predict. But katyusha rockets have a very limited range, and Tel Aviv is far beyond the radius of danger.

After work, I head to the beach for a run, a swim, and some frisbee, only to come home to news of the attempted terrorist attacks. I'm amazed at the grand scale, complexity, timing, and, even more, the detection and aversion of this plot. I can't imagine the repercussions this will have on the already painful process of air travel.

Also, a 25-year-old Italian tourist was stabbed in Jerusalem today by an "Arab youth." The tourist died from his wounds. I was actually planning on visiting Jerusalem this weekend. Don't know yet if I'll change my plans.

On a different note-- an unusual piece of news: "Mum names son after Hezbollah rocket."

My first sailing expedition!

Today marked my inaugural experience on a sailboat. One of the teachers, Christina, has been sailing since she was 2. She is a member of the local marina and rents a boat one afternoon every week. This afternoon, Christina took a couple of us new teachers out on her 38-foot sailboat for a three hour sailing expedition on the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean is surprisingly rough, and I was terrified of getting seasick on this (relatively) small boat. Pre-departure, Christina said, "And if you get seasick, I'm sorry but we're still coming back at 5." Thankfully, my stomach didn't fail me and sailing was amazing.

Boarding the boat.

Our fearless captain.

Exiting the marina.

View of the Herzliya shoreline.

Michelle up on the bow.

Up on the bow.

Learning how to steer.
(I was terrible at it.)

Tomorrow is our first day of full staff orientation. School starts in exactly one week!