Second Shabbat

Friday Sam and I went to Super Shuk, but earlier this time. We learned our lesson. On our way there Shahar (apartment one from the previous day) called me to tell me I could have the apartment!! After our errands, we went into Tel Aviv to have lunch with a girl from Tufts. We went to an Asian restaurant that has a wheat free menu. I had pad thai (with out peanuts), which was delicious. Then Sam and I ran some errands, got iced coffees and went to see the apartment again. Amir gave me a copy of the contract and I took pictures of it and emailed them to people I know who read Hebrew well enough to understand all that gobbly-gook. I’m still waiting for responses, but consensus so far is that I should not sign this contract because there are illegal clauses in it. It also seems like each tenant must pay 4500 shekels a month (instead of the 1600 I was told). There’s another clause that says that if the owners want to remodel the place they can make us pay for it. I’m waiting to hear back from some other lawyers about this stuff, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do about the place. I don’t have to let them know anything until tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll know more by then. Friday night we had Shabbat dinner at Sam’s apartment. One of Yonni’s friends was here visiting. We made shakshuka (eggs), roasted potatoes, yams and carrots, had some cheese and tuna along with other veggies. We ate on the roof looking out at the sea while listening to the Muslim call to prayer. Then, I went out with an Israeli friend I had met while traveling in South America. He picked me up and we went to a hooka longue/bar with his friends. They were nice, and spoke some English, but the place was pretty smoky and I was really tired.

Week Two

On Sunday I had more TASP stuff. Then Lindsay and I spent the day going to see apartments. At this point I had practically secured the apartment with Edi (the guy from day two). All I had to do was meet the other roommate. Lindsay still needed a place to live. We saw five places that day, many of which were awful. The first place was pretty much two dorm rooms. It was really clean, but there was no communal living space and the rooms had little kitchenettes in them. There was A/C and a really nice bathroom, but you had to walk through one room to get to the other one. Apartment number two was a room in the home of a 40-something security guard. He had come to Israel 18 years ago (not sure where he was from) to play basketball. The place was nice, but it would have been a lonely experience because he was pretty quiet and didn’t really have friends over ever. The next place we saw was in a basement. Not only is that not safe, because of potential break-ins, but it felt really dark and somewhat claustrophobic. The kitchen was pretty crappy, but the guy was awesome. He was our age and worked at a sushi restaurant. Apartment four had been broken into twice in the past four years – once through the balcony of the available room. Not only that, but the two other roommates were both smoking when we arrived and the place stunk. Number five is going to be Lindsay’s place. An Israeli guy named Oren lives there. He’s an acting student and was really nice. The apartment was adequate and in a good location. I could have chosen to take the other available room, but Lindsay and I really don’t want to live together because we’ll already be spending so much time together and we want to live with Israelis to practice Hebrew. Lastly, we went to Edi’s apartment to meet, Ana, the third roommate. She’s from Argentina and was pretty cool. We discussed switching rooms and she said she’d give me the mattress that came with the apartment because she wanted a new one (different firmness). We both told Edi that it would work and Lindsay and I went back to Yafo (she’s subletting here).

Monday was a TASP field trip to some ruins and a cave. We saw the spot where David killed Goliath. Some of the second-years came on the trip and it was nice to hear about their experiences and apartments. One of them had gone to Cornell with a friend of mine from HP. They had actually roomed together which was hilarious when we figured that out. After our outdoor activities, we went to a winery for a tasting. The wines were delicious; I even liked the white one. Monday was a pretty tiring day, but afterwards I managed to run some errands, purchasing a cell phone and apartment hunting with a guy on our program.

After orientation on Tuesday, Lindsay and I walked all over the city in search of face wash for me. Based on the lack of supply and selection, I have come to conclude that people here don’t wash their face often.

Wednesday we had a walking tour of southern Tel Aviv with TASP. We started in Yafo and made our way up, following the pattern of the formation of Tel Aviv. For lunch, we stopped and had falafel. The guide made sure there was no wheat in it, so I finally got to try it. I’ve determined that it’s pretty over rated. The tour was good, but repeated some of the stuff I had already heard about from birthright. That evening Yonni and I biked up to Tel Aviv to go sign the lease at Edi’s apartment. Edi said he would email it to me so I could translate it and come back on Thursday to sign when I had a better understanding of what it said. I thought this was a fine plan and went back to Yafo.

Thursday morning I had a meeting at my school. The principal kept the Danks and I waiting for nearly 40 minutes. We sat with her for 15 minutes before going up to the English room. There are two English teachers at the school. Limor is in her 40s and has been there for a few years. Sahar just returned to Israel after graduating from Hunter College and spending the last six years in New York City. She’s never taught before, but will be teaching most of the grades at the school. Limor is teaching the upper grades (4^th, 5^th, and 6^th). I’m going to be teaching the native speakers and gifted students. Native speakers are kids who were either born in an English-speaking country or whose parents speak English at home. The gifted kids are bused in from all parts of the city. I’ll have small groups and I’m pretty sure I’ll be the only English-instruction for these kids. Limor was shocked that I had not come prepared with a book I prefer to use. I told her that I didn’t know I was teaching elementary school until last week and found out two days ago that I would be at this school. She told me that she’d get me the phone number of a publisher and I could start thinking about what kind of book I wanted. She’s a pretty strong/harsh person and also told me that shadowing her would be useless because I’m not going to have to teach 35 kids at once, like she does. People at school were nice enough, and it will be interesting to see what it’s like once the kids arrive.

I whipped out my iPod just outside school so I could check my email. A message from Edi was in my inbox. It told me that things had changed and I wasn’t getting the apartment because a former roommate wanted to come back in October and was willing to pay for the September rent also. I came back to Yafo and immediately started looking for an apartment again. I wrote down some listings and went to see five more places that evening. The first one is a bit further south than I had originally wanted, but two Israelis live there: Shahar is 22 and in the army. She dances and does yoga. Amir studies computer science and philosophy at Tel Aviv University and he’s 25ish. The apartment is kind of dingy, but they’re really nice. The second place I saw was in a great location. Two Israeli girls live there. One is a nurse and the other is an officer in the army. The apartment was on a busy-ish street and the room faced the street. The third apartment I saw is a two-room. A Russian guy who just finished architecture school lives there. It was really homey – he had tons of art books and old cameras decorating the place. The kitchen was clean and there was a porch which is used like a living room. The roommate is leaving to move in with her boyfriend. She’s selling her bed and there are other pieces of furniture that come with the room. Anton, the Russian guy, speaks some English, but I’m not sure exactly how much. I loved the apartment and the location is pretty far north, but it’s quiet and near good grocery stores. The fourth apartment was the worst. It was a room in a two-room (no living room) with a 40-something statistician. He was pretty creepy and I left without even asking him all of my apartment questions. The fifth one was pretty bad also. It came with furniture and was in a decent location, but the 28-year-old Russian kibutznick plays piano for 3-4 hours a day, which would drive me nuts. His English was great and he didn’t smoke, but his best friend is always over and smokes like a chimney. The friend and others were actually there – it was a sort of group interview. They asked me a million questions and I just wanted to get out of there because I was tired and knew I would not be living in that apartment.

First Shabbat

Friday was the first day I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t go to Tel Aviv (except to take a sheruit, which is a sort of mini-bus that runs all the time, even on Shabbat), but spent the day in Yafo. Sam and I went to Super Shuk, a two-part supermarket. I was in the produce market, paying, which she went back to the regular market to get the ingredients we had forgotten. The woman in front of me was purchasing enough veggies to feed an army. It’s Ramadan and people have large family gatherings to break the fast. A man came around her (from the outside!?!?) and got in front of me. He said something and motioned to her. I couldn’t respond, but the woman behind me started yelling at him. There was a shouting match for a while, and the cashier didn’t really know what to do. She started to ring the man up because he was getting on everyone’s nerves. The purse of the woman buying the whole store was touching the scale and he went off on the casher for ringing him up because it was effecting the weight/price of his veggies. After he finished, I paid for my stuff and got out of there. We realized we should have gone shopping earlier in the day. We had waited until three and everyone was out shopping before Shabbat started and the stores closed down.

For Shabbat we went to an apartment in Ramat Gan. A girl from Tufts, Jackie, lives there with five other people. The six of them work for a Zionist movement. They run programs for kids and other educational events. Everything in their apartment is communal and they’ve made aliyah (they’ve become Israeli citizens). Our dinner was delicious. They had made roasted potatoes and beets, squash soup, an eggplant pastry (I didn’t eat that), grape leaves and challah. Sam and I made a salad of tomatoes, watermelon, basil and balsamic vinegar with feta cheese on top. After dinner, Sam and I went to meet up with her Israeli friend and his friends. They were hanging out at one guy’s house. His mom is Yemenite and he made us the best hummus we’d ever eaten. There were so many spices on it. The family keeps Shabbat, which was really interesting. There was a hot-water dispenser (like for tea at a catered event) in the kitchen and the hall lights were left on. The bathroom lights were not on and could not actually be turned on. We spent the rest of Shabbat (Saturday) by sleeping late and going to the beach. The beaches here are nice, but they allow dogs to run around on them, which is annoying. The dogs run around in packs getting wet and shaking water everywhere. I got stepped on at least two times and had sand thrown at me from all angles.

Beginning of Orientation/Apartment Searching

On the first day of orientation I saw two apartments. One was on the ground floor, so I pretty much ruled that out. Two American girls were moving out and there were two Aussie guys staying. The rental period was only for two months with the possibility of extending. One of the girls was actually taking the stove and the guys were way too much of partiers for my taste. After that I saw a place where a 40 year-old Russian woman was the roommate staying (a 20-something was moving out to study in Jerusalem). She seemed nice, but we would have had nothing in common and it would have been a pretty lonely experience. I had trouble finding the bus back to Yafo because apparently the 25 had stopped running. After a full day of apartment hunting, I was beginning to feel nauseous. I had purchased a single-serving of hummus, but had no way of eating it. I tried using the cereal bar I had in my bag, but that was gross and the bar fell apart. Finally I wound up going into a 24-hour market and picking up a bag of potato chips, which was disgusting, but potato chips only have three ingredients (potatoes, oil and salt), so I knew that they would be safe for me. I ate the hummus and threw out the rest of the disgusting chips as I got onto the number 18 bus.

Day two I saw another apartment, which I really liked. The guy was kind of quiet, but the place was awesome. The kitchen had everything I could want, there was air conditioning and internet. Later on, I was sitting on a bench reading from my Kindle and a woman started talking to me in Hebrew. I smiled and said (in English) that I didn’t understand Hebrew. She was older, walking with a nurse/aid, and wanted to know how the Kindle didn’t hurt my eyes. She wound up to be American; her children live in New Jersey. Those first few nights, I slept on the roof of Sam’s apartment (there are mattresses up there). I really only lasted two or three nights because the squeaking noises from the bats finally drove me nuts. I was afraid they were going to attack me or something, so I started sleeping inside on the couch, which is leather and really sticky from the heat.

On Thursday I saw another apartment near Dizzengoff center, which is a very central location. The roommates seemed like they could be cool people, but there was no a/c or washer, it was on a busy street and they had a dog. That night I met Sam and her roommate, Yonni, at pushpeshuk, a nighttime street festival in Yafo. There’s a market (shuk – hence the name) and lots of live music. I had a “fruit shake” for dinner and watched the bands perform. Sam went out, so Yonni and I walked back to the apartment and he made shakshuka, which is essentially scrambled eggs with veggies and tomato sauce. We went up to the roof to eat it and the shakshuka fell off the edge of the roof! It was hilarious and convenient because I wasn’t that hungry and he was adamant about feeding me.

Arriving in Israel

My flight to Israel left Sunday afternoon. I few Czech Air and thought I would be one of the only people flying through Prague to Tel Aviv. Boy, was I wrong. My flight was full of orthodox Jews, both Israeli and American. Every other person was carrying a hatbox, many were also wearing tallit. Our flight arrived in Prague at 6 am local time. To fly to Isarel you have to pass through special security at the gate, which was not yet open. So I sat around as all the other Jews prayed, washed their hands and ate their kosher snacks from New York.

The other funny thing about the flight was the number of kosher meals served. I had ordered a gluten-free meal. The flight attendants came around with the “special meal” lists and kept trying to serve me a kosher meal. I had to keep correcting them and request my gluten-free meal. They figured it out, but it took a while. When they cleaned up, the kosher meals had to be collected separately which meant other passengers were really confused as to why their meal trays were still on their tables. I understood what was going on, and chuckled to myself.

When I arrived, the airport was insanely busy. I took a train to Tel Aviv and then a taxi to Sam’s apartment. The taxi drivers were trying to convince me to pay them a flat-fee instead of using the meter, which Sam had explicitly told me to do. I fought the taxi drivers and wound up walking to another area to take a taxi with a meter.

Sam showed me around her amazing apartment, which has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room/dining room/kitchen area, a covered patio, balcony and rooftop balcony. She lives with two Israeli guys: Yonni, who is 21 and just got out of the army, and Shay, who is in his late 20s-early 30s and works at a restaurant at night. The apartment is in Jaffa (Yafo in Hebrew) which is considered a southern part of Tel Aviv and is much older than Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv was founded by people who moved out of Yafo.

Sam and I walked up to Tel Aviv to the beach. Her friend Daniela came and met us there. She took us back to here apartment which she’s leaving. It’s a one room place – practically a dorm room – on the ground floor. It had a kitchenette and bathroom, but I didn’t think the door was very secure and I don’t really want to live by myself. Then Sam and I went for hummus, which was delicious. Here you can eat hummus with a pita (not for me!) or people dip onion in it.

Last days at home

After Cape Cod, I went home for a few days, one of which was spent in the city. I saw Jess for the first time after our Euro-trip. I also went to the Museum of Natural History and saw the big whale and the dinosaurs. I hadn’t actually been to the museum since I was seven years old and I was surprised at how nice some of the sections were. The tired diorama cases hadn’t changed much, but the newer space and animal exhibitions were modern. Joe and I went out for sushi and then back to NJ.

Cape Cod

I had to get up to Cape Cod while I was home: after having spent last summer there, I missed it terribly. Steve drove down from where he lives with his family (north of Boston). I was glad he was able to come because it was the only time I got to see him.

I had already gone to the beach before he arrived. We went to another beach for a while and then went to dinner at Squire. I hadn’t realized that Steve had never tasted raw oysters or clams, so we ordered some. He determined he liked the oyster better, but I don’t think he’ll be ordering either one soon.

The next day we went on a walk up in Eastham. It had looked cloudy, so we weren’t going to do it, but the sun stayed out for our entire, two-mile walk. Our destination was Coast Guard Beach. On the way, we were eaten alive by bugs. They weren’t mosquitoes, rather triangular-shaped giant, biting flies. It got to be so annoying that we wound up walking the bike path where there were far fewer bugs. The beach was really crowded, but we managed to find a space to hang out for a while.

Our last day on the cape, we went on a walk through the nature reserve. I had been there with my mom, but we had never walked the entire path. It’s not actually a long path and it cuts through the wooded/marshy area. Steve and I missed that turn-off and wound up walking around the entire mini-peninsula. When we realized we were way off the course of the path, we tried to take another path, but that one led up to someone’s house. Instead, we had to cross the dune area. We finally made it back to the marked path, nearly two hours after we set out. As we were walking back up the beach to get to the parking area, Steve, who was barefooted, stubbed his toe on a rock. We went back to the house, he iced and taped it, but it had swelled pretty badly. He went to the doctor’s when he got home and it was broken. The doctor told him to ice it, tape it and rest, which was the same treatment I had prescribed!

I’m really glad I went to the cape because I got to see people from last year. It was nice to go back to the beaches I had hung out at last year. I also went on a run/walk along my old route. Chatham is probably my favorite place on earth.