THE LABYRINTH

Life's a bloody maze!

Topics:
-Food and Spiritual Strife
-Major Ido
-Overheard in Tel Aviv
-The Labyrinth
-Prostitution
-"Clubbing"
-Self Respect

Food and Spiritual Strife

The other day we had a seminar about food.

We got a guided tour of Machane Yehuda Market, aka, "The Shuk."

Some of the stalls in the market have been owned and operated by the same families for generations. And then some people, like Itzik, come on only certain days and sell handmade stuff right from their homes. His pickled veggies = delicious.

The guy who runs this produce shop doesn't have prices on anything... he takes a look at you and what you want and names a price.  A lot of really poor people shop here because he will give them a rate based on what he thinks they can afford.

This place is famous for its kubeh (kind of like meatballs) and other food. It made me nostalgic because Matat and I escaped here during Taglit <3

Our homework for the seminar was to prepare a dish that has some significance to us.

Cooking for a group of Jews of various backgrounds is a difficult thing to do, in particular because of laws of kashrut. I've already talked on this blog about some of the standard rules (no pork, no shellfish, no mixing meat/dairy, using separate dishes/sponges for meat and dairy, carefully washing lettuce so as not to eat non-kosher insects, etc...) but today I learned about a new rule, called "Bishul Yisrael" or the "Cooking of a Jew". Or more accurately, I learned about Bishul Akum... the cooking of a Pagan.

So I spent a lot of time thinking about how best to prepare my dish. I chose a vegetarian dish, so that avoids most kosher issues. But my kitchen isn't really kosher. We have separate things for meat and dairy, but I'm pretty sure we've messed up with them before, and when you mess up you're supposed to re-kosher them (Dip them in a mikveh or an open body of water), which we definitely didn't do. We have separate meat/dairy sponges even, but again, I'm pretty sure we've not been super consistent with that. So if I cooked in my kitchen, it wouldn't really be kosher. So I thought about if I wanted to go cook in someone else's kitchen, a really kosher one, but in the end I decided against it.

Which is great, because I learned today about this "Bishul yisrael" business, which says that Jews can't eat food cooked entirely by non-Jews.  Aka, they can't eat bishul akum, or the cooking of a Pagan.  It doesn't matter if the food is prepared perfectly according to the laws of kashrut, if the cooking is done entirely by a non-Jew, it's not kosher, really. The way to get around this, I guess, is to have a true-blue-Jew participate in the cooking in some way... like turning on the oven, or stirring the pot, or something. You need the assistance of  Jew to make it truly kosher.

And as I've cried about many times on this blog (and sometimes actually literally cried about), Jews that are religious enough to care about this, are also religious enough to consider me not a Jew (because I don't have a Jewish mother). So even if I followed all the laws of kashrut, and even if I went to someone else's totally kosher kitchen, unless I got a "really" Jewish friend to help me, I am not capable of making kosher food.  Because I'm a pagan.

(don't be fooled... I'm a pagan.)

I was sitting there at our potluck dinner and just feeling like... fuck it. Okay, I'm done. This is a level of absurdity with which I cannot grapple, and as a folklorist you might imagine I can grapple with a lot of absurdity. 

I think that underneath my bafflement is an acknowledgement that actually, this is a really effective kind of rule. The point of kashrut is to divide the Jewish community from other communities, to keep it separate and prevent socialization between Jews and non-Jews, and thus prevent intermarriage. And this policy has worked a long time... the Jews have survived some crazy shit basically because of self-isolation. And this rule, right now, feels really super effective on me. It's really pushing me away. I need the help of a REAL Jew? No, thank you. Just no. 

And I guess that's a win for the preservation of the Jewish people. Because while yes, I identify as Jewish and nothing else, let's face it - I'm a lot else. I'm also German and Norwegian, and I also have all this Asian cultural heritage, and I'm also an American who values diversity and flexibility and progress and social evolution, and I'm also a feminist, and I'm also a writer, and you know what they say about us creative types...

I do mix with everybody. Most of my closest friends are not Jewish. 

And who's to say that, like my Judaism, these other aspects of me won't flare up one day? I didn't care about being Jewish growing up, this is a recent development. I suppose it's conceivable that one of these days, I'm going to learn something interesting about vikings and decide that my allegiance is with the Norwegians, that my place is eating pickled fish at the fjords. I don't know. I can't promise that won't happen.

And I can't promise it shouldn't happen. I don't think I'm less than a Jew, but I do think I'm more than just my Jewish side. So maybe kashrut is right to caution Jews against mingling with me, to make it impossible for me to feed them without the help of their own. It feels so weird to write "they" about Jews, instead of "we." I don't think I've talked like that since I was very, very young. But it's how I am feeling at the moment. I heard you, kashrut, I heard you. I'm not one of you, okay, okay. Hide your children, hide your men, ya'll need to be protected from me. I might snap up one of your men and take him back to America with me and raise a family away from rocket fire. This could happen. You're right to be worried about my shiksa wiles, you're right.

Major Ido

But while I was wallowing in that bitterness, Ido said to me, "Ariane, what are you doing on Sunday?" And when I said I didn't know, he said, "Because I'm getting a new rank in the army, and there's a little ceremony at my base, would you want to come?"

Of COURSE I wanted to come! Ido works for 8200, which is an elite branch of IDF intelligence, and outsiders normally can't go to the base, but he cleared me ahead of time so I got to go. I couldn't really take pictures, obviously, but it was really interesting.

Getting ready! And I helped him shine his shoes which made me feel important ^_^

The most interesting part was when we were passing some low buildings, and Batsheva said, "That was where Ido and I were working with the team last summer, trying to find those boys." I had no idea they'd worked on that, but I'm not surprised. It makes me wonder what else they're working on, but of course I can't know. Batsheva once told me, "If we do our jobs right, you'll never know what we do all day." 

Anyway, it was really great to see Ido get his new insignia and hear his commander talk about him (even though I only understood a little bit.) And to see the Brigadier-General giving Batsheva a nod because he used to be her boss. I hang out with fancy people ^_^.

Ido eats my cooking! And he's a major in the IDF! :D

It was really near to hear the ceremony in Hebrew and just have that momentary recollection that Jews were scattered over the globe and in the last 100 years or so gathered together in their historic homeland, founded a modern nation, created armed forces to defend itself, and resurrected and reformed and ancient language in which they now conduct intelligence missions and ceremonies and commercials for shampoo. This is such an interesting place and Israel's is such an interesting story.

Afterwards we celebrated with shots and danced around the living room

And at the end of the day, Pagan or not, a very Jewish foundation is paying me to live in Israel and develop myself as a leader this year, so... 

Overheard in Tel Aviv

Noam: So you're interested in working with soldiers with PTSD, right?

Ariane: Yeah!
Noam: I have two suggestions for you. First, you should visit this institute near Azrieli, which specializes in military psychology. Everybody who wants to be a psychologist for the army needs to go through there at some point, they could give you a lot of information.
Ariane: Wow, thanks, I'll check that out. And two?
Noam: Ibn Gavriol Street 54... best burgers. Amazing. There's always a long line, but you have to go, you'll love it.

Ariane: So you're glad you're out of the army?
YetAnotherDude: Totally. Yes.
Ariane: What makes you have such an emphatic answer?
YAD: Um... being in control of my body again. It's basically slavery, did you know? They own you. Did you know that technically, you can be penalized for getting a sunburn when you're in the army? For damaging army property.
Ariane: o_O

StillADifferentDude: I was supposed to go on Birthright once.
Ariane: Oh? What happened?
SADD: I was a platoon commander, of tanks. Anyway it was a month before my service ended, and my commander called me and said my unit was being deployed to Gaza.
Ariane: Oh O_O
SADD: Yeah, so in the middle of the night I had to wake my mother up. And I said, "Ima... don't panic, please. But I'm not going to Birthright in the morning, I'm going to Gaza instead."

This facebook post from Israel Defense Forces:

Sam and his friend Katie and I went to Jaffa, to Abu Hassan, which has arguably the best hummus in the world.

This is the beach literally 10 feet from the school where I volunteer

So I volunteer at a mostly Arab school in Jaffa, and the kids are amazing. They love to learn and they are very sweet and energetic and funny. Like this:

Ariane: Okay girls! What color is my shirt?

Girls: Your. Shirt. Is. Red.

Ariane: Very good! And what color are my boots?

Janat: Your. Boots. Are. Brown!

Ariane: Excellent. And what color is my hair?

Najwa: Your. hair. is. yellow. and. black.

Ariane: Black???

Najwa: *points to roots*

Ariane: No, we don't say that. It's yellow. Just yellow. My hair is yellow.

Also, Yahli continues to be wise...

Ariane: *Tells about deeply personal conundrum*

Yahli: Well you know what they say! If the dog is grey, it has some black in it...

Ariane: What does that mean?

Yahli: I just totally made that up. I don't know. But it sounds good, doesn't it?

Action shot of Ido and Batsheva making malawach... which is a delicious pancake thingy with an egg inside

The Labyrinth

The next seminar from my program was on Tel Aviv By Night... what happens in this glorious heap of a city after the sun sets. The first thing we did was take a tour of the Central Bus Station...

And it was AMAZING. 

"But Ariane," you might be thinking, "Why would you take a tour of a bus station? How is this bus station different from all other bus stations?"

I'm glad you asked this question, because the story of the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station is just what I wanted you to know.

The New Central Bus Station (CBS) is the second largest transportation hub in the entire world! Some stats:

-It covers 11 ACRES of land!

-It contains over 7 KILOMETERS of cooridors!

-There are no external windows, it lets in no natural light.

-There are no straight lines of sight. All floors, etc, are diagonals.

-There are 7 floors... and actually there are TWO 7th floors that are not at all connected to one another.

-It was intended to accomodate 100,000,000 people a day.

-It is designed to look like you're on an outside street inside... with street lights and stuff in doors. "A city under a roof" said architect Ram Karmi.

Much of it is now abandoned and closed off, so you need a guide to really see it, which we had!

Streetlights inside

Everything's twisty and diagonal and weird

Karmi's book of blueprints for the building is called "The Labyrinth", so he knew very well the monstrosity he was building. It was designed this way basically to lull people into a shopping stupor. You don't know what time it is, you don't know where you are, what floor you're on, what planet your'e on... so you just buy stuff.

But its intricacies and funding issues meant it took nearly 24 years to complete, meaning when it finally opened in the 90s, it was already a dated building. And the neighborhood was consumed by floods of illegal immigrants, mostly from Sudan, and is pretty blighted. 

Today the shops are a very bizarre mix indeed. There are hair salons, clothing and shoe stores, a Phillipino super market, a pet store, tech stores, clearly bootlegged stores, vast lingerie shops, one shop that is a restaurant/pawnshop/ AND grocery store, a library, a free STD testing clinic, 2 preschools for migrant children and asylum seekers... 

Stuff at an asian market... why are these eggs purple??

There are 1,400 shops in the station, and many more abandoned spaces. There were supposed to be busses going to all 7 floors, but there is only enough traffic to support 2 of the floors, so the others are empty. 

So why is this albatross of a transport hub still open? Why have they not destroyed it and built something cleaner, and easier and more reasonable?  There are 3 main reasons:

1) There are over 3,000 people who own pieces of the building, and they can't agree on anything

2) There was so much concrete used to build the thing that if they took it apart, it would take 4 YEARS to disassemble it without destroying the surrounding neighborhood... and then what would they do with all that concrete?

3) THE BATS (I'll get to this)

Here our guide explains the mysterious number system on all the shops:

First digit is the floor (4)

Second is the hallway number (4)

Last two are the shop number (05)

Thank God, I always get SO lost, this might help... a little.

Signage in the CBS is notoriously awful. Notable strangeness:

1) Okay so what happened to the fifth floor? Does it not exist?

2) It hasn't been possible to bus from TLV to Cairo for many, many years

This sign was literally hung the wrong way. It points at a wall. And no one bothered to turn it around, decades later. 

The signs were so wrong and so confusing that they just gave up and took most of them down, so you pretty much have to wander the abandoned hallways looking for where you're trying to go and hoping you stumble upon your bus.

I am good at finding the bus TO Jerusalem, but still whenever I arrive at the CBS I get lost. WHENEVER.

Tel Aviv Arts Council This Way! Really?!?

Curious outside architecture inside.

What am I to make of the fact that the air vents leave these marks...?

We stumbled upon some alternative theater group rehearsing in one of the abandoned areas

In order to get to the basement you have to cross this wall that looks rather like the West Bank security wall

This says "Do Not Enter", but of course, we entered

AND THEY GAVE US FLASH LIGHTS AND IT WAS LIKE I WAS ON AN EPISODE OF GHOST HUNTERS AND IT WAS THE BEST THING EVER.

THIS IS LITERALLY A SINK IN AN ABANDONED BASEMENT MEDICAL CLINIC.

THIS IS LITERALLY SOME CREEPY SHRINE SOMEBODY SET UP

WHY IS THIS HERE?!?

LITERALLY.

So you come around the other side, and you find... an abandoned cinemaplex. In the bus station. With 6 theaters! This is the box office. Or was.

This is where the concession stands were

A room lined with plastic garbage bags?? Why??

Because of all the concrete, the CBS is basically indestructible. So of course they used to station a unit of soldiers here just in case some horrible disaster befell Israel, there'd be some people left to protect the survivors. But the soldiers were really bored so they mostly drank beer and screened their own movies in one of the theaters.

This way to the nuclear fallout shelter! :D

It has huge creepy red crank-operated blast doors! :D

It's HUGE!

It was marked by Cheshire Cat, a graffiti artist who places grins in places he thinks need to be covered in street art. Like "Hey you! Paint here!"

And THIS is a door to the totally functional situation room, WITHIN the abandoned fallout shelter, WITHIN the abandoned floor of the blighted central bus station. Behind these doors are tons of advanced computers, maps, scanners, security protocols... you know, in case of the apocalypse.

In case you REALLY have to go on the way to the shelter

HERE BE BATS!

Okay. So. Behind this walled in space there is an enormous cavern that no one can go into anymore. It was supposed to be used for bus parking, but it was left empty, and bats moved in. Lots of bats. So many bats, and in such a unique combination of species, that the Israeli government declared this a NATURE PRESERVE. A nature preserve WITHIN the central bus station! It can't be torn down or violated by federal law, to protect the bats!

The original subterranean departures call, designed to be like an airport, so loved ones could stand on this balcony and wave goodbye to their loved ones below... who were taking intra-city busses to 10 blocks away.

These ramps led to the busses, like plane ramps. But people were too creeped out to line up in them so they'd skip the CBS and wait for the bus at the second stop, out on the street.

This busses were never on time, so they just covered up the time slots with tape.

Of course this is in the bus station!

Rehearsals of a Philippine Children's Dance Troop

And then... you go into this little oddity's shop... and go through the back door, and suddenly you're in...

A Yiddish museum! All the books (and there are over 50,000) are in Yiddish!

And there's a cool performance space!

I found this book beautiful

Prostitution

Then we basically took a guided tour of the red light districts and learned about human trafficking in Israel, which is a huge problem. It was really upsetting and difficult, so I'm just going to give some bullets.

Our guide was Ran Gavrieli, an amazing activist who is best known for his "Why I Stopped Watching Porn" TED talk (You must watch this. It's great.)

-When victims of human trafficking are 'rescued,' they're generally sent back to the countries they were kidnapped from... not given a visa to stay and prosecute their attackers.

-Traffickers generally jump bail and flee the country. Those who are sent to prison eventually benefit from public funds dedicated to reform prisoners, help them get educated, help them get a job post-prison... which is ironic, because there are no such government funds to rehabilitate former sex workers or victims of human trafficking.

-One area in South Tel Aviv, near the CBS, is known as the "Tolerance Zone" where pretty much the police will not go. Ran once saw three guys raping a girl in broad daylight here, though Ran and his friend interfered of course.  And the girl was a junky and wasn't even really aware of what was happening to her.

-Israel was ranked 3, on a 3 point scale in terms of human trafficking problems (3 being the worst). the US threatened to reduce national aid if they didn't work on this, so Israel instituted a few reforms that bumped them up to 2. Once the US continued their aid though, trafficking was basically ignored again.

-Ran pointed out the spectrum of prostitution by making the argument that in a marriage where the man brings the financial capabilities and the woman brings sex isn't so different.

-There is a line item in the financial package given to injured IDF soldiers to pay for sex (!!!!!!!!!)

-Ran feels that Israel's positive feelings about the military are a kind of Stockholm syndrome... that Israelis are suck in this situation, so they've learned to take pride in it, the way that some prostitutes claim to be 'empowered' by their sex work

Ran estimated that 60-70% of these apartments were used for prostitution

"Clubbing"

Our panel on the night life scene in Tel Aviv

Next we had a panel about Tel Aviv nightlife, manned by a professional party planner, a DJ, a dancer, and a drag queen. It was really interesting and they were so nice! My favorite quote:

"I'm in full drag, and we're a thousand people without shirts, and a rabbi came and lit Channukah candles for all of us. It was a moment, in heels, for me. A religious moment in heels."

Also this gem:

Her: "It's about the music"

Him: "I don't know, some people go out, not looking for music."

Her: "Lesbians, for example, they come out to sit and cry about their exes."

Then we all went to a club and drank and danced :).

And yes, that was also part of my program.

Self Respect

In the original story of the labyrinth, Ariadne gives Theseus a ball of string to take in with him so he can find his way out again. I think going into any experience... like say moving to a new country, or embarking on a new relationship, or starting a job... the ability to navigate it and maybe to get out again without being mauled by a minotaur depends on self respect and being anchored in yourself. I found this quote on self respect the other day and I really like it:

"To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice or carelessness. However long we post- pone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un- comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves."

-Joan Didion

Shit Israelis (And I) Say

Topics!

-Israeli Political Debate
-Overheard in Tel Aviv
-That time I was robbed
-Hebrew improvement


Debate!

So I attended a big political debate for internationals here in Tel Aviv. Rivka told me that only Americans would go to such a thing, that political debates are not Israeli. Well, in that case, I think it's clever for candidates to engage in something for a specific voter base.  Plus, olim (immigrants) can vote in Israel AND in some other country (often the US...) so you get double influence if you speak to us.

These were the representatives:

Tzachi Hanegbi - Likud (Right wing, current ruling party), he couldn't make it, which is too bad

Hilik Bar - Avoda/Labor (Center Left)

Michael Oren - Kulanu (Center)

Tamar Zandberg - Meretz (Far Left)

Ayelet Shaked - Bayit Yehudi (Far Right)

Yaakov Peri - Yesh Atid (Center Right)

Here are some of the more notable quotes from the evening...

Bar (Labor) - He suggested that a two state solution is the only true Zionist solution, because otherwise we either annex the West Bank and give those Arabs voting rights and lose the Jewish majority and the Jewish state, or we annex the West Bank and don't give them voting rights and lose Israeli's status as a democracy.  "I suggest a two state solution, which is a respectful divorce from the Palestinians rather than the Catholic marriage that other parties want."

Ayelet Shaked (Bayit Yehudi) - "No parties are talking about peace. We need to acknowledge that a peace agreement is not going to happen, so what do we do in this situation? In the Gaza disengagement, the left wing parties spoke about trade agreements with the Palestinians and vacation villages, and the right talked about tunnels and missiles and look - we have only tunnels and missiles." She suggested we annex area C of the West Bank and give the Arab minority there full citizenship.

Michael Oren (Kulanu) - "In the West Bank, Palestinians have something to lose, life is relatively good for them there, which is why they don't rebel. Gazans have nothing to lose, so they revolt. W need to try to improve their daily life without strengthening Hamas."

Bar (Labor) - "What are you so afraid of, Ayelet? The two state solution would result in a demilitarized Palestine, and even if they go back on that promise, then we will have the legitimacy in the world, as a state acting upon another hostile state, to give them the biggest punch in the face!" (quote!)

Ayelet Shaked (Bayit Yehudi) - "That's not the case! There will still be a civilian population there, we can't just smash them. We should move out and then let ISIS take over and THEN fight them? NO THANKS!"

Tamar Zandberg (Meretz) - "Can we blame the rest of the world, who loves us, for trying to help us change our unfair policies?"

Shaked - "We shouldn't try to be loved. We should try to be right, and explain how we are, and not give up the right in order to be loved."

Zandberg - "We shouldn't explain our bad policies we should fix them."

Shaked - "I live in the Middle East, I don't live in a dream. With states crumbling into Jihad all around us, I'm not crazy enough to give one centimeter of land to the Arabs!"

Bar - "Someone who doesn't believe in peace is not a true Zionist. There must be hope."

Oren - "We're going to need a 'Diplomatic Iron Dome.'

Bar - "There are those Arabs who want to live next to us... Jordan, Egypt... and those like ISIS who want to live here instead of us, and with them we will speak only through our very brave soldiers."

Then they each talked about their major domestic points:

Bayit Yehudi - More competition in banks, lower cost of living

Kulanu - More LGBT rights, lower cost of living, break banking/import/land distribution monopolies

Yesh Atid - More LGBT rights (Zandberg interjected that despite claiming this, Yesh Atid voted against them...), deal with corruption, lower cost of living, better welfare/healthcare situation

Labor - Create equal opportunities across Israel regardless of race/economic class/geographic location of birth. "We Jewish are proud of our huge heads, and we've invented so much amazing stuff but we can't find a way that children born fifty km apart can have the same chance at education and a future."

Meretz - Separation of church and state, equality across gender/race/wealth/orientation lines. And she added that Meretz votes according to their policies.  "This is a relatively new idea, to vote according to your position. It is crazy that here in the Jewish homeland, the democratic state of Israel, there are Jews who can't get married according to their own beliefs."

Overall, I thought most people made good points and also some silly points.  As I was leaving, Shev bounced up to me and said "Ariane! Did anything you heard today change your mind?" And mid-yawn, all I could say was, "I'm confused.



Overheard in Tel Aviv

aka bits of conversation...

In Hebrew, many words sound very close to other words. The other day I was at Shabbat dinner with a bunch of people I just met for the first time. And someone was asking me if it was okay since everyone was speaking hebrew.  So I said "Ken! Ani Smicha!"

Which I meant to mean "Yes, I'm happy!"

But SmEcha is "happy." What I actually said was , "Yes, I am a blanket!" :D


***

Ariane: What did you do in the army?
Dude: I was in the paratroopers. I wanted to be a pilot, but I didn't make it. You know what they say, you try to fly the planes, and in the end you just jump out of them.
Ariane: That's cool though, did you enjoy it?
Dude: Sure, yeah I did. I still have a lot of friends from my unit. And I learned a lot of great skills, because I was a medic.
Ariane: Ooh, like what?
Dude: Like CPR. I'm really good at CPR!
Ariane: Did you have to use it in the field?
Dude: Sure, but mostly on Arab terrorists that we shot and then I'd have to revive them.
Ariane: Whoa. That's intense.
Dude: Not really, compared to most of what we did.
Ariane: o_O

***

OtherDude: You're so cute! I just want to bite you!
Ariane: Uh... thank you? So... uh... what's your dream job? If there were not obstacles, what would you do?
OtherDude: I guess I'd be a soccer player. How about you?
Ariane: Well... you're going to laugh, but hear me out...
OtherDude: Let me guess: a princess.
Ariane: No. A Mossad agent.*

*Doing historic artifact recovery for Israel

***

Family Portrait of "Hadira" (the apartment)

I was in the kitchen doing the dishes, and...

Ido: Ariane! Come in here, we're having a family conversation.

I walked in and Ido and Yahli were talking in Hebrew, and Ido turns to me...

Ido: Ariane, do you think we should beat up Nir?*
Ariane: Aw.
Yahli: Yes, we will break his legs.
Ariane: Aw, you guys! You don't have to do that, but that's a nice thought.
Ido: We think he should be sensitive towards our sister.
Yahli: Yeah, so invite him over and we'll kill him.
Ido: Is he a big guy?
Yahli: Does he have a lot of muscles?
Ariane: I don't know, not especially.
Yahli: Does he have any martial arts training?
Ido: Does he do karate?
Yahli: Find out this stuff first before we beat him up.  If he's medium skill level then yeah, we can take him. Better than that though... and never mind, you're on your own.

*Yet a different dude, who somewhat hurt me


***

Yahli: Ido is a really tough commander.
Ido: There is a rumor that I don't let my soldiers go to the bathroom without asking first.
Ariane: Is it true?
Ido: No! That's absurd!
Yahli: My commander told me that though, it's going around the base.
Ido: That's crazy! Of course I don't do that!!

***

Yahli: Blah blah blah shoah. Blah shoah shoah shoah. (Hebrew)
Ariane: Are you talking about the shoah?
Anna: Yahli compares everything to the shoah. Even if it's not that bad, everything is the Shoah.
Ido: Like Yahli says I'm the shoah to my soldiers.

***

Ariane: You wear a different uniform on your way to base than you do on base, right?
Yahli: It depends. If you're living on base, you'll usually change into a more comfortable one when you get there. But we just stay in our representative uniforms since we come home at night.
Ido: I had a soldier once who was stopped by military police and got 8 separate uniform complaints... his hair was too long, he wasn't shaven, he wasn't wearing his dogtags, and he was wearing flipflops, and...
Yahli: He was wearing FLIPFLOPS?!?

***

Ariane: Today a guy at the shuk (market) called me a pretty lady!
Yahli: Really? Was he with a dog and carrying a cane?
Ariane: No.
Yahli: Was he wearing sunglasses and kind of stumbling along?
Ariane: No. *walks off*
Yahli: Hey! You ARE a pretty lady!

***

Yahli: (hands me a crumpled up pricetag) Ariane... here is a gift for you. It's symbolic of our relationship, and I want you to have it.
Ariane: Aw, thanks. Explain the symbolism?
Yahli: You see how there are black and white stripes?
Ariane: Uh huh.
Yahli: There are happy times, and there are sad times, in our relationship. The white parts are the happy times. The black parts are when I offend you.

***

Ariane: I'm writing a new blog entry that's pretty much entirely conversations that have taken place in this apartment.
Ido: Oh arreee you? We like you! We love you! I am the biggest Zionist ever!

***

Here is a random video I took so you could get a sense of my roommates and the timing on it is kind of remarkable actually.

Ido taught me the phrase earlier in the day, because he said it to me when I got my new phone (see below).  But I couldn't remember it, so I just said "chadash!" which just means "New!" which would be a pretty dumb thing to just say to someone when they have a new thing, but what can I say, baby linguistic steps.

That Time I Was Robbed

The other day I was walking on my street... it's a lovely tree-lined avenue and I like to listen to music and walk up and down it sometimes. Anyway, I was walking and leaving a voicemail for Gabi, when just outside my building, some dude in a hoodie on a bike just glided up behind me, said "Whoooosh!" and plucked my phone right out of my hand and sped off with it.

I tried to chase him but obviously on foot I fell behind quickly, and let's be honest, it's probably better I didn't catch him or I might also be missing teeth as well as my phone.

All in all, I'm not that upset about it. It's going to sting to pay for a new one, especially since I've been trying to save up money to make my first few aliyah months easier, but at the end of the day, meh. I called my dad on skype and he said "Are you hurt?" and when I said no, he said "Well then it's just a fuckin' phone!"  Yeah. Truth!

My Dad also said something that made me smile. I said "I'm sorry I'm calling to bitch about this, I know you have bigger fish to fry right now." And he said "Sweetheart! I never have any fish to fry bigger than you!" Aww <3.

Anyway, there are no photos in this post because this week's photos are now in the hands of my little thief. I changed all my passwords and everything, but I hope he's thrilled by my photographs of a funny looking snail I saw in the street and our Shabbat cake.

I bought a new phone that's much shittier than my old one. Obviously I'm going to be more careful now when it comes to waving my phone around at night, but it occurs to me now that it's literally like holding $400 up to your ear and playing with it in the street and so on, and I don't really want that.

Aaaand when the sales dude asked for my number when I went to leave the store, I had the really simple excuse of, "I told you, my phone was stolen, I don't have a number!"

My Brain is starting not to run away from Hebrew

You know how when you hear a language you don't know at all, your brain doesn't even try to decode it? It just sounds like blah blah blah blah. Like Hungarian vs Czech vs Turkish, if I heard them, I wouldn't know what was what.

And then you reach a point where you understand patterns in the language, so you recognize WHAT language it is. Like I know when someone is speaking Korean because of all the "sumida"s and the "da/sa yo"s in it. But I don't know what they're saying, just that they're saying it in Korean.

And THEN you get to a point where you can start to pick out words, and THEN to the point where you actually understand something that's been said to you.  

So in Hebrew, usually when I go to order coffee, I know precisely what to say to get what I want, and I know the normal questions I'm asked and the normal responses to those questions, but if the barista deviates from this script, I just freeze up and my brain doesn't process this improvised interaction and I just go "uhhhhh" until they repeat the question in English.  But TODAY, for the first time, the barista asked me a new question - did I want to eat something along with the coffee - and at first i went for the "uhhhhh" but then my brain caught up and I understood them and I answered.

Which is actually pretty exciting even though it was so minor, because it means I'm moving past the "oh they're speaking Hebrew to me..." stage and into the "they're saying something specific to me that I can decode" stage. Obviously my tutors speak Hebrew to me all the time, but they speak very specific Hebrew to me that they know I can understand, which is definitely different from the way normal people speak. And in lessons, my brain is in learning mode and my tutors will wait all day for me to word by word decipher what they said, whereas normal people in the street will get impatient and switch to English. So yay!

Here's a picture of Kiyomi. We had coffee and a nice chat on her balcony today.