Food for my thoughts

A few days ago I received an email from a good friend who asked a very interesting question (thank you Debbie). She wanted to know what things about moving here were harder than I had imagined they would be and which things were easier. I think it’s a really interesting question and I’ll try to answer it. Hopefully I do a thorough job.

On the positive Side- Many things have been a lot easier or a lot more natural than I had anticipated. Take my relationship with David for example. Most of our relationship has been (very very unfortunately) long distance. I was really worried that when I got here and we would start to spend significant amounts of time together and really start to build a routine together that there might be problems. Maybe we wouldn’t fit together as well as we had though? Maybe we’d find each other just plain annoying? Questions like that plagued me for the weeks leading up to my aliyah. Thank G-d we have been very fortunate. Being so close to him has been even better than I could have possibly imagined. He gets a long great with my friends and I with his, we enjoy spending as much time together as possible (obviously or we would have broken up by now), and we are simply just very happy to be together. It makes me very happy that things are working out so well ☺

Another thing that is better than I could ever have imagined is my apartment situation. Rebecca and I get along so well that I am having withdrawals from her and we are only going to be apart for a total of 3 days. She went to Beer Sheva for Shabbat ☹. We do pretty much everything together. After I come home from ulpan we play before I start my homework. She has been on break between finishing her Sheirut Leumi (National Service in place of the army) and starting a job and school. We make dinner together every night and have even started making art projects to decorate our depressingly white walls. Unfortunately we hardly see our third roommate Shira because she works a night shift for an American company, but when she is around we all get along great. Physically the apartment is coming together really well. We hung up our first piece of homemade artwork and Rebecca’s geometric wall is AMAZING (see picture). My room is being painted next once I get over my laziness over clearing out most of my furniture… We have a cool chandelier thing, two couches, and we even have curtains that we have to figure out how to hang. Basically it’s so cool and really exciting to have a place of my own with people that I like and an eclectic fun decorating style.

Ulpan fits into both categories. It is a ton more fun than I could have ever ever guessed. My class is so diverse that it is always interesting to talk to my classmates. We also get along great and always have a good time with each other. Our teachers are also some of the best teachers I’ve ever had for anything. They really help promote a good classroom atmosphere and really bend over backward to make sure we are doing well. They make class so fun that sometimes we forget that we are really learning (until the test comes around obviously!) Hopefully I will leave the ulpan with some good new friends.

On the negative side ulpan is much harder for me than I had anticipated. My Hebrew is very good from the point of view that I can get along in life and converse about many topics fairly fluently, but from the proper speech and grammar point of view I am very weak. I am managing though. I had to give a presentation the other day which was pretty fun. I had to translate a song from English to Hebrew, present it to the class, and explain why I chose it all in Hebrew. The teacher commented that I am very comfortable in front of an audience (as if that should come as a shock to anyone) and that my speaking Hebrew is very good. YAY!

Social things are also a bit harder than I had hoped. I knew things wouldn’t be easy with the majority of my friends in the army. Unfortunately the problems go a bit deeper than that. I am at a point where about half of my friends live here on their own and the others still live with their parents. As much as I love all of them there is now a certain disconnect between those of us who are on our own and those who still live at home. It has nothing to do with how I feel about the others as people or how I see them as my friends, but there are just certain things that I am dealing with and going through that they cannot understand now matter how much they would like to. It is the kind of thing that you can’t really explain to someone who still lives at home. You have to truly be on your own and completely responsible for your self to know what its like. Forget things as simple as having to remember to wash your clothes and buy food and make food, but things like learning how to pay bills, opening bank accounts, buying internet and insurance are all things that weigh on my mind at all times that my other friends don’t ever have to think about. Hopefully some day relatively soon we can close the divide. But for now, while they are in the army, they should be home with their parents and have someone to wash their clothes and make them yummy food when they come home. On the plus side it has created quite a nice community and family feeling for those of us who are living here basically without family. I have cousins who I am very close to but they don’t live around the corner and aren’t popping in and out of my every day life. Those of us loners have really started to help take care of each other. It has made us really close and I don’t know what I would do without them. They are truly the best support system. Even David can’t understand some of the things I am going through so it’s nice to have friends who can. (this is my friend Yoni who moved here by himself a few months before me and is now in the army. I can't imagine how much harder life is for him than it is for me. Becca and I have kind of adopted him-- we do his laundry!! These are pictures from his first official army photoshoot)

I hope that helps answer the question. I am with David again for Shabbat ☺. We don’t have big plans, but I am hoping to get a lot of rest because I have an eye infection and it has unfortunately kept me up a few nights wanting to scratch my eyes out. I have seen a doctor and have medicine but it takes a while to really get rid of the infection. My medical experiences here so far are a whole separate topic, maybe for next time. I hope all is well with everyone. All my love. Shabbat Shalom.