Hi Everyone!

Had two pretty long days today and yesterday so I’ll try to summarize in a way that at least partially makes sense. Yesterday we had some more orientation activities where people came to speak to us about health insurance, security issues, our Hebrew classes, and some other things, I can’t really remember. Wasn’t overwhelmingly interesting.

Note: After I wrote the paragraph above I ended up just making a list of everything I wanted to write about cause I was so tired and ended up having a really busy day. I had full intentions to write again the day after that, but here I am three days later with a really long list of things to write about!

Last Sunday night a couple friends and I decided to check out the pool at the university gym, which is conveniently located right across from the dorms where we’re all staying. On the way to the pool, I peeked into the basketball courts, and my eyes fell upon a magnificent sight: Four GIRLS playing basketball! I didn’t think Israelis even played basketball, let alone Israeli GIRLS! I asked one of them whether they were in some sort of league and whether I could play, and she said that I probably could, I’d just have to get some kind of health stress-test examination. Whatever, who knows. I plan on showing up next Sunday and seeing how it goes, so I’m really pumped for that. The pool was ok, by the way, nothing special, except that it was really steamy in there (it wasn’t exactly indoors, it sort of reminded me of a greenhouse), which hopefully gives you an idea of how cold it gets at night out here.

Right before we’d left to go swimming, we’d stopped by the room of a friend to see if he wanted to come and ended up meeting one of his Israeli roommates (Deedee… I’m probably spelling that wrong), who coincidentally is a friend of one of my roommates (Moran). Later that night as I stood brushing my teeth in my pajamas, who bursts in the door of the apartment, but Deedee. Deedee, Moran and I ended up sitting in her room for an hour or so playing Israeli rock songs on her guitar (this guy is seriously insane but hilarious… I ran into him again at Salsa dancing last night). That was really cool, I swear I’m having the dream-dorm experience, I feel so lucky! By the way, I met Larissa (my last roommate) and she seems pretty cool but I haven’t seen her much since. My second roommate (whose name I still can’t remember! Grr…) is so sweet, she made me tea last night and is always so upbeat and friendly.

Obviously one of my favorite parts of Israel is the food. I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that I can walk into the grocery store and buy the same cheap deli meat as everybody else and it’s kosher!! I’ve been eating this smoked chicken breast for a few days now, I just bought some more this afternoon. I eat it with a cucumber usually (Israeli cucumbers are only about 1.5 inches in diameter on average, I’d say), it’s amazing. Also, their yogurt is way better than ours, I usually have a cup during our morning Ulpan break. It’s so good! I had kiwi flavored today and yesterday I had cappuccino.

Speaking of Ulpan. Quick explanation: Ulpan is Hebrew immersion class, generally for new immigrants, but we’re taking it since we’re spending the term here and need to be competent Hebrew speakers during our stay. My teacher seems pretty cool, she came to Israel from Hungary when she was 4 and has lived in Be’er Sheva all of her life. She recommended a good falafel place to my class so I think we’ll check it out one day when Ulpan ends. We’re in class from 8:30 to 10 then have a break till 10:30, then class again from 10:30 to 12. I’m in the most advanced class so we are each supposed to present something from the news in Hebrew and we discuss it and usually get a good amount of vocabulary out of each topic. The first time I talked about an Israeli version of Restaurant Week (an event in a bunch of American cities where you can get a gourmet three course meal for a flat rate of $30 or so) and today I talked about the popularity of Macs in Israel (found the articles in the newspaper Haaretz). The second session, after break, is spent on grammar. After 12, we’re out for the day! It’s awesome having the whole afternoon to do whatever we want.

I’ve jogged a couple times before Ulpan with one of my friends who lives in my apartment building/section which is nice, it’s a good way to get up and start the day but it can be absolutely freezing! The first time we ran north into one of the nicer areas of the city called Ramot, and the second time we ran south towards the old city but didn’t get too far before we had to turn around so I don’t really know what’s down there yet. Apparently on Thursdays a Bedouin market is open in the old city so I’m hoping to take a look at that tomorrow and maybe buy a rug for my freezing tile floor. Then I wouldn’t have to splurge on slippers.

After a bunch of hassle I have internet in my room! This is good because my schedule now doesn’t revolve around when I can get to the computer lab. (Even when I do get there, I can’t swipe in with my ID because I haven’t yet had to the chance lemagNet, or to magnetize, the magnetic strip on the card. Why they’re not pre-magnetized, I have no idea. Israelis are geniuses, I swear.) We had to go through this whole protocol to connect to the internet and the only instructions they gave us were for PCs. This meant a bunch of Mac users were totally confused on how to connect. To make a longish story short, I figured out how to do it for them and somehow I’m now considered the resident computer expert. This now means that people are asking me all kinds of questions I have no idea how to answer relating to everything from itunes to bit torrent to why AIM doesn’t work (no clue about that one, and it’s really annoying!) so I feel kind of bad/useless now but oh well. At least they got online…

There are all kinds of things to do on campus here. So far I’ve heard about at least one event every night and a lot of the overseas students have been checking them out together. We went to a piano/guitar/vocals performance a few nights ago and as I mentioned earlier, I went salsa dancing last night. Many events are held in bomb shelters around campus. No reason to let a big underground room go to waste, right? Now, what’s funny is that at Tufts, every time there is a free dance lesson, it’s completely dominated by girls. The ratio of girls to guys is probably 2:1. Here, the ratio is the opposite, there were way too many extra guys. Culture gap much? Our teacher was kind of crazy and didn’t like when I translated some stuff into English for my friends but after a while I stopped listening to what he was saying anyway since it didn’t seem to make much sense. This might be why it took me about 8 partner switches to catch on to the dance, and let me tell you: Israeli pushiness does not mix well with beginners’ dance, especially when the Israeli is the leader. Anyway, I’ll probably be back next week to hone my skills. In the way beginning, before everyone split up into levels, they taught us a line dance to warm up. It turned out that it was a slightly tweaked version of the Electric Slide which basically cracked me up once I realized what was going on. As a side note, another line dance they taught us had a move deemed “drunk,” pretty goofy looking.

The other students in the Overseas program are really great. Everyone is just incredibly friendly and up for doing new things and we’ve been having a good time exploring/navigating the university, talking about Israel and religion, and going to different activities together. Some people have had a ton of experiences in Israel and some have only been on Birthright, and some have never been to Israel at all. I’m excited to meet new people and practice my Hebrew, etc., but I’m really glad to have the comfort of English whenever I need it. During our orientation weekend you could see the group start to fracture into smaller social circles but everyone is still friendly and we all spend time together.

Tonight our head Madricha (counselor) planned a volunteer fair where people from different organizations come to speak to us about volunteering opportunities over the course of the semester so I’m pretty psyched for that. Plus, later tonight I think I’ll be making an appearance at a local Be’er Sheva frisbee team practice so stay tuned for updates on that. (I’ve never played a sport in Hebrew!)

I’m basically really glad to be here. I’m probably still on a high from my first week but it’s gone better than I could have imagined so far and I’m feeling really positive about the whole experience. Who knows what it will be like when Ulpan ends and the real semester begins but so far I’m just taking it one day at a time and seeing what Be’er Sheva has to offer (aside from the amazing cheap food and taxi fares). Ani mitgaga’at eleichem (I miss you guys) and I hope everything is going well with you! Drop me a line when you get the chance.

Love,

Ilana