Adventure Land

I really am not good at these blog posts.  There have been several opportunities to write multiple entries.  It’s also not like I do not have the time…. technically. I have stopped doing homework and studying because homework is just like it was at JTS, which means I study and do homework in order to get it done and I don’t actually pay attention to what I am studying.  You could say I am doing myself a disservice, but this is not how I learn a language.  I learned more from giving a presentation on Crohn’s Disease in Hebrew and when I have opportunities to speak than I do filling in blanks and reciting verb conjugation tables.

Re-creation of one of the Atlit barracks

That is why I have been spending more time going on adventures than sitting around studying (although recently I have been sitting around, but it has involved uploading 200 or so photos to Facebook—time well spent I think).  The first of my most recent, unwritten about adventures was to a place called Atlit Detention Camp.  To take the words from my friend Healy to Haifa's blog post about Atlit :  “[Atlit] was originally built to be a POW holding camp, but in the mid-1900s it became a jail, essentially, for illegal immigrants (or the more preferred title here: clandestine immigrants) to what is now Israel.” It was used as a detention camp until Israel received its independence in 1948. 

It was exciting for me to be there because I had visited it 10 years ago while on my USY Spain/Israel Pilgrimage trip.  One particular memory I have of this site was that it was where I first ran into my friend Josh Katz for the firs time.   I remember feeling special that I had a friend on a different Pilgrimage group.

After that trip I was truly getting sick of the whole group mentality that this ulpan seemed to revolve around.  I could see why my 22-26 year old Taglit participants always had difficulty with being stuck in a group and somewhat losing their independence.  Because of that, I decided to spend Shabbat with some family members of mine who I’ve only seen a few times because they live in Israel. 

My third cousin Keren and her two sons

I visited the home of a third cousin of mine, Keren, who I haven’t seen in 10 years.  In that time she got married and had two adorable boys.  They all live on a Moshav (a kind of co-op community) near the Jordan valley called Beka’ot.  Interesting fact: Keren’s father-in-law was one of the founding members of the Moshav.  I spent my weekend there hanging out in their A/Ced flat since it was around 45 degrees Celsius (approx 117 degrees Fahrenheit all weekend).  They did take me to the moshav pool and it felt nice to be in the water.  Even being in the shade was pleasant. 

The most annoying part of the weekend was how I simply could not communicate with Keren’s 4 and 2 year old sons and they don’t know any English, aside from the four-year-old being able to count to 10.  I want to blame it on the quality of my ulpan but I think it was just a failure on the part of my confidence.  I definitely could have said more to them in Hebrew than I did. Of course, they were also weirded out when I spoke to them in Hebrew.  They were probably like, who is this strange girl in our house speaking a language we don’t understand and when she does speak Hebrew she says things strangely.  The best miscommunication with them had to be when I said Naim Meod (Nice to meet you) as I was leaving and the two-year-old smiled and calls out “Yummy! Yummy!” He thought I said Ta’im Me’od which means “very tasty.”  It still makes me laugh almost a week later.

The first grotto at Rosh Hanikra

With it being the last week of ulpan, the program did not organize any trips to anywhere and a group of friends and I organized for ourselves a trip to a place called Rosh Hanikra, specifically the Rosh Hanikra Grottoes, which is a little redundant because from what I understand, Hanikra means “the grotto” and according to the dictionary app on my computer, a grotto is a small picturesque cave.  This makes sense since we did go see some caves formed from years of the Mediterranean Sea crashing against these cliffs in Northern Israel until erosion finally won out and the rock gave in.

Rosh Hanikra is yet another place I have not been to since USY Pilgrimage 10 years ago.  It was fun to see how much I remembered and to have the opportunity to appreciate it in a different way than I did back then. I even took a picture of myself in an exact same spot I took one while on Pilgrimage.  I am looking forward to eventually peeking at that photo to see how accurate my memory was or was not when choosing where to take the photo below:

The rest of this week (since it has been all of four days) has been a lot of hanging out and getting ready for the end of ulpan.  Tomorrow is the final exam and, just like at JTS, I have not studied an incredible amount.  I always intend to but fall victim to my usual study habits of futzing around the internet and ending up in a location that is entirely too distracting for my own good.  Granted, there are few places in the dormitory complex that are appropriate for studying, so distracting, internet-filled areas are the way to go.

One interesting thing about today is that, following a week long vacation, the University is gearing up for a new year.  As part of that preparation, the siren, which warns of oncoming rocket attacks from Lebanon, was tested.  Despite knowing that it was a test (since everyone got three text messages about it as well as a reminder from our teacher), the sound creeped me out.  It was slightly irrational, but all I could think of was what the atmosphere must have been like during the 2006 Second Lebanon War, when Haifa was inundated with rockets from Lebanon, and how panicked I would feel hearing that sound in a real emergency. 

On the other hand, knowing that it was a test kept me from freaking out the way I might have when the university decided to use the intercom system within the dormitories to announce a party going on in the moadon.  I was eating dinner in a friend’s apartment; we heard the crackling of the intercom, the beginnings of the announcement and fell completely silent –you could tell it was that panicked-pretending-to-not-be-panicked silence.  We laugh about it now, but it was interesting to see how we/I reacted these stimuli.  I pray that the siren will not have to be used in ways other than to test them and I am looking forward to adjusting my associations to sirens and Israel when I go to Jerusalem and am able to enjoy the Shabbat siren every week.

I suppose I will have the opportunity to hear that tomorrow when I officially start my nine months in the "City of Gold"  Despite the fact that I was "over Haifa" last week, this past week has been pretty great. I am looking forward to having my own apartment and a real space to call my own, but I think I might miss the social atmosphere that was provided by living in the dorms with everyone always being around, and being two seconds to two minutes away from all my friends. Jerusalem will bring me back to more of my NY lifestyle where everyone is in relative proximity to each other but we are all scattered in that relative proximity.  I will be interested to see what kind of social dynamic evolves from this environment.