I have returned!

Please accept my deepest apologies for the prolonged drought in my update dribble. Shortly before the American holiday of Thanksgiving I arrived at my new home in Qiryat Shemona, where the vital aspects of life including but not limited to Internet, public transportation, nightclubs, and free time have been almost entirely nonexistent. I assure you that I have kept myself incredibly busy in the absence of modernity – in the last three weeks alone, I have watched every episode of Grey's Anatomy at least twice, taken up knitting, convinced Tel Hai Academic College that I am a student (with a real ID card and everything!), and made myself infamous at the only (tolerable) bar in the region! Needless to say, I'm having a blast up here.

To make up for having worked a total of perhaps twelve volunteer hours in the last three months, I now have an awesome job teaching English at the local junior high school. Sunday to Thursday, from 8:15 to 13:15, I assist teachers by dragging groups of three or four kids out of their English classes to discuss such interesting topics as Halloween, Alaska, or whether or not my piercings hurt, basically anything as long as it's in English. Indeed, when it comes to asking me questions, the kids don't hold anything back and they go at me like I'm a shiny, new, electronic toy with "touch me!" written all over my sparkly exterior, shipped straight from the American shelves of Toys R Us to their sweaty, eager hands. Last week was full of introductions, and rather than allowing me to voluntarily introduce myself to each new group of pupils, the teachers relished displaying me at the front of each classroom where the kids were free to shout out hordes of intrusive inquiries (in poor grammar with plenty of omitted words) about my personal life and where I live and anything else they could think of.

Although it's been weeks since Ulpan concluded, I still can't get my Hebrew teacher's last words out of my head from her closing lecture on the last day of class. In between distressed bursts of anger, reprimanding us for skipping class and neglecting our studies, she expressed her wishes that we continue to progress because there's no limit to what we can accomplish if we really exert ourselves, or some crap like that. Except that the literal translation of what she said was not "the sky's the limit," but instead "the border's the limit." I've been trying to think of something profound and eloquent to say about this, perhaps along the lines of Israel's volatile borders between Lebanon, Jordan, or the territories, but all I can really think about is how the people here don't really know any personal limits. I'm not just referring to the fact that nobody waits in line and everyone's an in-your-face close talker. Let me just cite for example the three most common questions I've received since I started working at the middle school last Sunday:

1. "Yesh lach chaver?" "Do you have friend (masculine)?" I usually sidestep this blatant interrogation as to whether or not I have a boyfriend by saying "Yesh li harbeh chaverim," or "I have many friends (masculine)." I mean technically it's true, because I do have a lot of friends. Anyway.
2. "You Jewish?" Maybe I'm more polite than the average person, but I usually wait until I've known someone for more than 5 minutes before asking them about their religious preferences. I think it's because I don't appear to be Moroccan and I like to think I don't look Russian, so it's a bit of a challenge for them to place me on the religious spectrum.
3. "They pay you for this?" It's probably hard for these kids to believe that someone gets paid to ask them about their hobbies and which celebrities they want to meet, plus I look way too young to be out of college (people finish college in their late 20s here) so they don't get that I'm not a student either. But they don't really understand the concept of volunteering so I just tell them that I'm working here for the year without money, which they condescendingly chuckle about.

I especially enjoyed my second lesson on Tuesday: I was mid-sentence, describing the lengthy plane ride between California and Maryland, when suddenly two youngsters plowed into my table, which apparently got in the way of their wrestling match. I always pretend I don't care about their violent behavior because the last thing I want to do is scream at them like their drill sergeant teachers, and generally when I shake my head and say "lo beseder" they're too caught up in the fact that I know how to say "not OK" in Hebrew to continue their horseplay. Seriously, though, the teachers appreciate me and the students enjoy their time with me – or at least they love the excuse to skip English class. Either way, as long as I don't pick up any rare or tropical diseases, I'm content. Speaking of diseases…

B'yom chamishi/Thursday I traveled to Haifa for the weekend to visit friends and family, as well as to romp around the Christmas street fair. (What is that holiday, anyway? I've almost completely forgotten about it.) The Otzma representatives from Boston live in an absorption center in Haifa that is not unlike our former home in Be'er Sheva, except that instead of three bedrooms and five people per apartment, it is now one bedroom for four people. I'm so not even joking about those numbers. Please, for a moment, stop and think about the worst possible situation to walk into after a three-hour commute from the Lebanon border when you know you'll be sleeping in alarmingly compact living conditions for the next two days. Let me just say that Mediterranean Spotted Fever, Dysentery, Conjunctivitis, and Strep Throat are currently not the only ailments my program boasts – we can now add Headlice to our repertoire of wretched afflictions. The moment I walked into their apartment I witnessed the horrifying act of half-naked Americans picking lice out of each other's hair, but I arrived as they were just finishing their delousing procedure so I'm roughly 72% sure that I don't have any parasites on my own head.

Sorry for the lack of direction in this post. I'd like to point out that a decline in English skills is a sign that I'm progressing nicely in my Hebrew studies.