Mabsut means Happiness

Well, as it turned out, monday was not my last tutoring session with my wildly obstinant ethiopian kids. Mainly because i went to Sara's house this time, met her darling parents (who's daughter is a treasure. and a joy...riiiiiiight), who begged me to "hold her in English", which i think means that they want me to turn her into an anglo. Which probably won't happen this year, but she was so well-behaved this time, and her parents were so damn earnest, so now I'm going to do it, only for this semester, and I will freak out at the coordinator when necessary. Like every day.
Excellent.

I went to Dalyat al Karmel yesterday, a Druze village where nearly everyone is related somehow to the Chalabis, a prominent Druze family, with Shoshana from my Hebrew class. We basically put the entire Chalabi family through university. Joshie-love called from J'lem to say that he would be in Haifa at 10 (which turned into 11:30 after he got on the wrong bus, of course, because he's Joshie-love and his father's son), so I got to Safta's after he called me from the Central Bus station, had tea and pudding, played a little sudoku, chatted a bit with the family members, and went home way too late for my own good in a cab driver who was very insistent that i never become one of those "dumb girls who smokes" (the girls who he had just dropped off were apparently major smokers, who put up a fight about not being allowed to smoke in the cab, and according to the taxi driver, smoking is correlational to sluttiness, so they were skanky hos by virtue of their nicotine addiction. hm.)

Sat through the language lab this morning for hebrew, which is just plain hard. I can't multitask by listening to hebrew and reading an exercise sheet at the same time. I can do one or the other. But whatever. The teacher likes me. Jessica from Florida and Hila from Calgary and I went to the beach, where Hila and I stayed all afternoon, becoming lobster red and chocolate brown (depending on where we already had a tan), and now, because I smell really bad after having sat in the hot sun all day, I'm taking a shower.

Lehit, y'all.
Jess

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Wow. So as it turns out, Queen's homecoming was really awesome this year. Sorry about that, Alex. But if you want to know about it, ask him.

Went out to Irish house pub with a few people last night after dinner, which was nice, but fell asleep way too late for my own good. After hebrew class and an abusively boring library tutorial, i signed up for the gym, took out money, and went to visit the little old ladies' book sale in Neve She'anan, where i cleaned them out of all their good books, and some of the sucky ones, too.

Tonight, I have what is hopefully the last english tutoring session with my wild and obstinant ethiopian kids. It is only "hopeful" that this is the last, not because I don't enjoy it, which in real life, I don't so much, but also because if I choose to remain at this specific post/timeslot, it will mean me being out of the house, with no food/bathroom breaks from 8-8 every monday, which is just not going to happen. I will have to discuss this with the volunteer coordinator tonight.

Going down to the beach later tonight for a picnic dinner. Word.

-Jess

Quick update

Creepy old men coming up and chatting with you at the beach while you're doing your homework (hah!) is just creepy. Like Hani who runs the candy store who wants to go with me for coffee. I know he runs a candy store, not only cause he told me, but also because most of his teeth are visibly rotting out of his head. And I don't give out my cellnumber to strangers, and no, i don't take theirs, and dude, you don't need coffee, you need a toothbrush and a periodontist. Bleagh.

There are ant hills in my room. On the second floor. In my room. Swear to god, real anthills, sand and everything. Well, not any more. I slaughtered them with toxic roach spray, which apparently works on ants, too. I like making them really dead. At least they weren't the scary swarms of red ants which are in the ventilation system at the Federman dorms. So long as they're small and black and harmless and very very dead, i'm fine with them.

Went out with "the girls" for coffee at Aroma tonight, had a totally sober blast (it was like getting drunk, but without the headache....Rebecca and Jessie W -not me- are too funny, especially on caffeine, and especially together) and almost got ripped off by the taxi driver on the way back (we're apparently on terror alert, so busses were out of the question). My laundry, which was tkaing three hours to dry in the machine, decided it needed another hour, so i did homework at Arielle and Jessie W's with them and Rebecca, folded my clothes, sighed a bit over how my mother was right and I should never put bras in the washing machine, threw away the damaged bra (twisted, stained, torn and mangled: so beyond any means of repair.), pressed the dryer on again, and the clothes, four hours later, still aren't totally dry, but they won't grow mildew.

All in a day's work, all in a day's work.

Credit card fraud and other holy adventures

Christ, it has been a loooooooooooooooooong week. Here’s a day by day update. Also, my computer mouse is refusing to work. Please excuse any major mistakes.

Friday, Sept 16th:
-I went with about 20 other people on a tour of a)the campus and b)haifa. Fun and hot and therefore sweaty, I saw the Carmelite church at Stella Maris, where the Carmelite sect claimed Elijah lived (and where I couldn’t enter because I was a Daughter of Israel who was inappropriately dressed-This is in reference to those old creepy men who walk through Jerusalem screaming, “Daughters of Israel, dress appropriately!”, and who look like they haven’t showered in a month, and you want to yell back “old-creepy-man, you know you liiiiiiiiike it”), and then we hiked down to the cave where everyone else on the planet believe he lived (if you aren’t a Carmelite, but are jewish, muslim, or some other Christian, then stick out your tongue at the Carmelites; they too, couldn’t read directions. But they build some pretty churches)

*Just looked at the blog. have already told everyone about the adventure on Friday. Moving right along...

-Na'ava and Yael took forever to get to safta's house, but a good time was had by all. Eventually.

Saturday, Sept 17th:
-went to the beach with Na'ava and Yael, split off from them when they had to return to Jerusalem, met up with the rest of the Haifa U people (let's play, "spot the foreigner!" But for serious, it's my favorite game). We then went to a bar that had disappointingly bad pina coladas...much too watery. Arielle, Anna, Jessie-Arielles-Roomate, Rebecca and I split off and walked a half hour to Aroma cafe, passing by numerous other cafes, simply because Aroma is the best, and also we were on a mission (I was on a mission for a bathroom, but topped off with the best coffee ever, so, yeah.) In line, this guy starts creeping me out, checking out my behind, making lewd comments to his friends, and finally, when Rebecca and I leave line to wait for our order, he comes up to me and says "You are pretty" in terribly accented english. I reply in Hebrew "I am not interesting" (i tried to say "i am not interested", failed, but i suppose that this was better). He then says "You have beeeoootifool eyes". At which point I just said "Ani nesoo'ah", or "I'm married".
Pow. Immediate backing off. Amazing what those words can do to a guy, eh? Think about it:
If you say.....he says:
"I'm not interested"...."don't worry, i'm a great guy, we'll get to know eachother"
"I have a boyfriend"..."but he's not here right now; i'll be your boyfriend for the night..*waggle eyebrows*"
"I'm a lesbian (not that there's anything wrong with that)"..."That is so totally hot, let's go back to my place right now and we'll call your girlfriend"
"I'm married"..."deafening silence"

So there you go. Guy repellant, made easy. Also, this is easier when you have a ring on your left hand ring finger, which I do.

Speaking of repellant, I had a sleepover party with Rebecca because a)i was still in the old dorms with an empty roommate bed and b)there are small swarms of sandfleas in her room. I don't know if the problem has been dealt with. Whatever.

Sunday, Sept 18th:
-Nothing very much exciting happened. Really boring and useless orientation discussion, after which Arielle and I went to Safta's for lunch, said goodbye to my parents and got some shiksa insurance. And a pot. You can't go wrong with a good sturdy pot. Except I need another, and also a spatula.
(oh my sweet christ, this mouse sucks)
-At night there was a nice opening bonfire/barbeque/drum circle event where I bonded with Andrea from Germany over really cheap white wine because...we got moved into the Talia dorms!
-Word of the day: Shidroog=upgrade.

Monday, Sept 19th:
-Took the hebrew entrance exam. I don't want to say "I aced it", because that implies that I got a mark. But I aced it. Or at least, I completed it, which is always a positive thing. Slovak Erik and Czech Jan helped me move my stuff into my brand new dorm, where I met North Dakota Kelly and my other Israeli roomies who are dear-hearts, Adi, Hila, and Karin. I checked my hebrew class level, and i am in level six, the highest level. Sweet. Shout out to Gila Sasson, who in grade twelve told me to go down a level in hebrew , in case I couldn't hack the regular level. Thank you, Gila, for keeping me so belligerent.
-I went to the volunteer-to-teach-english-to-small-obstinant-ethiopian-children thing, where the ethiopian children are small and obstinant. I had to explain to an unexplicably angry little boy why it is inappropriate to say "F.U", and I think that my tutee, Sara, is a bit of a hyperactive kid who really doesn't care. She's sweet, just a bit space-cadety. I'm going to have to try to talk my way out of this tutoring thing before next monday, while still being allowed to volunteer at a school for kids with cerebral palsy. Wish me luck.

Tuesday, Sept 20th:
First day of classes! Also first day of having absolutely nothing to do after class except go to the beach. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat. Also, I should probably call safta and say "what up". But in real life, I went to the beach with Erik from Czech Republic (it's a good thing they changed the name, because i don't think i can spell czechoslovakia correctly), did my homework, navigated my way through the train station (which you have to pass under in order to get to the beach), got back to campus, and decided to call Hot! to have cable installed (though doesn't it sound more like a porn service than a cable company? This is something that they should have ran by their PR people). I gave my information to a sketchy guy named Adi, who always answers the phone like he hates to do his job and you're interrupting him on the one date where he's decided to propose to his girlfriend. (Allo....What? Huh? tsk....*sigh*....fiiiiiine, they'll hook it up in the morning...bye.)

Wednesday, Sept 21st:
-I woke up at 7, plodded over to my desk and saw....ants! tons and tons of ants! ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! It seems that I left the cup from my lemonade (minus the lemonade) on my desk and they found it! So after hosing down the cup, I returned and made the little bastards very very dead. With kleenex. Puffs plus is not just for achy noses, it also makes a good death-ray-for-bugs! They seem to not be returning, so the moral is either a)don't eat in my room or b)keep kleenex on hand.

-Mina, my hebrew teacher, bless her heart, has found a way for me to take both morphology and hebrew, even though they conflict; i get to skip hebrew class on mondays, but take home assignments and meet with her once a week to go over what I missed. Praise be to Allah, and also sweet Mina.

-As of today, I think I'm beginning to be able to navigate my way around campus rather well. It helps that there are signs, but it doesn’t help that they are all in Hebrew. I have no idea what a “Dikahnt Studehnt” is. It sounds like “student discount”, but I’m sure I’m totally interpreting that wrong. That being said, I’m not really interested in asking someone. It is not in my Oxford Hebrew-English/English-Hebrew dictionary, and so therefore, it is not a word. Until the day comes where I have to use whatever services are offered in the Dikahnt Studehnt, in which case I will just have to pretend that I know what I'm doing. It's all very shady.

-Another fun update is that Bezeq has been unable to fraudulently charge me because my credit card didn’t go through, since they don't accept overseas credit cards (but Barak does!). They asked for my bank account, which is so many levels of sketchy, i can't even begin to get into it. I feel like I let Bezeq Batya down when I politely but firmly told her that I would have to cancel their services. She sounded really upset

-But on the upside, I am now a proud customer of Barak, for only 35 NIS a month, and my new BFF is Barak Nasreen, who “gave me a present” of 10 whole overseas minutes a month to call anywhere in the world. Except that Cellcom is not letting any of those calls go through. Thank you, Cellcom. You rock my planet.

-My technician has come, installed the cable and the modem, and I am now updating this blog from a fully connected computer. On the downside: the computer's power connection is very very very hot. Is that supposed to happen? I feel like it isn't. But I am happy to report, that the computer technician did not steal any of my things while I was out of the room frying up some eggplants. Hurray for tech support.

-I have learned how to deal with customer service people, technicians, and tech support, entirely in hebrew. Also, how to give my credit card information in hebrew. The latter is not so exciting, while the former is just plain annoying.

I need a new computer mouse. Will deal with this later today...after I go do my homework on the beach!!! Jealous? You know you are.

-Jess

Settling in

On September 14th, 2005, I finally settled in to the dorms.

And sometime this weekend, I will be unsettling and resettling into the other dorms.

So the Federman dorms, where I was originally slotted to stay, are nice and all, in fact, they're nicer than most of the dorms at Queen's, mainly because they at least include a kitchenette. But they are double rooms, and the washrooms are claustrophobic especially if you have to share one toilet and one shower among 6 people. And the thousands of tiny red ants marching six by six from the cereal box to the air vent are totally disgusting (Until you spray the hell out of them with "instant bug-death" spray. Which I did.). So I asked Nogah, the counselor, if it was possible to move to the even-more-upscale-single-room-your-very-own-shower-and-more-spacious-common-area Talia dorms, and that if it was not, then I was okay with it. She told me no promises, but she'd look into it. And six hours later, I am officially a resident of the Talia building! Yay!

Except I haven't moved in yet because the housing office wasn't open and so they couldn't get me a key. Which I hope they do soon, because there's a creepy water stain emanating from a mystery spot on the other side of my bedroom, and the creepy water stain is inching ever closer to my bedding, and I would like to move in before it actually gets anything creepy-water-wet.

But other than that, I think everything is going rather smoothly. I've made new friends, seen a lot more of Haifa than I should have (more on that later), and gone shopping for most of my necessities. In fact, I even bought a desk lamp, but when I opened it up, there was no lightbulb. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Which explains why it was so cheap. All I need is a pot and a spatula. Also some food. A lot of food. But I'll save that for when I actually have a permanent address. Actually, same thing goes for internet; I'll only be online sporadically, until I get the internet set up in my room, which I can't do until I discover where my new room actually is.

Today at 9 in the morning, there was a quick campus tour followed by a walking tour of Haifa. Both were great. The Haifa tour was casual, as in at any given point, we were allowed to leave and go back to the university. So I saw the church where the Carmelite Christian sect says that Elijah used to live, then a nice walk/hike down a hill, and then I saw the cave where everyone else (Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc) said he used to live, bought some pita druzit (laffa bread, labaneh yogourt/cheese, za'atar and olive oil), saw the Baha'i gardens, and bought a map of Haifa. After the Baha'i gardens, Eliad, the other counselor as well as the impromptu tour guide with hysterically inconsequential anecdotes, told us that those of us who could leave just had to cross to the other side of the street, walk yashar yashar yashar (straight straight straight), and we'd get to a bus stop where we could catch the 37 sherut back to campus.

Except when you go yashar yashar yashar on the other side of the street, you definitely do not pass any bus stops going toward the university. Mainly because you are on the wrong side of the street. You do pass arab restaurants and fat bible-belt tourists, but you had better believe that you aren't getting a bus/taxi/sherut up the mountain any time soon.

Hint: if you go to school on the top of the mountain, and are trying really really hard to get to the top of the mountain, and are heading toward the beach which is conveniently located at the bottom of the mountain, you're going the wrong way.

So Hannah, Sonia (Sonja?) and I walked around a bit until we finally found a bus stop with a 37….except we got on the 24, which a)arrived first and b)was also going towards the university…After stopping at every freaking bus stop on the entire freaking mountain. Instead of taking a direct route up (approximate ETA: 20 min), it zig zagged all the way around Haifa. And I do mean all the way around. Like, scenic route to the extreme. So we left the group at 12:30, got lost at around 1, got on a sherut at 1:15, and got back to campus at….2:30. Wow. What an adventure.

I am at Safta's now, waiting for Yaeli and Na'ava to arrive, having already spoken to Michal last night on the phone.
Shabbat shalom all,
J

PS: Eliad, we love you and your crazy Cochin-Jew stories, but you suck, hardcore, at giving directions.

Mekhirat Gwai-lo (The Gwai lo price)

Gwai-Loh: Chinese for "white devil".
Note: this is actually an extremely derogatory term for a white person, and you probably won't hear Chinese using it in polite company. Should you happen to understand Chinese. In any given Chinatown (in Toronto; we have over seven), I am often charged the "gwai-lo price" for things like bubble tea, hello kitty wallets, maoist coins, etc...because I am not a local. Now, having had the "tourist experience" practically everywhere I've travelled, this is not new. Rather strange in my own city, but not new.
With that background in mind...

My father and I went down Chanita Street (where my auntie lives) to buy an alarm clock and a power bar. And it would have been under 100 shekel (about 30 $ CAN) if my father hadn't opened his big gwai-lo mouth and given us away. The box with the alarm clock was marked 85 shekel, but the guy helping us told us it would be 80 shekel. Then he plugged it in to make sure it worked, and lo and behold, the radio came on. Hurray and all that. We found a power bar, and after explaining that 9V batteries cost only a dollar in Toronto, not 5 dollars, and being told by the guy with an audible shrug (go figure on that one) that were "weren't in Toronto any more", we went to the front cash to pay. The man at the cash told us 113, 10 more shekel than it should have been. Dad reminded the man who helped us that he had said the clock would be 80, but both men from the store insisted upon 85. Fine, whatever, we'll help out the israeli economy slash fund their crack habit, we paid, and we left.

Jess's theory: You see, if the guy helping us had plugged in the radio and it was broken, then it would have only been 80 shekel. But since it worked, it was 85.

And that is the gwai lo price, baby.

We're off to Hadar now to get ripped off on two pairs of sandals for me and mom, so wish us luck with that.

Gung hai fat choy,
J

Druzim and the beach

Last night, i went to sleep at ten and slept for twelve hours. So the jet lag is gone, hopefully.

Today we (the parents, nancy, and arielle who we picked up from the dorms) went to a druze town where there is no cellphone reception; since it is at the top of the carmel, there were hundreds of celltowers there. People were getrting sick, so instead of thinking "hey, could it be because we all come from one family and intermarry (true story; everyone there is a Chalabi, or married to a Chalabi, and if they aren't related, they're probably just not looking far back enough), and our health care is substandard because the gvt doesn't care about us and possibly we shouldn't have open sewers running through the streets", they decided "hey, lets burn down the cell towers". Which is what they did, until the towers were finally officially removed , without resorting to matches.

Wow.

Walked around. Tried to get my arabic bracelet translated, but the lovely old woman selling soda pop and other snacks didn't have her glasses on and so couldnt read it. And the guy selling the labaneh and laffa only read "bismillah, in the name of the prophets" out loud, read quietly to himself and says "it's very good things, from the koran, but why don't you have a bracelet from the tanach?".

Meh.

I bought two pretty bags; the kind you swing over your shoulder but that pickpockets love because there's no zipper, which I have to get added as soon as I find a seamstress. Then back to saftas for lunch, and off to the beach, where I met some of ari's friends on the religious program at the university. We went for shawarma for dinner slash daddy and saftas birthday. And that's that.
Lilah tov to all,
J

Landed!

So that flight was so many levels of awesome.
Except that the movies sucked.
And while dinner was great, breakfast tanked.
And i got only 2 hours of sleep so am running on fumes right now (energy-wise)

But the moral of the story is, after being royally stupid and making my parents go on a shared taxi instead of the train (a difference of about 2 hours, and not in our favor, either), we're finally here. And my phone is here, and so damn cute. And that number, once again, is 0525355590. So, call me.
PS: no psychos or perverts, please.

Cell number update

So I screwed up the cell number: My actual cell number is:

052-535-5590

Packing

So, packing, eh?

Man, it sucks.

Actually, it only sucks in that I can't bring absolutely everything I want. Though I tried pretty hard. I've kept it down to 3 suitcases and 2 backpacks full of stuff (1 suitcase and 1 backpack are already there), but I still can't manage to fit in socks or underwear anywhere. They just simply won't fit.

Is there a WalMart in Israel?

*twiddling my thumbs*

4 days left....
-Jess