Back in Canada

My adventure has finally come to a close; I landed in Toronto Pearson Airport at 6 pm EST. This means that this is the last post in the blog.
Sad.

I may or may not start up another one; to find out the address, post a message here including your email, and when I do set one up, I'll let you know.

The last few days in Tel Aviv were amazing and fun-filled, but you can tell that the war hasn't really 'hit' Tel Aviv (heeee. Morbid-humour queen, right here). The streets are packed with people: Tel Avivim, normal summer vacationers from abroad, normal summer vacationers from Israel, and people who've left the North until things 'settle down'. There are no azakot, and so life carries on like normal. Which is good, because i wouldn't know where to find the bomb shelter if I tried from the hotel and we were on the 15th floor. But we were walking on the tayelet and suddenly hear sounds like gunshots and so we panicked and ducked down. Turns out it was fireworks. Can you spell 'shell-shock'? (again, heeee)

The flight was terrible, but when you're stuck in a tin box with screaming children and broken down flight movies and gross food (usually I like airplane food, but they served beef. Twice. Barf.) and rude flight attendants and a strange burning rubber smell emanating from the galley, it doesn't often make for frequent flyer fun.

Also, the plane brought me home, and I wish I could have stayed there. So that also didn't factor in the mad parties, either.

I hope I've been able to provide a small picture of exchange-student life in Israel. If you feel otherwise, then go yourself. It's a blast!

Hee hee hee...

-Jess

I'm a spokesblog!

LOOK!! I"M FAMOUS!!! I'm the "this one" that he talks about!
Me!
My blaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwg!!!!

Hah! And they said in high school that I'd never amount to anything.

Actually, they said in high school (my supposedly pluralistic religious high school) that I was on a "direct path to hell". Cause I believed in some crazy stuff, like, you know, gender equality and equal rights regardless of one's sexual preference and the idea that maybe, just maybe, 'all arabs are not evil'. Which apparently rubbed some of my teachers the wrong way. Though that (the direct-path-to-hell thing) was just the minority opinion, it strikes me as a fun thought: For all those who find themselves there, I'm throwing a big party in Hell and you're all invited. Except for Nasrallah. I hope you go to heaven and sleep with seventy virgins and they all have painful and uncurable venereal diseases and you realize that sleeping with virgins is not all that it's cracked up to be and oh my god you have to do it seventy times? Also, another question: Do you only get to do it once with each virgin, and then, like, that's it? You're done? Then what? Or do they re-virginize?
Whatever the outcome, that has to suck.

But I'm famous! Me! Famous!!!

-J

Le Sigh...

I have no idea if I've already got a post with the same title as this one, and I'm not entirely sure that I care enough to check. I don't know how much time I have at the computer given that the last three air raid sirens were twenty minutes apart, which, you know, doesn't leave much time for blogging. Or peeing.

And the bomb shelter's toilet is kind of raunchy. And, um, I don't do gross toilets. I barely do porta-potties.

There have been four or five azakot (alarms? this is not a literal translation. But when you hear the word azaka, it means "get your ass down to the bomb shelter") since the wee hours of the morning. And when it was rumored that the first one (at six in the morning. Bless their sweet little hearts...) was a false alarm, it's entirely possible that I might have said, "You bet your ass it's not a false alarm at six in the #$%*ing morning."

Dan (are you happy? I've mentioned you now...) went off to a friend's house to study and I went to Noa's to "study" (hee!) and order sushi and watch tv (guess which two out of the three goals actually happened? Come on, guess...). I got there, we ordered the sushi, popped in a Friend's DVD and heard two explosions. And then, thirty seconds later, the air raid siren. Now, technically, the air raid siren is supposed to give you 60 seconds warning before you hear the explosions. And for half an hour on the radio, people wouldn't freaking shut up about how the system didn't work, and how it didn't go off in time. And I suppose that it's bound to fail, especially if the terrorists were raised in a barn and didn't get the memo that they're supposed to give the Israeli public 60 seconds before they try to bomb the crap out of them, and clearly if you're going to go on jihad, you might as well be polite about it.

But they were better later, and the other five times, the siren went off a minute before the rockets, which is nice, I suppose.

Anyways, Noa and I started wondering whether or not we would need to call the restaurant to a)find out about the health of the delivery guy and b)find out if they could bring the order after the azaka finished. Five minutes later, the delivery guy shows up at the shelter with the order. Luckily, I brought money down with me because I'm paranoid that someone might steal it while we're out (think about it: wouldn't the best time to rob a house be during an air raid? You know everyone's out of the house. You might as well see if they left their valuables behind. God, I need to get out of the house more...), so we paid him, and he went off on his merry way.

Now that is what I call being dedicated to your job.

Another thing I would like to clear up is how the following statement: "Terrorists are missing the petrochemical plants on purpose. But they can hit it if they want to, so watch out". That is complete bullshit. They released a statement like that because they haven't hit the plants, not for lack of trying, I might add. But just because they can't aim correctly doesn't mean that they care. Let me try to explain. Put your left fist (let that be topographical Lebanon) on top of your right fist (let that be topographical Israel) (diagram not to scale) with the palms facing you (but your fingers still in a fist). Now, the terrorists operating in the left fist hate the entire right fist without exception. It would like to hit the right fist's knuckle on it's middle finger (let that be the petrochemical plant in Haifa). That would be a happy day. However, if it manages to hit other parts of the right fist's middle finger instead, or even anywhere else on the right fist, the left fist doesn't really care, because remember, they hate anything to do with the right fist, which means that the whole right fist is a nice target area. It would be great, in the left fist's opinion, if it could blow up the right fist's middle finger knuckle, but in all honesty, what's a finger here and there on the right fist? So some right-fistians die in the process; they have a bunch of other rockets to use, and they might as well try to wipe out all the right-fistians they can.

If this is hard to understand, well, I did the best I could. Let me know if you're still having problems.

The parents want me to come home early or go to a hotel in Tel Aviv, so we'll see what happens. Meanwhile, I'm all packed up at Safta's and just trying to study, god damn it, so I really wish Hezbollah would choose a better way to get rid of their excess testosterone, like, I don't know, go out and have a lot of sex, because I just want to freaking take the exam and pass it.
Hah! Like that will ever happen. The studying, I mean. I'm a professional student, as in, I don't study. And come out with straight A's. Because I'm just better than you, I suppose. Regardless, both the Technion and the University of Haifa have "closed until further notice", and exams won't be rescheduled until things are calmed down. Now, they can post the exam date within 48 hours of it's new time, but unless they post anything by tomorrow, which is seeming less and less likely as the day passes, I will probably not be writing the exam in Israel. Sigh. I'm a big fan of procrastinating when it comes to me doing the actual procrastinating, but I hate it when exams and tests are pushed off. Just cancel the whole thing all together and give me a pass on a pass/fail scale; otherwise, it just eats into the rest of my summer, and the Israeli school calendar where exams go into July is just plain ridiculous enough as it is.

-J

Lebanon can kiss my ass

Not going to lie: this kind of sucks.

Hezbollah has been firing on Israel for the better part of this week, and at 9 am this morning, they started up with Haifa. Which means that I have spent most of the day going down to the bomb shelter, going out of the bomb shelter, trying to eat lunch but stopping before the fork hits the plate because the air raid siren sounded and that means, you guessed it, going back down to the bomb shelter.

It's quieter now, and we're hoping for the best. But seeing arab "members of parliament" on TV (read: terrorists) laugh at how Haifa's Patriot Missile system isn't working (they're supposed to fire at enemy missiles and blow them up in the air before they land and cause damage and instead, they're, well, not working), well, it's kind of disheartening. And also, who the @$&* do you think you are to laugh when you're sending rockets into civilian areas? Does that make you a big man or something? Aren't there any puppies lying around Lebanon that you can kick or something instead of directing your aggression in my direction? Is this all really necessary?

The safta has taken off for Jerusalem, which means that I am all by myself in the big city preparing for my last exam, and I hope to God that it gets cancelled. I mean, hopefully things calm down enough by thursday that I can study for it and write it, but also, I kind of don't really want to have to study for it/write it, because who does?

God, packing is going to be such a nightmare...

-J

Ads and Other Things

I am a consumer whore. And how!*
If you glance above my post, and just below my title, you will notice an ad, powered by Google's AdSense. Pleasepleaseplease click on it. I get money, and you get carpal tunnel syndrome. Everybody wins!!! If you look carefully through my post, I will place subliminal messages convincing you that clicking on these ads is a good idea.
Click my ads!
*(reference: Dan Hertzfeldt's brilliant cartoon Rejected. Everyone must see it. Google it or something. You'll find it)
Well, it seems that I'm posting every thirty seconds, but don't worry, that will soon change. I'm just bored. And procrastinating. Obviously.
Click my ads!

I am back from Jerusalem, and since my ZenMicro died again, I had a lot of time to contemplate the situation in the Middle East. I have come to the following conclusion:
I hate all people who use the following phrase when asked how they will know when peace will come to the Middle East: "There will be peace when I can sit down with my Arab neighbor and we can eat Chumus together and call eachother 'brother'. "

Oh my freaking God: Do these people have any idea how utterly obnoxious and patronizing they sound? And this is not just one isolated incident; madrichim of all sorts of youth groups and organized trips use this expression in various permutations. As do youthful idealists, philosophers, and dreamers. Also, communists *cough* anyone in the Nacha"l *cough*.
Now. There is nothing wrong with being a youthful idealist. I mean, they're just plain stupid and completely unprepared for the real world, but hey, power to you. Everyone needs their dreams.
But here's my opinion: If you didn't learn to share in Kindergarten, it's not a skill you're going to pick up anytime soon. I for one, seem to have missed that class. I hate sharing. It makes my skin crawl. I would rather buy a person their own plate of fries rather than let them take one of mine. If you aren't one of the three and maybe four people on the planet with whom I begrudgingly share my food, stop touching my things.
Chumus and peace in the Middle East have nothing to do with eachother, other than the fact that chumus originated in the Middle East, and that we would like peace to start originating itself there as well.
What if I said that the US would have less trouble with it's South American illegal immigrants if they could get along over a plate of enchiladas? Nothing, that's what.
People who use this quote want to smack you in the face with their "sameness". Look! We both live in the Middle East! Look! We both enjoy the same food! We can totally stop hating eachother now! Let's eat! And hey, let's eat together! My brother! Chumus!

Shut the hell up! And click on my ad!

FYI: Just because you eat the same food doesn't make you the same. And why do you want to be the same, anyways? Diversity is more interesting. Sameness is boring.

People don't need to resort to pithy little statements about food to achieve peace. They need to stop teaching hatred to their children for one, which, by the way, does not require that they teach their children to love "the enemy" (though it would be nice).

Here's the secret that I learned in Kindergarten (shhhhhh....don't tell): You don't have to like a person/nation/religion/ethnic group to get along with them. In fact, you can totally hate them, because that's your own business. It's kind of sad that you hate them, but really, there's nothing I can do about it to change your mind. All you have to do is respect them, expect the same from them and leave them the hell alone. Because peace does not require love for the enemy; it requires love for oneself to overpower your need to destroy your enemy.

God, didn't anyone ever see War Games? Fighting doesn't work, so stay the hell in your own backyard, and leave me in peace.

In the end, someone will probably poison the chumus anyways.

Click my ads!

-J

I'm fine, thanks for asking

So it seems we're at war with Lebanon.
Note to my parents: I'm fine and safe, thanks for calling to check. Oh, except that you didn't.
A terrorist group fires Katyusha's and god knows what else on Northern Israel and you don't pick up the phone to call your only daughter? Are you kidding?

But don't worry; I'm safe and totally fine. And it's probably for the best that I decided to visit a friend in Metullah last weekend as opposed to going up there tomorrow. Because spending the night in the bomb shelter is not really my idea of a rocking good time. Though I suppose we'd have good conversations for lack of anything better to do.

I spent the day in Jerusalem yesterday and slept the night at my cousins' place. And I got my homework mostly done! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! (Sorry, it just happens so rarely...). The bus-ride into town was interesting, in that it sucked. For some reason, I seem to get stuck with the ghetto-fabulous busses where the air-conditioning breaks down just in time for the Mediterranean July (nb: we are not amused), where the seats look so dirty that you just know you're crawling with body-lice the minute you exit the bus, and where the whole thing has a faint smell of, I don't know, garbage/feces/urine/feet/unwashed overweight men. Seriously, why do a large majority of religious men have an aversion to deodorant? Is there a passage in the Torah that I missed? "Thou shalt not smell like you shower once a day"? Seriously, this is something that needs to be taken care of. People! After the age of, like, 11 and a half, you must shower once a day (every other day if you're really stuck, but don't make a habit of it), and you must wear deodorant! And, come to think of it, you must brush your teeth! God, why are people so disgusting? And yes, I'm OCD, but good lord, something must be done! Can't this be one of those lessons you get at the absorption centre when you land in the country? I'm going to contact the Jewish Agency. Where's my phone?

The whole thing makes me itch. And to top it off, the driver had a huge Betar Yerushalayim (virulently racist soccer team) scarf strung across the windshield, which I guess meant that somewhere into the trip, we were going to stop off in Sakhnin and beat up the Arabs. I suppose it's always good to mix it up a little. Keeps the road-rage suppressed and all. At least the driver was polite, which is more than I can say for the jerk who drove the bus back to Haifa from Metullah: Because I knew that the bus was the kind that goes from Metullah to Haifa via every tiny little village on the way, and I needed to arrange for someone to come pick me up at the station, I ask him (and very nicely; I'm such a doormat when I speak in Hebrew to strangers. I speak very softly and use the word bevakasha a lot. It confuses the hell out of Israelis. And Russian Israelis, who yell at me to speak up. In Russian. YANI PANI MAY PA RUSSKI, BITCHES!!!) if he can tell me when we might get into Haifa. And he says "nagiyah bashalom" , which for the unilingual among you means "We'll get there in peace". Which is totally not an answer involving any period of time.
Jackass.

Le sigh.
Hopefully everything will turn out for the best. Lebanon, bus-drivers and all.

-J

Josephus Flavius Rocks My Socks Off

My faithful readers/stalkers (CNN: Why don't you call? Why don't you write? Has our love affair wilted so quickly into the Great Beyond? I pine for the day where you will ask me to be on your staff so I can ask your editors the questions that burn inside me but which can be summed up with the following acronym: WTF? ) will remember previous posts in which I write about avoiding studying for such and such exam so that I can update the world as to my goings-on.

Today is no different!

Instead of studying for my Introduction to Semitic Linguistics exam, I will take the time to brief you on everything that has been happening lately. Galileo was wrong; the world, in fact, revolves around me.

1. Haifa U Study Tour: Three weeks of sitting in a class/touring the country learning about Israel and the Jewish People from the time of Abraham until the Modern Age. Actually, I would have learned about the Modern Age had I not skipped the very last Friday class, but seriously, after spending eight hours moving all of my stuff into my aunt's apartment the night before, I'm not actually going to wake up at 6:30 to make it to the university in time for a 7:30 class on a Friday. Actually, I probably wouldn't have gone to the class any other day of the week.
So to amend my statement, I have learned about Israel and the Jewish People from the time of Abraham until the end of the Six Day War. In three weeks. Which is approximately 15% more material than was covered over four years in Jewish History classes at the Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto. Which makes you question the quality of the Jewish education you're paying for these days.
1. Back to the Study Tour: But yeah, the trips were great. To your left, there is a pile of rocks. And to your right, a bigger pile of rocks. Placed there by Josephus Flavius. I have learned that you can always work Josephus Flavius into any conversation. In fact, Josephus Flavius is my homeboy.
We went to all sorts of places, but I think my favorite by far is a tie between my thirty-second camel ride and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. My camel buddy for the day was Sascha, and we named our camel Louis. Louis was a fine camel, if not a little PMS-y. Fun fact! Most camels who participate in camel-rides are female. Because the males have territorial issues. Kind of like Ismail Haniyeh. (ssssssssssnap!) And Louis is totally comfortable in her sexual identity, despite her seemingly masculine name, thank you for asking. But when you take Louis's picture, she gets kind of grumpy. Suffice it to say that even if we died at the hooves of Louis, which we almost did, we'd have awesome photos. As for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where before this trip I have only ever seen the outer courtyard, it was totally awesome. And I even got a good photo of Jesus's grave. Which is kind of gross, I think. There was no body, because he rose from the dead, duh.
Tee hee hee.
Whatever, it was cool. And freaking huge and artistic and medieval and such. So my recommendation is "go!". Fun for the whole family.
I left the tour-week early with a few other people to study (hah!) for the exam, so the bus dropped us off in Dimona where we were to catch a bus to Beer Sheva and from there take the train to Haifa.
A word about Dimona: Hm.
That's it. That's my word. I don't think that anyone actually wants to live in Dimona. I mean, the whole thing is basically sand and disappointed immigrants. And, you know, the nuclear reactor. None of this "flower of the desert" stuff. Also, it's really dirty. As in, you know it's dirty when you look out the bus window to see a girl sweeping the dirt out of her house into the dirt in her yard, and she looks like she just needs a good bath. And then you realize that she's not sweeping the dirt out of her house into the yard, but rather she is..sweeping the sand in the yard, at which point you become sad and lose faith in humanity but especially in the youth of Dimona, like, you're in the middle of a desert, get a clue.
My final thought on the Study Tour: Auditing is awesome; all the perks and none of the assignments. Sweet.

2. Gilad Shalit and the Situation in Gaza: Well, it's a really tragic story, but in answer to all those inquiring about my health and safety in Israel right now, don't worry. My health and safety in Israel couldn't be better. That doesn't mean that I would envy your average Gazan at the moment. It's probably not on Expedia.com's top ten vacationing lists. But I the beaches are overrun with jellyfish this time of the year anyways.

3. Packing: I AM GOING TO DO IT!! I'm going to get all of my stuff home! You thought it couldn't be done! You thought I had too much stuff! Which I do! But I also have a great plan: Send most of it home with unwitting family/family friends, take two/three suitcases myself, and keep the rest in my delusional world of "It Will All Totally Fit in My Suitcase, SHUT UP, I HATE YOU!".
My long-term plan is to take all the stuff I won't wear/use anymore back in Toronto and sell it at one of those garage sales. 5$ a top, 10$ a pair of pants. Keep checking back to find out more on the grand opening of "L'Armoire de Jess", coming soon to a thrift shop near you.

More has probably happened in my fabulously important and irrepressibly desirable life, but I can't put off the procrastinating any longer, so wish me luck!
-J