thank goodness i'm literate

so i've been missing home hardcore lately. the past week and half or so have been particularly rough. i think it's faire (if you're Medieval, or if you're literate like i've claimed to be, fair) to say that i suppressed everything when i got here. i was kind of emotionally flat. i didn't realize it at the time, but i'm pretty sure this is an accurate description. i was a bit stunned, and thus took everything in really easily. i didn't realize that i wasn't really taking things in though... i was just letting them slide around me, like slippery fish in a barrel. (i'm reading Memoirs of a Geisha, so forgive the Eastern poetics.) and i think because i wasn't really taking it in, i wasn't fully grasping the enormity of my situation here.
and now i do.
and i'm kinda panicking, just a little. i know, it's against the number one rule if i'm going to be an intergalactic space traveler! but here i am!

i miss my friends. a lot. yes, i'm talking to YOU. i miss people understanding me. i don't know if you've ever had to make friends as an adult, but it's not fun. in fact, it's exhausting. and i'm too old for this crap. where's my camp crew, with whom i can be totally emo and totally ridiculous all in the span of 4.7 seconds? where are my jammin buddies that fulfil my creative and sonourous needs, no matter the hour? where are those special few, that don't even need to hear my voice when i call, and they're at my house in a jiffy making tea/cookies/music because they heard, in my silence, that i needed it? where's my mom? where are YOU??

i applied for a job last week. the position requires bilingualism, and unfortunately that second language is Hebrew, not my second language of Pig Latin (thanks for that, Mom). it seemed like a pretty cool job so i sent in a resume and a kick-ass cover letter, hoping to attract their attention. to my dismay, i attracted their attention. i got called for an interview. and i got called for a second interview, at which i needed to read two pages of hebrew. and on our way home, driving south from haifa the night before my interview, i got so overwhelmed that i wished i was applying for a job in electrical engineering or as a harvard math professor or a bee farmer or ANYTHING - as long as it was in English, because anything at all could've been easier to fake than knowing how to speak hebrew. and then i just kinda wigged out, shed a few buckets, and got into bed and read "Time Traveler's Wife" for the next two hours until i couldn't focus my eyes anymore. the thing is, i've read time traveler's wife, maybe 5 or 6 times. and i love it. but reading it was not because i love it... it became my home, my friends, what felt familiar to me.

To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one. ~Chinese Saying

books are my friends right now. Memoirs of a Geisha = case in point. read that one a few times too. and just finished it for the fewtimes+1th time. gonna try and read a new book, then transition to a new friend. maybe one will come of Micka, the woman who volunteers with the publishing place. (write about that after... i'm meeting her tomorrow). we'll see - if she becomes a friend, and if i read White Oleander (again) or go onto Nick Hornby, or my first Jonathan Safran Foer. ("first??" i know - tragic, right?) I'm still in the middle of When You Are Engulfed in Flames, but you can go in and out of that one, it being essays and all.

ok. i feel better now. :)

and p.s, i kinda got offered that job. so i'm proud of myself, in the end, that at least i did something totally scary, and learned something from it too. i didn't take the job cause i would've had to start work at 630am some mornings... and i didn't even need to work backwards to when i'd have to wake up to blurt YAH RIGHT at them (in my head).

in-between heavy stuff.

so i know i promised more decadent divulgings, like visiting Eyal's family and the insanity of Jerusalem and Israeli politics, but i just posted a juicy post so this is an inbetweeny light and fluffy cupcake, with apple sauce instead of oil.

the landlord won't do anything about the mold in the apartment, nor do we have any solutions for making it less damp in here. i've come to systematically hanging random piles of clothing outside on our line (can you do something systematically to something random?), just so that each piece of clothing can dry out every so often. it's kinda like doing the dishes even though you know you'll be eating off them again soon. plus my mom told me that sun kills mold so hopefully it'll help beyond just keeping things dry. ugh. how gross is mold? ugh.

i'm looking for a job, which in englishified hebrew is this: ani mechapesset avoda. as soon as my resume template lets me have more than 2 previous jobs (we've had a fight about it, he hasn't budged yet but i'll wear him down), i'll have a resume ready to submit to two interesting places, and some other places too. the interesting places are: BCVS, a residential treatment centre for Orthodox women 16-20 with an eating disorder, and this other place that i can't think of the name right now, but it's a centre for kids with special needs. day programs, respite, cool rec facilities and such. or maybe a vegetarian soup place.

as you can see from my brilliant hebrew above, ulpan is going well. i can say a variety of things, some of which are useful; i can use a variety of verbs in a mix of tenses, some of which only if i'm talking to male-identified person. i can say, for some reason, "No way!" and "There's no point" and "You and me, we will change the world." i've found myself sitting between Barrie, a guy in his early 50's i guess who is smiley and jokey and supportive of the Hebrew struggle and non-obnoxious like many other people in the class, and Jeremiah, a guy about my age with no neck and a mediumly-fierce Zionist attitude but he knows i'm against that so he keeps quiet about it. we hung out the park the other day and gossiped about the annoying people in our class, mainly this one British guy in his 30's named Pesach who is constantly seeking attention in a slightly passive way and who's English name is- no joke- Paul Simon. he says he's looking for a wife. i say GOOD LUCK BUDDY.

in vague emotional news, today i'm having a very hard time being here when i know one of my best friend's in the universe is going through a really tough time. it's painful. really really painful.

Randoms:

• I'm obsessed with this collection of blogs. Don't even go. Your friends will never see you again.
• My favourite line from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Tom Stoppard): "Hamlet, in love with the old man's daughter, the old man thinks."
• I just started reading Bernice Chu's blog and i really like it!
• I made an awesome walnut "cream" sauce for pasta the other night. *gurgle* yum.
• This is awesome: http://www.orthodykes.org/
• For some reason I decided to use capital letters where appropriate in this section.
• Keep an eye out for my soon-to-come picasa album. :)
  

today i miss: dad, the Shanly house and all its inhabitants.
***Just in case this little section isn't clear, you are ALL in my heart at ALL times... but of course, sometimes people stick out one day, for one reason or another. these are those people.***

my toast is ready. gotta go.
xo