rant

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhgggghhh i procraaaaaastinated and now there's toooo muuuuuch.

oy, i just let the cursor flash for like a minute before putting it work again. can't make brain work. but it wakes up quickly. so here i go.

i've been wanting to rant briefly about a variety of things, so lemme just release some babble on you and the i'll write some real posts later.

• my apartment is damp and i don't like it. clothes feel like i took them out of the dryer just five minutes too soon, my bed and slippers are cold and damp to get into, and bathroom towels won't dry without assistance from the clothesline outside. i found mould/mold (which one is British, which one American?) on some jeans i haven't worn in a while. i can do lots of gross things but mould/mold is NOT one of them. i don't know how to reconnect with my jeans yet.
• i got sick again and i think it's because my home is soggy. at least i didn't get the eye infections Eyal had. yuck.
• health food here is generally more expensive than at home, but the vegetables and fruits here are divine, way cheaper (even if organic!), and mostly local. WHO KNOWS HOW HAPPY I AM THAT I CAN GET LOCAL BANANAS AND AVOCADOS, RAISE YOUR HAND!
• i complain about my ulpan (hebrew school) teachers because they are training to speak monkey hebrew and not teaching us much vocabulary, but i'm complaining less lately. they're teaching us mostly structure, and using some boring verbs and very little other vocab, but Eyal is making me label everything in the house so i'm learning at home too. i think we might start a group here for people who want a social space in which to learn vocab, instead of the alternative, which is becoming very intimate with a hebrew-engish dictionary. i want to do units like we did learning french or spanish - a school unit, a shopping unit, an "all about me" unit - with relevant vocabulary, like 'to dance,' sister, 'i don't need a plastic bag', protractor, and fly-fishing. learning how to count above five might also be helpful. but recently (like this past week), i've actually begun to be excited about ulpan, and i find i know more thank i think i do. still hesitant to use it with eyal's friends, cause i kinda feel like i'm acting, but they always respond really positively when i use it so i should get over myself. :)

Coming soon: our trip to tel aviv/living in this insane city, the first weekend hanging out with Eyal's family up north, & Purim (it will a doozy).

Today, I especially miss, for various reasons: Lindsay Rothmar, the Montreal house, and Alex Duffy.

xoxox

BANANA BREAD

holy smokes.

so as i mentioned, we were at a friend's place for brunch 'n' good times, and there were these delicious-looking cakes that were in no way even close to resembling vegan but definitely resembled deliciousness, so needless to say, i've been yankering (is my english getting worse?) for cake since then. SO i got home and decided i was going to use the oven for the first time and make banana bread, to discover:

1. we have no measuring cups
2. we have no measuring spoons
3. the bloody oven is so old that it doesn't actually have numbers on it. (did people not used to bake things at specific temperatures?)

so i pulled up my socks and dug in to the flour jar with my hand and Vegan-A-Go-Go'd (shout out to Sarah Kramer - who will never read this), and created.... a masterpiece.



yes, i've already eaten a quarter of it. you would too if you could taste this.

shabbas in beit zayit

so it's coming to the end of the weekend... yes, the weekend here is friday and saturday. it's weird. i like my lazy sundays, but i guess now they'll have to be lazy saturdays.

today was in between lazy and not.

we went to visit our friends in Beit Zayit, a part of town about twenty minutes away but takes you really outside of the city. it's very beautiful. almond trees are in bloom now so the mountainsides are dotted with pink and while blossoms, and they smell amazing. so anyway, Eli and Eran live in Beit Zayit, next door to each other in these weird little houses with cool wood fireplaces and palm leaf-covered porches outside that appear to be homemade. we brought our compost because they have a garden in which to bury it.

on the way, we picked up Eran's ladyfriend, Amit (which turns out to be a unisex name. i thought it was a boy's name). we fell in love. she went to a school in Arava, a part of the desert in the south. it's a section of the Great Rift Valley, lying between the Dead Sea to the north and the Gulf of Aqaba to the south. it includes nearly half of the border between Israel to the west and Jordan to the east. (it's where the israel-jordan peace treaty was signed in '94. neat.) anyway the school is amazing. it's called the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and it's unique for being the most successful school at integrating Palestinian, Israeli and international students. there is a strong emphasis on social justice as well. Amit said it was the only one in Israel proper that allows Palestinian students, but i think it just might be the most famous and/or successful. anyhow, it's pretty awesome. look at the link. i sent you to the english site. :)

anyway, apart from her school, she's my kind of peeps. she lives in the desert so it won't be so easy to hang out, but we have plans to visit next time we go to egypt. she told me about a permaculture studies program she did, which is something i've been thinking about hardcore. i almost ditched ulpan to start a permaculture program at a kibbutz up north that starts next week - 3 months, spend the week living there and play on the weekends - but i decided perhaps it's best to not spend the week away from jerusalem seeing as i just got here. :) but an important thing going on in my head: i want to do an intensive permaculture course because i want to live like this one day. i don't know where, but i want to have a huge garden and mud buildings and goats and be surrounded by happy friends who want the same. i really think this is way i want to spend my days. so there you have it. :)

and as for breakfast... we made delicious salads, had delicious blueberry pecan toast and homemade olives that Eli made, and they had Amit's uncle's happy goat cheese, and i cracked a whole bunch of freshly picked macadamia nuts - WHICH is not an easy thing to do necessarily! i learned that it's easier to let them dry for about a month after you pick them BEFORE cracking them open, but we were eager so we just went for it. i got pretty good with that hammer and getting out the nut in one (or two... or three) pieces. *gurgle* so tasty. especially on that bread. we prepped food outside and ate outside, and spent the rest of the day outside, the sun scooting in and out from behind clouds... we had a pretty good dance party in the dirt there (some black eyed peas, michael jackson, beach boys...), talked about The Secret Life of Plants, and laughed hysterically while making strange noises with our faces. we drank lemon verbena tea (they call it Louisa) and piled on shawls as they day went on. Amit put almond blossoms in my hair and we talked about mud structures. i decided to make Eran a CD of Cat Empire (he's a great musician, plays the cora, going to give me a piano - we like Eran). we left around 530 when our toes were getting numb, and i was so happy.

i have a secret. i now like instant coffee. i'm drinking it right now with chocolate soymilk. don't judge me. i like real coffee too!

i'm going to relax with Eyal now... he has an eye infection, and is getting over the strep throat he caught from me. :S then we'll eat soup that we made yesterday... yum.

xo

and OH!!!!!!

i started ulpan today. met a friend named Elisa from Buffalo. she was the only non-religious girl in my corner. (apparently i'm a 'back corner' girl... do you know what YOU are??)

aaaand.....

i just finished my first page of Hebrew homework!!!!!!!

under the weather....

...which is actually pretty crapppy. yes, 3 'p'-level crapppy. for all y'all who think i plopped myself into the middle of desert and instantly get to enjoy 40 degrees, you'll be glad to know (and so will i) that youc an stop hating me for escaping winter. ok ok you're right, it's not snowing (where i am anyway - too bad for those suckers up north!), but it's raining and cold (kinda late fall in canada) so the cold gets into your bones... so now i'm really sick. :( but also, Sarah Blooma (aka Bloomie) has been sick and i've been babysitting, so i'm sure that didn't help build my defenses. or (ready for a tangent?) take away from how cute she is!

In addition to having a cute daughter, my sister Amanda and her husband Chanan (c'mon, really put a good chhhhhala at the beginning of that) have an adorable son, Yisroel (like Israel) Moshe. i started calling him Izzy Mo when he was first born (as opposed to second born? pfft), but Yismo has stuck. And he has long hair in the back and short in the front, which makes him look like Coach Fox (what was that actor's name? Craig something...?), so i now call him Coach. i hope it sticks.

[photos soon. uploading is being annoying right now.]

unfortunately, it here that i must reveal that i have deceived you. no, not about the kids; they're real. but it isn't cold today and i'm not as sick as i claimed above. this is because i wrote half this post last week and never finished because i got soooooo sick - i've sleeping, fevering, and groaning since tuesday, and haven't been able to sit at the computer for more than six seconds until last night really. so NOW there is much more to tell, but i'll save it for a separate post.

but i will leave you with this:

baking powder only comes in individual packets here??? ma ze chara a ze??? (something like, 'what the shit, man??')

Four days in

I'm sorry, but this post will probably be boring. But it'll be a decent standard details catch-up.

The flight was fine. Took off and landed rather promptly. I sat next to friendly, punky, air-sick youth pastor who kinda stole my window seat but I figured she needed it more than me. Made sleeping nearly impossible, so I've been tired since I got here. I guess jetlag has something to do with it too.

It was the first time I'd ever had someone waiting in the airport for me with my name on a sign. That was pretty cool. She nabbed me nearly as soon as I got off the plane, then took me to another person who had my name on a sign, all the while telling me about this crazy flood that had just happened in the south. The new sign lady let me bud the security line to get my passport stamped, and then took me upstairs to the absorption office (kinda freaky - i was absorbed...) where the lady told me that my necklace (the Celtic Goddess lady... you probably know the one) "is not good thing for Jew to put." Ah well. I put it anyway. I didn't give her a hard time about the comment because then she gave me cashmoney and introduced me to the man that was to get my bags for me and wheel them out. That was pretty awesome.

Eyal was waiting for me with Leon and a rose. We were happy. We were happy for so long that the guy who wheeled my bags out finally came over and was like, "Uh, ok well mazel tov and enjoy Israel," and kinda sauntered away. It was amusing.

The apartment is very cool - it needs heaters in every room. (YES I KNOW i'm Canadian but this doesn't mean I don't have the right to complain about the cold. Because it's SO cold at home, we need heaters and sweaters and slippers and duvets, and thus we don't acclimatize to the nippy weather. So there, Israelis.) Although most apartments are like this- the buildings here are constructed to be self-cooling because it's so damn hot in the summer. So it's a lot of tile and concrete and poor insulation. I know I'll appreciate it in the summer.
But in other definitions of the word, the apartment is very cool. I'll post pictures when Eyal gets home. It's kinda like a cave, with lots of archways and niches and slopes in the ceiling and walls... apparently this is old-style Israeli, but at the same time not very common, because our place is older than most - so unique even to Israelis! Neat. :) It's a half-basement, so we still get lots of natural light. Not direct sun, but not a typical basement, so it's fine. There's lots of space for storage, and Leon (the dog), and toys for when Yismo and Bloomie (the nephew and niece) come over. We have a decent kitchen, a washing machine in the bathroom, and large common area that we'll use often. Already have, in fact...

On Friday night (people call that Shabbat here), we had four friends over for dinner and wine. I made three Indian dishes from the Indian Vegan cookbook Lon gave me just before I left (it's AWESOME. i can't wait to make stretchy fried bread) and they were all well-received. Yeahhhhh. I really like Eyal's friends. His friend Tultul (which isn't his real name - "tul" means curl, and he has curly hair, so they call him Tulul. I don't actually know his real name...) lives close and he's super nice. Also, Omri's girlfriend Michal lives close-by, and Eyal 2's girlfriend (he's one of Eyal's best friends) named Liori goes to school in Jerusalem, so I have some lady friends near-by too. And soon I'll make my own friends. :)

In other news... tomorrow, I'm going to pop into the community centre (rather, center) that is right by my building because they have an ulpan there (an intensive Hebrew studies program) that I will hopefully start attending the first week of February. Other things on my to-do list:

1. get a cell phone
2. get a router so we can hook up our VOIP phone (which will let me call anywhere in Canada and the U.S for one low monthly price!!!)
3. sign up for a bank account
4. get my Israeli ID card (Teudat Zehut), which I actually need to do first.

To delve quickly into feelings... I think i was in shock a bit when i got here. I wasn't feeling nervous or excited or anxious or worried or anything really... kinda weird. Jess told me i shouldn't worry and that i'll start to settle and accept my new life and feel again. *lol* Well she didn't say it exactly like that... but i've actually started to wake up to all the new things in the past day or two, so things are moving along. More on feelings another time.

Love.