Kibbutz Ketura

So Kibbutz Ketura....

The kibbutz in which i grew up has given me boatloads of stress for about 3 years now. The last time my family and i went to israel was passover 2006, so about 4 1/2 years ago and when we went to the kibbutz it was really awkward and uncomfortable and I said I never wanted to go back. I would go to israel and not to the kibbutz. On kibbutz everyone lives in their own routine. People are very very social but everything is done by routine, everyoen goes to the lunch and dinner at the usual times, goes to the pool at the usual times, pops by a friends house unannouced. No one is calling each other to say, hey you want to meet up? Which is a wonderful way to live, but as an outsider is quiet daunting, and especially for me, a person who is very scared to invite myself to things for fear of being unwanted, the kibbutz feels like a social awkwardness nightmare. I didnt know when to go to the dinning hall or whose house people were hanging out with so I was alone a lot of the time. Needless to say I did not want to come back.

But that is kind of impossible, be in Israel for 5 months and not visit the kibbutz? unheard of. so Ima and Abba and Ariela went down for Yom kippur and i begrugingly agreed to follow them down for sukkot. I was shitting bricks though, i was on the bus down from Tel Aviv and I wanted to cry. Why did I do this to myself? I am just setting myself up for 4 horrible days.

The moment I got there though, my childhood friends Yahav and Mika (all of us were born within 20 days of each other and we have always been a little triplet. Yahav is the only one who still lives on Kibbutz, though) went on a night hike. I dropped my things off where ima and abba were staying and we did a really nice hike in the full moon down into the kibbutz.

It made me really get it. No matter what, Yahav and Mika will always be in my life. Even if we lose touch its this bond that will always be there, i will always see them again.

The same is true for the kibbutz. no matter what it will always be part of my life. even if i dont go back and live there or go live in israel again i will always return to it even just to say, i once lived here. I am going with my group there next weekend and i feel like it will be like that. i can introduce my new friends to my old life.

so kibbutz surprised me. yes, people were in their own lives and most dont go out of their way to invite you to things and say 'were having lunch at 12, come join us' and that makes things very difficult for me. but it was also a lesson for me to get out of my comfort zone. it sounds like a small step but at school i would never just show up at the dining room and if i see people eat with them and if not ok. I would never do that. After being in middle school and having girls purposefully not include me in things, i have created defense mechanisms for myself. a lot of that has subsided over the years but still going to the dining room on kibbutz alone made my stomach churn. But it was definitely better than i expected. In most cases I saw people I knew and they were more than happy for me to sit with them. At nights I found things to do and even went to this hang out place in the mountains with people I wasnt that good friends with. I didnt feel too alone. Yahav was really a godsend because she really made an effort to invite me to things and include me. I felt really thankful that I had her because I felt like we were really friends and after all this time we were real friends and even though she had her own life she welcomed me.

Stress and Fasting

So the past 2 days have been pretty significant; first Slichot in Jerusalem and then Yom Kippur. So we drove to Jerusalem thursday night for a traditional Slichot service which is I guess a prayer service you can do from a month before to start.... okay I wasn't really listening, but we went through some of the old city and it was nice. I was very excited because I couldn't even remember the last time I had been there if at all. Then we went to the Kotel, or near the Kotel because I have never seen so many people in one place before. It was insane. There must of been 100,000 people or something, it was ridiculous. I really liked having so many people there all for the same purpose. There was a group of Yeshiva boys near us singing the prayer and dancing and I just thought, 'where else could this happen?'

When we tried to leave, though, all the good feelings evaporated. The masses had started to disperse and the way out was blocked. We tried to push and move through the crowd but it had become a mosh-pit. It was very scary and stressful to feel like I had no control where I was going and not knowing where I was if I were to get lost it would be such a struggle to find the group again. Also in the back of my mind I had what happened at Love Parade in Germany, so I kept thinking, what if someone fell, what if I fell?

We started to leave at midnight and only returned home at 4AM.

The next day Yom Kippur began. It was the normal deal, Kol Nidre, fasting, Neila, but in Tel Aviv the atmosphere is amazing- no cars on the road, everything is closed. I wasn't expecting this because so many people are secular but the tradition is that people don't drive. It was incredible- everyone was walking on the roads and riding their bikes. Wow

Parentals came to Israel

The parentals are in Israel!! They arrived saturday night, oh Ariela is here too.

Well lots has happened and yet it seems like everything just goes the same way it always has, even though I have been here less than 2 weeks.

We go to Ulpan, I space out a lot and try to not roll my eyes as we learn to conjugate and read 4th grade level hebrew, its hard. Tomorrow I am going to take the test for a different Ulpan to see if they have a level for me but we will see. I don't want to be a total snob but i need to be challenged if this month is going to mean anything in terms of my progress in the language. I would even rather to not do Ulpan at all and do volunteer work or go hang out on the kibbutz just to be exposed to hebrew more, but that may be too much to ask, well see...

Otherwise I'm hanging out with the parentals and friends, going to the shuk and the crafts fair and seeing Tel Aviv. I promised I would not try to bore everyone with the blog so while nothing that exciting is happening I'll keep it short.

I will say that while Tel Aviv is definitely happening it is exhausting- I'm also not used to cities, but people are pretty rude and abrasive and everything is loud and hot and expensive, so maybe not the city for me, but Jerusalem soon.

ISRAEL

OH MY GOD. i felt like crying all the way from when we landed until i got to my apartment. i dont really know why, mostly because i was overwhelmed and the airport had all these signs that said "israel is always a part of you" and "everyone has a place in israel" and so i was thinking "its true! its true!"

so anyway i was so on edge maybe because lack of sleep or because everyone was speaking in hebrew, all the signs were in hebrew and i was now starting a new program with all new people. anyway, i took the train to tel aviv and hobbled my way over to 138 dizengoff where i thought i would be so late and embarassed. turns out they wanted people to arrive 4-6 pm so my 5:15 was totally fine.

they led me to my apartment right in 138 dizengoff with violetta (russian), yulia (german) and sarah (american). breathe. we met everyone else at 6:15 and walked to a park by the water to do "ice breakers". very international group (italian, french, spanish, australian, british, american, german, and russian) but not so diverse gender-wise (16 girls, one boy). we then walked to a restaurant and had a lovely meal and met the famous shoshana. now a thing about shoshana, i have been emailing her all year and was terrified of her because i thought she hated me, but turns out everyone has been emailing her, phewww.

so we have been doing tours of tel aviv. everyone is really nice and really eager to make friends so i am pretty at ease. its definitely college orientation-like but with so few people its so much nicer and less stressful. we also do tours with another MASA group who is studying music at a conservatory in tel aviv, but they mostly (not to be totally prejudice) are alot of nerdy boys who spend too much time with their saxophone/oboe/piano. but still its nice to have people.

we have been walking around orienting ourselves with tel aviv (home for the next month) and on organized tours, the most notable on an open roof bus where the bus driver made us all dance in the aisles to sephardi music.

i have been very impressed with the organization of it all- everything is planned for us for these few days before ulpan- especially after knowing so little about the program. i still dont have a real schedule, but i know ill be in ulpan after sunday and go on a tour to the south in october where we spend shabbat on kibbutz ketura, oh ok.

so im in tel aviv, friday night, i have the option to go to chabad for serivces which i think i will opt ot and try to find a masorti synagogue for next week.

paris post

Tired, tired, tired.

Lets learn another life lesson here, never try to see the sites in paris while dragging around your 50 pound suitcase, not fun. then again i dont really have anything to complain because i was in paris, or for the sake of this post i am in Paris.

so anyway, heavy luggage and Paris. basically the reasoning for my blog's title because if you were in paris august 31st you may have seen a girl with her suitcase, namely noa and her suitcase; ahhhh.

so i saw paris though, i persevered, and i am really glad i pushed through because it was quite spectacular. there are just so many monuments and famous buildings and things to see. i got off the subway at the arc de triomphe (sp?), walked to the eiffel town, down along the seine, by the presidents house and all of the guards and soldiers, to the obolesque, the louvre and the pyramids, all the way to hotel de ville and the RER train to the airport.

well i guess what they say is true, paris is beautiful, i dont know if it can be compared to barcelona which may take the cake at this point, but it was pretty magical, minus the suitcase of course.