So, since the last post I wrote about was really only about a sandwich and that was 3 weeks ago, I would say I was due for another writing, and this time I'll try to talk about real things?
I have learned somethings since that weekend, and that means going away for the weekend. The social scene in Israeli universities is very different. Namely, people go home for the weekend. It comes from 2-3 years of being in the army where you go home for the weekend and in a country where everything is close. Still, though I find it a little odd, maybe not odd, but, well, different. I go to college 2 hours from home and I only go home for holidays and vacations. My friend goes home every weekend on a 5 hour bus. Plus she travels down thursday night and back on the 5 AM bus every sunday. It's great dedication.
Now, this creates a very interesting dynamic. On the family unit it keeps the family unit together for much longer. There are graduation parties and everyone cries and the child leaves the home but then they come back on thursday. Or better yet, they have a day job and they come home every night. The children don't leave the nest really until they go to college or maybbe just when they get married. I think it keeps families closer but at the same time it doesn't force the kids to become more independent which I think is a big benefit. I certainly feel that being so far from home, although I miss the family so much and how much i wish I could just go home for the weekend, it has forced me to make very independent steps.
Anyway, what I am trying to stay is that people don't stay in the dorms or in Jerusalem on weekends. I don't know how it would be to stay in town, because people do live in the city, but Mt. Scopus is very lonely and isolated as it is and on friday/saturday when there are no busses we cannot do anything, so I make plans.
So I went to the Tals family home who were our neighbors on kibbutz and I grew up with their daughter Mika. Mika could not come home from the army but they have 2 other daughters and i really had a great time. i felt really comfortable just to hang out and be a little weird. it made me realize that there is a very difference between Ima and Abba's friends who I could call if i had an emergency and people i can just go to hang out with. Since i have no family here (except for really religious third cousins somehwere who wont acknowledge my existence) and no one i can bother each weekend i need to find those hang-out people- those are the people who become your adoptive families in the end. in the end it is the people who know me best and in israel it is the families of the 2 girls i grew up with, Mika and Yahav- the Tals and the Erez-Slotts.
So the next weekend I went to visit the Erez-Slotts and the rest of the kibbutz. Now this is a very different experience- for one, Yahav does not live with her parents. Although they live about a 3 minutes walking distance every kid on kibbutz after 11th grade gets their own apartment in a pseudo-youth village in the corner of the kibbutz. This certainly creates a very interesting familial dynamic but that is for an entirely different sociological research study. Anyway, the kibbutz is very layered. For one, it is the place I grew up in so I can pass my old house, kindergarten, dining room, etc and have all of the nostalgia, but it is nice that they all live in the kibbutz and not just an empty place in some neighborhood. Second, its the family thing, all the people who watched me grow up are there and certainly many of those families and Ima and Abba's friends i could go to to hang out, but since this is kibbutz its entirely different. Third, there are the people I grew up with. Going to visit Yahav means I follow her around a little and sleep in her bed, but visiting the kibbutz means i am part of the youth village. I was very very surprised and pleasantly I should add that I felt very welcome there. People seemed to know I was showing up and people acted like I had just been there even though a lot of people were not home when I was there before so I hadn;t seen them in 5 years. No one was unwelcoming or acted like 'why are you here?' People also asked me about my life and if it was weird that i was back. it made me feel very nice because i tend to feel that kibbutz people are so entangled in their own lives and in the kibbutz that they dont notice other people's lives as well. Anyway, I felt a little strange and there were lots of volunteers and people i didnt know but i ended up having a really good time. i hung out with people the entire weekend and went to "cool" bars in other kibbutzim (no comment) and the famous Ketura pub, but i really got a sense of their lives and felt like i was a welcome visitor.
I did not feel like i could have been living there or that i wanted to, but i took the 6am bus with my friend Yasmin back to Jerusalem and i was sitting in the bus stop, me in my MASA backpack (the organization that funds and creates trips to israel) and her in her army uniform and i thought, if things were different i would be sitting here in my uniform going to my base as well. I know that things would have had to be A LOT different and who knows who i would have been (and believe me i have spent a lot of time pondering this) but if i still lived on kibbutz one thing would have been for sure, i would also sit in the bus stop sunday mornings in a uniform waiting for a bus to go back to my base.
I am not just saying this about the army, but it is strange to think about Yahav, a girl who was born 13 days before me and until i was 9 we shared the same life and while my life has taken so many turns i can see what it could have been like by looking at her life. I know this is oversimplifying everything, but from a physical standpoint i kept thinking that weekend, if we would have stayed on kibbutz, this is what my weekend could have been like. I think there are few instances where we can say that about decisions: if i would have made a different decision it would have come out liek this. sure who knows who i would have been but since the kibbutz seems to be something you can count on to stay more or less the same- that could have been my life.
My last point after all of this was the people- Mika, Yahav, will always be in my life. I spent alot of time at Mika's house looking at photo albums and watching home videos and hearing stories. And the funny thing is that 80% of their videos and pictures we have almost duplicates in my house. And while their video of out move from the baby home to the toddler home has the dad's voice and is pointed on mika and mien has abba and focuses on me, they are all the same. We had the same memories and significant events of our early childhoods. Every time they are ever in the US or I am here we make special special efforts to see them. Not just because we are still friends but because they are my constants. No matter what i know i will always see them and we'll be at each other's weddings and all. I don't know if many people have this with people they are not related to but its this weird bond. Even if i didnt like them i would always have to see them and i would have to drag my butt half way across the world to see them.
Israel is really inescapable to me. I thought earlier this trip that it was just the place i was born in- not really different than France if i were to have been born in france. And yes, it is a lot alot about that- the kibbutz, the places that hold memories, the people- they will always draw me back here. But it is ISRAEL and well, the fact that i am expecting visits from friends going on birthright and can see people who i worked with at camp because they were on the israeli delegation and the obsession american jews have with israel and the fact i speak hebrew and the fact that my name only makes sense here (although i start to not like it in hebrew because its so commonplace) and the fact that israel has so many issues and cannot stay off the news and people ask me my opinion from the "israeli voice"- well that makes Israel be layers and layers for me.
Now i will go to bed because tomorrow i am going to natanya for the weekend, because although it is certainly not the most glamourous place in israel, lets face it, i cannot be home alone with a sandwich again.
