Blogs from Ra'anana, Center District, Israel, Middle East

I arrived in Israel after 8 long hours in the Charles DeGaulle airport. All I really have to say about that experience is that you better have two hours in between your flights because getting from terminal to terminal is a job and a half, and you also better figure out a way to smuggle your own water, because the freaking French try and charge you 4 euros for a bottle of water. And it's not even a good ole 20 oz American size bottle of water. It's one of those socialist bottles of water that is in some metric weight that I don't even know how to read. And they don't have any restaurants in the "secure" terminal. My four and a half hour flight from Paris to Israel was aboard some crappy Airbus plane ... read more

I would like to dedicate this entry to my nose, my stuffy head and my general unpleasant-ness that accompanies those parts of my anatomy. You know....in America, I had asthma. I mean, I still have asthma (praise G-d if moving to Israel cured me of that), but I have never had any allergies except the stuff I was umm...allergic to. Meaning, when I say I was allergic to cat dander that meant that when I came into contact with cats, I would have an allergic reaction somewhat. Not that Israel has ANY shortage of cats….. Or when I say I'm allergic to bee stings, I would have to be stung in order to go into anaphylactic shock (lamans terms: swell up, lungs close, pretty much my whole body starts to die). But never just more ... read more

Ok....so I wrote this blog on the 23rd and it's now.....the 29th. But who's counting? :) Oh come on now. Cell phones are killing bees? Bees???. Give me a break. Upon picking up the International Herald Tribune, I came across this ridiculous article. First, people think that talking too much on cell phones are frying their brain cells and it leads to brain cancer. They even made these ridiculous band-aid looking things to attach to your cell phone so that it "blocks" the harmful death rays your cell phone apparently emits. Now that that crazy fad has passed, the newest harmful thing is that we're actually killing nature's bees. They even quoted Albert Einstein (a great Jewish man by the way) when he said that "If bees were to disappear, the human race would follow suit ... read more

So each day I start out with a list of things that I have to do that day, like most normal people do. Sometimes if I'm motivated, I'll even write it out but most of the time I just rely on my usually coherent mind to actually remember the stuff I need to do. A lot of the things I need to do center around the basic needs of a human being... 1) food (always an adventure here in Israel) 2) shelter (a never ending battle to make my apartment look more homely) 3) hygiene (well....no one likes a dirty girl - unless you know ....wink wink) Of course there are other "needs" such as education, people contact, and love. But let's go with the basics first. In my next to last post, I talked ... read more

So I almost died last night. And not from gunshots or rockets. From the highway. Trying to get to the bar. For real. This all innocently started out as an fun trip to the Temple Bar, in Cinema City, which is a healthy 1/2 hour bus ride for me to get to anyways. The last time I went, it happened to be in a car, so I didn't have to experience the highway of death before. I saw the highway in all it's glory from the relative safety of my friends car. I say "relatively" because if you think that New York and New Jersey drivers are bad, I invite you to come driving or riding in Israel. 100mph is about the norm. The "oh shit handle" becomes your friend (if it even exists) or you ... read more

Prelude: I just posted 2 entries at once, so read the other one as well...sorry been quite busy and no internet in the room kinda kills it. I'm having a bit of a dilemma. The problem is this. I've only been here a week and I'm already feeling bogged down by what I have to do as far as ulpan and work. It's not necessarily the fact that I can't handle it, but I keep having to take days off to do the basic oleh chadasha (new immigrant) stuff, such as opening up a bank account, going to misrad haklita (Office of Immigrant Absorption) and such things like that. I still have to make my way to Tel Aviv and meet up with the people in Misrad HaStudentim (Office of Student Affairs to get set up ... read more