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Published: September 13th 2007
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Inflation...
The flower guys seriously inflated their prices for these flowers...but they're gorgeous, no? So before I forget any of the things that happened to me today, I have to write them all out.
Tonight I was given the opportunity to go to Rosh Hashana dinner with my loyal blog reader, Itay and his beautiful family. His wife Galit and adorable daughter welcomed me into their home in Ness Ziona and adopted me for the holidays. Which in and of itself is amazing and makes me love this country even more, because it's of people like their family and my friends here that make living here on my own bearable.
The fact that I have such a strong network of people who are really like my family is the best thing that I could ask for in the beginning of this new year. How awe-inspiring it is that I am starting a whole new year in a whole new country with a whole new set of people in my life? 1, 2, even 4 years ago, I never thought I'd be living here in Israel. What started out as a random free 10 day trip on Taglit:birthright Israel, turned out to be one of the most life changing events that has happened to
Amit
Itay and Galit's adorable daughter... me so far. It was the beginning of a love affair that I don't ever want to end.
The food tonight was great - I had chicken, beef, rice with "the assortment" on top, tomatoes with pine nuts, antipasta, salat, couscous. And in the classic Jewish style - even when you're full, there's always the saying of "Eat! Eat more!" and then just when you think you're in the home stretch, desert comes out and of course it always deals with some type of chocolate and you just
have to have some - nevermind that it also has ice cream on top and you can feel the calories soaking into your thighs...Oy...Ofir will know what I ate and punish me with an extra set at the gym. I know it.
But it was worth it. On the way back, Itay and I were talking about firefighting and Hebrew language. I admitted that I had been lazy out loud with the language and that the documentary I saw today about 9/11 and seeing the firefighters survivor stories kicked me in the gut. My job is amazingly important to me and I know that in order to get what
Swing Low Sweet Chariot
I'm the cutest firefighting onion farmer in all the land :P I want and hell, even to communicate fully in this country - I really need to step up to the plate and start studying and throw myself into this language.
It's so easy to get caught up in the fact that everyone speaks at least a modicum of English. Some better than others (which I can't even tell you how much it amuses me when people ask me what country I'm from and then I say "America" and they say "no..which country?" meaning "what state")
So that's it...I now have another kick in the ass to do what I know I needed to do even before I moved here. Aliyah is no joke. If you come here without knowing Hebrew, you have a lot of work to do. And if I have to read children's books, do flashcards, watch kid's shows and sing Barney songs - then so be it.
How fitting that my new resolution falls on the Jewish New Year. It's tradition to make New Year's resolutions in the States, but as everyone knows and the stigma goes - you make the promises and break them. But I can't break this one - because not
being fluent breaks my chances at what I want and need to do in my life.
Oh - and some of my particularly more paranoid Israeli friends actually warned me against going to dinner tonight siting the fact that
"I'm Israeli and I know people. I know that you shouldn't just go to dinner with some guy who reads your blogs"
I would just like to say - not only was I
not raped, killed or maimed in any way whatsoever, that I have the best time today and I would do it again in an instant! 😊
Ok..as I promised, I said I would write my next entry about being an onion farmer.
There is this great organization in Israel called
Table to Table or T2T for short. It's a volunteer group that has various projects that all support and provide food for impoverished and hungry people in the surrounding areas. One of their projects is called Project Leket.
There are farmers all over the country that harvest their produce/vegetables and sell them but then there is a little left over that either by some law the guy was telling us about or by other reasons there is usually at least a dunam of land that is left over that if not picked, it will get razed over and not picked. This means that at any time there is at least 30 dunams all over Israel that is not getting picked and that could be at least 5000lbs or 2273 kilos of food that can potentially be wasted.
So here is where T2T comes in, they hold "picking days" which volunteers can go to and actually help the organization. On Friday the 7th, Jewlicious (an amazing blog about Jewish life for young adults) hosted a day to go pick. When we got there we learned that we were going to harvest onions. You get there and you see these HUGE bins of onions. More than you've ever seen in your whole life! We later found out that each one of those bins holds 3000lbs (1364 kilo) of onions!
In 4 hours, we picked 2 of those bins, no lie. We had a group of chayalim (soldiers) with us and it became a competition to see who could pick the most and the fastest. They were really friendly and one of them told me that they had all been in the army together, stayed in touch and then decided to do this project for T2T as an outing. They even invited me to go into a picture with all of them. My group and I sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" as we pulled the onions from the ground, had this insane "cheerleader" guy who just kept saying
"Thank you guys! Thank you! I can feel the field being done soon! You guys are amazing! My new friends, thank you guys!"
, which in the beginning was an awesome way for us to keep motivated but then it just turned into a fantasy to choke him and give him prozac or something...he just became plain obnoxious with how many times he said it.
Afterwards, we went and had fresh watermelon, Arak (nasty drink that is like Sambuca and since I hate licorice, therefore hated this drink as well) and falafel, which was delicious.
You can see more pictures at the Jewlicious blog under
"Jewlicious at the farm!" entry.
Ok...time to end this entry.
Shana Tova - and may your new year be rich in food, drink, friends, and love.
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