Sylvester! no not Stallone... the Pope

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Happy New Year!!! This is my official new years greeting to all my readers, even though its already a week past. Here in Israel, the holiday is mysteriously called Sylvester... but I'll get to that in a few minutes.

So, I last left off on my return from my trip to Eilat and the Negev and Chanukah. That week, I returned to work, my teaching English to the troubled kids. While the situation has gotten better since the beginning, it is still often a completely disorganized mess. At this point, it is beyond ridiculous, but I have mostly given up on trying to fix it, since the program is only for another 6 weeks (GULP!!!!!!) However, I am working a lot more hours than I was in the beginning, and that is about the only improvement. The most frustrating thing for me with this, is I feel like I"m not making much of a difference with the kids, because I"m not given the proper tools, and I am not utilized in a way that the kids can really learn a lot from me. Its very sad, because I know I could do so much more for these kids, and for the most part, the kids really want more from me too.

On the brighter side, I got a 2nd internship, that is much better, though only squeezed into the few hours that I have as spare time. My new internship is working with the children of illegal immigrants (yes, Israel has illegal immigrants too!). The illegal immigration situation is like this... Most of the people are from Africa or south east Asia (mainly Thailand). They come to Israel because of the better standards of living and opportunities for economic gain (similar to why people come to the US). So, because you need a work permit to be able to legally work in Israel, and these many many people don't have them, they have very limited options on working. Also, a strange situation is that most of these families are single mother with children families. This is because, at some point, Israel decided that instead of deporting the whole family, they would deport the fathers, because you couldn't deport the mothers and leave the children here. So these parents, whether one or two parent families, work like 12 hours a day at least, which leaves their young children to go to "babysitters" for 12 hours a day at least. These babysitters are also illegal immigrants, and in order to make the most money people, it is normally just them working with 20-30 kids at the house in one day. Sometimes, the places will have a second assistant, but not all places. And typically, the houses are just small apartments, with all these kids crammed inside alllllll day. The babysitters are so overwhelmed with so many kids that they don't really bother to interact with the kids much, to play with them, teach them motor and developmental skills, like a normal preschool or day care would in the US. And of course the kids also don't get much attention from their parents, since they are working all day. So the kids are very behind developmentally, like 3 year olds unable to feed themselves and other similar things. Luckily, in Israel, starting at the age of 3, all children are entitled to go to free public preschools, where they get a much better education and interaction with adults and learn their developmental and motor skills that they have been missing out on. But most times, when the kids finally get to this point, going to these schools is such a shock that it takes them a while to adjust. OK, so now that I have explained to you the plight of these illegal immigrant children, what am I doing about it?! Well, my job is to go to a few of these "babysitters" 2 times a week, every week, and just spend a little time working with the kids, playing games with them, teaching them, and at the same time, showing the teachers how to interact with the kids better, even in short amounts of time that can really make a difference. Also, observing the situation of the babysitter's apartment, safety, etc. I have already been to this job 3 times now, and so far I really like it. It is a great placement me, because it is definitely social work, its working with children, and I am getting great supervision from the organization, which is called Mesila (The path in hebrew). And the best part, its close to my apartment! Unlike my other job which takes me at least an hour to get to each of my 5 different schools.

The other exciting thing is that I started a babysitting job, just once a week with an american family, and I am actually earning money! Its just a little bit, but honestly, it is so nice to be making money rather than spending it all the time. Its also conviniently in walking distance. Although I walk a lot more here than I ever do at home.

For Shabbat, I had my friend Jon Kovach (from Pitt) and his roommate Max come over, as well as my roommate Elisabeth (from France), one of her friends who was visiting us from France, and our other friend Simon (from Sweden) from our program. It was nice and yet strange to have one of my American friends here. Nice in that is was normal and comfortable, but strange in that, well, first of all me and Jon never actually hung out when we were at Pitt, just friends in the same Hillel group. Second of all, being with Americans again. I have very few American friends here, and at this point, am very used to not being around Americans (even though one of my roommates is American, we both try very hard to be Israeli). So to be with these two guys, was almost like a reverse culture shock. And his roommate Max, is pretty much the most American guy I have ever met. All the stereotypes you could think of for an American, this guy was it. I even said this to them, that it was so strange to be around Americans again, and he reminded me that I'm still an American and I shouldn't forget my roots. And while initially, I just laughed at him, he is also kind of right I realized. I have been trying so hard to be Israeli, to fit in (which I think I do a decent job of), to be not American, because none of my friends are, that I had forgotten, and I now know that no matter what I do, I will always be partially American. So it was a great shabbat that turned into a long weekend.

So, what else? Ahh yes, back to New Years aka Sylvester. I'm sure you are all wondering what the connection is, and believe me so was I. So first of all, NYE is not quite the big excitement in Israel as it is in the US. Everyone works on Jan 1st. Big bummer for partying. I would say about half of Israel celebrates New Years. The Israeli Sabras (those born in Israel for at least 2 generations) typically don't celebrate New years, or if they do, its nothing big. They consider it a Christian holiday, which I will explain in just one minute. But, all the immigrants, mainly Americans and South Americans and Europeans, and Russians, they all pretty much celebrate New Years still. In Tel Aviv, which is a city that needs no excuse to party, but will always take one, there were parties alll over the city. I went out with all my friends in Tel Aviv, and we went to a couple different pubs to bring in the New Year together, and it was a lot of fun, especially the Salsa Bar we went to.

Finally... what in the world is Sylvester?! So, I had to look this up, because nobody had an answer for me. Here is the little that I found. Silvester was a Pope during the time of Constantine (the first Christian Roman emperor- for those who need a Roman refresher course). He apparently was the only pope to have met the descendents of Jesus's family, and was present at the Council of Niceaa, which was when they established the laws of the Orthodoxy Church and which books would be included in the bible, and which would become heresy (wow, I learned something in college!). So anyway, Pope Silvester 1 died on December 31, 335, and ever since this day was his Saint's day. The day had no other meaning until the world started using the Gregorian Calendar and the date of the New Year changed from Dec 24 (happy birthday Jesus) to Dec 31. Now, what does this have to do with Israel?? Honestly, I have no idea. My only guess is that the Jews that established Israel were mainly from Europe, and New Years is also referred to as Silvester in several European countries, such as Germany, so it got carried over in the yiddish/european Jewish culture. I could be totally wrong here, but this is just the only thing that makes sense to me.

Well, so these last two weeks I have been working a lot, and its been exhausting. Its kinda payback I guess for the beginning of the program where I was barely working and wanted to work more. You always want what you don't have right? Thursday night, my program had a special concert with one of the most popular bands in Israel, the Idan Raichel Project. It was not just my program, but several programs under the big organization that we are part of called MASA. It was really great because the tickets were free, and there were maybe only one thousand of us for this special concert, so it was nice and a bit intimate. I was sick, so I didn't have all the energy to dance around like some people, but it was a great concert and I enjoyed it. I knew about half the songs. His band is special because it incorporates typical "Israeli" music with middle eastern styles, Ethiopian and other ethnic style music, ethnic types of instruments, several different languages, and the lyrics are beautiful. I highly recommend you looking it up, even if you don't understand the words, the music is great and something really different from anything you hear in the US. This past shabbat was another nice one with the roommates, and I spent literally the entire weekend in my room, in bed and using my computer, sleeping a lot. Sounds boring, but it was actually really nice to just be there and relax.

I realized, after reading all my blogs, and reading through the blogs of many other people on this website, that I often don't talk about the random people I meet, and really that is one of the great things about traveling and living in a different country, the people that you meet, so I'm going to try to do more of that from now on. But for now, I"m tired, so I'm gonna wrap this up.

My mom is coming to VISIT ME in Israel, this Friday!!!!! I am super excited. She will only be here a week, but I am really excited. It has been 6 months since I left home, more than that actually. I really didn't think that anyone would come to visit me, so I am really glad that my mom is making the journey after not having visited Israel in 36 years! What a shock she is in for, Israel looks so different. OK, I"ll report more on her visit in my next entry.

Happy 2007!

Congratulations to Chris Huska and Natty on getting married!!


Love and miss everyone,

Leah

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Photos

shabbat photo
max, jon, muriel, me, and simon

happy new year!
me and abigail out on new years

scary sparklers!
abigail and simon freaked out by the sparklers... hehehe

smile
some of the group at the salsa bar

Comments

[Rachel Bea]

Whoa 2007 baby!
Sounds like you've already had a busy 2007 and its only the first week! Congrats on the new job! You deserve something more in your "field." Have fun with your mom next week!