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Published: October 23rd 2006
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Hi! I'm writing to you from my new apartment in Tel Aviv! We moved in a week ago, and I have to say that the apartment is great. It is in the absolute center of Tel Aviv, 5 minutes to the beach, the main shopping areas, all the buses, and plenty of cafes, restaurants, bars and grocery stores all within short walking distances. The kitchen and living room were just restored, so all the kitchen is brand new and theres a couch and tv and even a dvd player! It is really great. I"m sharing a room with the other american girl in my group, Erica, who I also happen to be working with (we spend lots of time together because of these 2 things).
So, everyone has been asking me, what about work?! Well, here's what... I haven't really started yet. I'm going to be working at 4 different schools/learning centers with kids who have trouble in school, and are having trouble learning english (which is a required subject to graduate highschool). The kids are not from great backgrounds, meaning poorer families, mostly from Ethiopian families, and also Russian families. So, I'm working with highschool students (I finally get
to work with teenagers!). The problem is, since I'm working at 4 different schools, that means 4 different program directors, and 4 different teachers to meet with and work with to decide what exactly they want me to, because they all need different things for their students. So last week, I met with 2 different program directors, and the meeting went very well, and we've come up with some good ideas for the programs. Today, I went to one of the schools, to meet the students and just observe the normal classroom behavior and way of learning, etc. So its all going well, just everything is coming together very slowly. I hope that we'll be working more next week. Everything in Israel is disorganized and slow like this, and because they want us working at 4 different schools, it seems to be going even slower. But I think once we get into actually working, it will be very good. I hope!
OK, let me now give you the highlights of the other things I've been up to the last week or so.
Thursday night, we had a surprise 50th birthday party for my cousin Sari, who's house I
had stayed at most of the summer. She was very surprised, and it was nice to see my cousins. I hadn't seen most of my cousins in a while. So the party was a lot of fun, and I stayed there for the night.
Then friday morning, I had to come back to tel aviv to pack to go to another cousin's bar mitzvah in Haifa up north. Well, the bus that should normally take 1 hour took almost 2. So I was already annoyed, and on the way my cousins called me to tell me that we had to leave at 12, which was 2 hours earlier than they had told me the day before, and I had to get to one of my other cousins houses, instead of them picking me up. So this left me with about 30 minutes to pack and shower and get out of the house to the bus. Needless to say I was in a big rush and not very happy. I finally get on the bus to go to my cousin's house, and after like 5 minutes, the bus breaks down. I was already running late, and my cousin was already
calling me asking where I was, so I decided to take a taxi to get there faster, instead of waiting for the next bus. Big Mistake. I found the only slow taxi driver in Israel (most taxi drivers drive like maniacs). And because I was late, my cousin started calling me like every 5 minutes yelling at me where are you where are you?!?! (this was my cousin Pnina, my grandma's cousin, and she is the most nervous scary person ever, and doesn't speak english). So, she keeps calling me calling me screaming, and I only partly understand her. But I get what she is asking. Well, not only was the cab driver slow, but he also misunderstood the street name I told him, so he took me to the wrong place! And my cousin continued to call me yelling. Finally, the cab driver starts yelling at me to stop answering the phone, that the person is annoying, and I yell at him, what do you want me to do, its my grandma! and I'm late to go to a bar mitzvah! and at the same time I'm talking to my cousin on the phone yelling at her that I'm on my way. And all this was in hebrew! SO I had my first real fight/argument in hebrew!! It was quite exciting, except for the fact that I was totally stressed about getting to where I needed to go. Anyway, I finally got to my cousins house, and she didn't let me forget how much I made her worry the entire weekend.
SO, the bar mitzvah!! The bar mitzvah was in haifa, for one of my religious cousins. They rented this really really nice hotel on top of the mt carmel in Haifa (the big mountain in the city). The entire weekend I pretended to be a religious jew, dressing in long sleeves and long skirts. The bar mitzvah was just amazing, sooooo much amazing food the entire time. I also met a bunch more cousins I had never met before, who are younger than me, but closer to my age. They were all very nice and it was really cool to meet them. Of course, everyone said I look like my grandma, and asked how she was and where she was and that stuff. And it was really cool to all be together in a hotel, and have such amazing catered food the whole time. It was a lot of fun.
I got back to my apartment in Tel Aviv around 11:30pm saturday night, exhausted. A few mintues later, my cousin Oran, who I had just left at the bar mitzvah, called me to say he was in tel aviv with some friends, and invited me out to a pub. So I figured, why not, and I went out until 2am. It was fun to go out and hang out with him and his friends. But I was so exhausted when I got home, from the whole weekend of running around and buses and taxes and family and speaking hebrew. But it was a really good weekend, and everyone was impressed with my hebrew. The only thing was being at the family bar mitzvah made me miss my family at home in the US (gasp!). But I'm so glad I went, it was really special.
Anyway, thats about it for now. Hopefully I'll have more to report about work next time. Hope everyone is doing great! Love and miss u all.
Love,
Leah
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Carol Schneier
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Your episode going to the Bar Mitzvah was like a Seinfeld episode. I chuckled! Grandma Rae is enjoying your blog or letters.