First Week in Israel!!!

Wow, so I barely even know where to start in telling you about my adventures. Since not all of you reading this have been to Israel before, I'm going to be writing all of my blog posts as if you have never been to Israel or experienced that which is Israel. Excuse this first very long post, but so much has happened in very little time, so here goes...

My flight over here was rather uneventful. It was extremely cramped and long (about a 10 hour flight from Newark to Tel Aviv). I flew over on the group flight so I began to make friends immediately with the people around me going to Rothberg (the Hebrew University's school for foreigners). Interestingly enough, I quickly made friends with a girl named Julia from Connecticut. We really didn't have anyone to come over with, so we connected pretty well. Later on the bus ride from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as we were receiving our apartment numbers, we discovered that we were actually roommates!! So that began my Israel adventure quite nicely.

I'm skipping over a few minor details of the how and how long it took me to get to Jerusalem with the group after landing to tell you about the campus. Well actually, only the Student Village, where I live. The Student Village (or in transliterated Hebrew "K'far HaStudentim") is the newest built "dorm" setting for students at Hebrew University. For those of you who don't know, Hebrew University has 2 campuses: one called Givat Ra'am and one called Mount Scopus. I go to the one called Mount Scopus...it's on a mountain overlooking Jerusalem, which makes for a stunning view from my dorm and my room. As for my dorm/room, I live in an apartment with 4 other people. This apt has a small kitchen (which only consists of a fridge, stovetop, sink, and cabinets), a small kitchen table, 2 small loveseat type couches with a small coffee table. Each room in this apartment is labeled with a number, and I am in room 3. We have one shower, 2 toilets, and 4 sinks!! My room is pretty standard, with a bed, desk, chair, and closet. As for my roommates, in addition to the aforementioned Julia, I live with 1 other American named Mitchell (who actually was in my Hebrew 102 class at Michigan) and 2 Israelis named Arad and Daniel. They are fairly young for Israeli undergrads (22 and 23...for those who don't know, Israelis are required to enter the army right out of high school for 3 years, and then some stay on longer). We haven't spoken to them much yet (or vice versa) but they seem pretty nice.

Moving onwards towards the rest of my time so far... We have 4 madrichim (which are technically counselors, although they don't want to be called that). We haven't met one of them yet because he was called away to the Gaza operations, but hopefully he will return safely and we can meet him. We were given a tour of the campus by our madricha (the female version) named Rotem, who is very nice. Unfortunately, as I had to get up at 3 am on Tuesday and was still running on whatever energy I had left, I could barely stay awake and was extremely tired during the tour, so I mostly just shuffled along. However, the best part of the tour came towards the end. I was walking towards the back of the tour when all of a sudden my Israeli friend from camp, Nir, ran into me! I haven't seen him in 1.5 years! We exchanged numbers and he told me that my co-counselor Tamar, who stayed with me after camp, was also hanging around the University. In addition, my friend Sara Geboff (from my youth group and from camp) is on the Rothberg program with me, her boyfriend Jacob (who I went to camp with for many years), and my Israeli friend Meodi (from camp as well) got to meet up and have a small camp reunion. I found out Meodi lives in the dorms right next to mine, and is about a 2 minute walk from here. How exciting!

Other adventures include Israeli grocery store shopping, and ordering a taxi in Hebrew! Julia and I went grocery shopping to have some basics here, and the phrase of the day became "I don't know!" If you think grocery shopping is hard at home, with all the choices, try doing it in another country where you can't read half the labels! Between Julia and I, we stumbled around and got basically what we needed. Then last night, 2 friends and I decided to go to Ben Yehuda Street (which is pretty popular with Americans) for dinner and exploration. It was too dark to walk it, so we had to take a taxi. Julia called for one, but the driver couldn't speak any English, and her Hebrew wasn't good enough, so she passed the phone off to me and I order a taxi from where I live to where we were going, and giving all the proper details to the driver, in Hebrew!! I felt very proud of my accomplishment, however small it is.

Alright, this has gone on long enough. I'm sorry about the such long post, but I just got internet in my room, and even then, the internet is extremely slow! I hope you enjoy my future blog posts, and I will try to keep you all updated as soon as I can.

B'ahava Me Yerushalayim (with love from Jerusalem),
Talia