Last Day

This is my last day in Tel Aviv. My flight leaves at 11 tonight, and 3 (!) flights later, I'll be back home. Yay, home!!! For so many reasons!


It's hard to leave, but I think it's time. I've had an amazing time here, and I'm afraid that I'll never be able to come back. But, at the same time, I think that this trip has really come full circle. 


Almost the first thing I did in Tel Aviv was go swimming in the Mediterranean, and on Tuesday we were able to go swimming again. Somehow, spending just a few minutes in some salty water or lying on soft beach sand makes everything seem right.


Yesterday, two friends and I went and had pizza and lemonade at a nearby place, and chatted. There was a bomb threat a couple feet away, but life just kept on keeping on, probably in part because there wasn't a bomb. Plus, yummy pizza. That evening, we went and had cake, followed by a trip to the store to get plane snacks. I tried an Israeli winter chocolate marshmallow puff thing that everyone has been telling me that I need to try. Then three of us went to the lounge, ate popcorn and drank hot chocolate and tea. We watched the end of Inception, and printed our boarding passes.


Leaving is tough. Saying goodbye to people who I might never see again isn't easy. But there's also so much that I have to look forward to at home. Family, friends, food... The forever adorable Donut and Ginger.


On a less sentimental note, I thought I'd throw out a couple of final observations.


Hanukkah is not an ostentatious holiday. Businesses light menorahs, but they are small, and the decorations are minimal. Turns out that my idea of Hanukkah is influenced by the wonderful, over-the-top love of Christmas in America. Speaking of, is Christmas really in a few days? It still feels like mid-Fall here, except that most everything is still green. Snow? What? What's that? What?


Free-cycling is the best. In my part of Tel Aviv, people put out clothes and shoes they don't want anymore on benches for anyone to claim. The weather is mild enough here that things don't get wrecked before people take them home.


Last observation/suggestion/note-to-self: If you ever want to get to know the layout of a city, and it has reasonably-sized streets and isn't too hilly, ride a bike. I feel like I know Tel Aviv so much better from the times that I rode my bike places than the times that I took the bus, and walking is too slow to really cover ground in a reasonable amount of time. Bikes!!

Just Life

Hi all!


Exciting news! I'm going to start reintroducing meat into my diet on Monday, in preparation for going to Yunnan, where Will assures me that I would not be able to manage a vegetarian diet. I am so excited to have a valid reason to eat meat over Christmas this year. What's that you say? There's lard in these biscochitos?? Ha, I'll have two!


That's it for today!


There's always more to say about food, vegetarianism, the lack of delicious cream cheese in Israel (but really though, why is there no cream cheese?), and the trade-off between morality and efficiency in the meat industry, but I really ought to finish my paper, which is due tonight.

Last Week of Classes

We're coming up on the end of the NYU-Tel Aviv program. Classes end on Dec 15th, and then we have our finals period, and then on the 22nd it is back to New Mexico for me. I'm going to miss Israel, but I'm also excited to be home again.


Since this is the last week of school, it's pretty much crunch time. All the assignments that we didn't have over the semester are happening all of a sudden. Papers? Tests? Work?? Arabic homework has been pretty consistent, but my other classes tended towards reading homework, with the occasional response. Now they want actual papers--absolute madness.


Actually, these are probably some of the last essays that I will need to do for a while. I finally decided on a major, and it is biology! Yay! So I won't be taking as many humanity-type classes after this semester.


But on to the happenings of the weekend!


Last Friday, my journalism class went to Jerusalem. We did an Ir Amim bus tour of East Jerusalem, which was interesting, but also cold. For a collection of their maps of Jerusalem, click here. The locations of the green line, municipal boundary, and wall are worth looking at (although the best map for this at their website is 2 years out of date, and doesn't show a difference between planned wall and existing wall).


In the afternoon, we spoke to a formerly American woman who used to live in Itamar, and now lives in a predominantly Jewish enclave in the middle of a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Click here if you feel like crying.


It was an interesting conversation. I know that I tend to stereotype settlers, and this woman was a surprise. She said that she wanted people to get along; she was much more interested in that than she was in whose land was whose, or who had done what to whom. She lives in Israel because it is the land that she loves, not because she feels politically motivated. She was remarkably open, sharing details of her life that I never would have inquired about without the least bit of prompting. Also, she was pretty clearly a former hippie. All in all, a conversation well worth having.

Doctors and Health

Hi!


Sorry this has been something of an uninteresting read recently. I've been a bit distracted. The most exciting thing that I've done recently is get a typhoid vaccination. And so, a blog post about a mundane trip to the travel clinic.


I needed so much help getting an appointment set up. First off, I needed help finding someplace reputable and affordable. Then I called the number, and it immediately went to a message in Hebrew listing hours of operation. I tried the number a couple of times, morning and afternoon, and it kept not being open. After going for help again, I learned that actually, the message was just a menu, and I needed to press 3. Oops. It was a relief to have someone else make my appointment for me, since I was proving unable to navigate health care in a foreign land. Thanks, Hadar!


Finding the travel clinic: off to Dizengoff Center, which is basically an absurdly confusing mall built with ramps, stairs, escalators, and second-floor passages over the street below. I found the clinic easily enough--it helped that there was a picture of a happy cartoon child on the outside.


First strange-ness: the person who tells patients what paperwork to fill out sits at a desk of regular height, and on the patient side, there are chairs to sit in. I get to sit down while you put my information in the computer?? Very odd. But then, I've never been to a travel doctor before.


I think that's probably plenty of detail on my exciting trip to the doctor's office. I should write a book on the experience, clearly. And then the sequel: A Fantastic Journey to the Reception Desk of the Chinese Embassy, Or Getting Visas in Tel Aviv.