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!!

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving here in Israel!


Some of the more talented NYU-Tel Aviv students arranged to cook a Thanksgiving meal for us, and it turned out wonderfully. Turkey, gravy, vegetarian stuffing, potatoes, yummy soup, apple crumble, apple-spice cake with cream cheese frosting and coconut sprinkled on top... So much delish. And there were lovely decorations hung up, and it was altogether an excellent holiday.


Things that are hard to find in Israel: cranberries and canned pumpkin. It was also tricky kosher-wise. Since our dining hall is kosher, we ate the cake and crumble downstairs, and there was no milk or butter involved in the actual Thanksgiving meal.


Hope your Thanksgivings were all fun!

Halloween

Halloween.


You are a wonderful holiday. I wish people here were interested in celebrating you.


I've been to my internship twice since I've been back in Israel. Each time I went, I asked a different person whether we were going to be doing anything for Halloween. The answers? The first was that Halloween is a Christian holiday--I mehhed and not-so-much-really-and-actually-some-Christians-really-hate-it, but my very nice coworker seemed utterly uninterested in introducing any Halloween-related info to the curriculum. The second person I asked said that it makes more sense to do Halloween-related vocabulary around Purim, and besides the kids wouldn't be interested because they don't know anything about it. (sidenote: in my opinion, everyone is more interested in things they are absolutely ignorant about. Look! Parents in England let their small children knock on strangers' doors while dressed as monsters and then they carve up pumpkins and then they all try to scare each other and ooooo a black cat and a bat and a witch and a haunted house and eyeballs. So fun, right?)


There's nothing wrong with not wanting to waste time on foreign holidays, but in language classes that I have taken, there's always been a strong cultural component. In Spanish class, we made sugar skulls for Dia de los Muertos. In Arabic, we learned about Ramadan and went to a mosque for iftar (break-fast in the evening). My school's French classes were always having food days, to the point that the rest of us were actively jealous. In my own personal non-universal experience, a big part of language classes is culture.


At the English center, the cultures of English-speaking nations seem to be less of a priority. I'm somewhat thinking that this might be because English is the global language of the moment--everyone speaks it, and everyone needs it, while we Americans learn languages in high school with vacations in mind more than everyday life.


In my opinion, the center should have done it up for Halloween for one very important reason: it's one of my very favorite holidays and I miss it.


Happy Halloween!

Yom Kippur

Hi!


Yesterday was Yom Kippur--well, more accurately, Yom Kippur was Friday evening to yesterday evening at 5:54. It is an extremely important holy day in Judaism, and it is the best holiday that I have ever not celebrated.


In Israel, everything shuts down. There are no trains, planes, buses, sherutes, or taxis--only the occasional emergency vehicle. There are no television or radio broadcasts. 


Friday night, at one in the morning, some friends and I went out on our bicycles to see what a fasting city looks like at night. The streets were empty but for the occasional group of teenagers standing together with their bicycles. We rode our bikes in the street, weaving between the dotted lines that normally separate lanes of traffic. 


We cruised through intersections, completely unconcerned with the possibility of cars; it was quiet enough that we could have heard a car from a mile off. The traffic lights flashed from red to green and back again pointlessly--we wondered why they weren't turned off.


It was surreal reaching our destination: the highway. Normally, the highway is a congested mass of cars whose drivers are convinced that there is no such thing as a blind spot and that tailgating is just being friendly. Now... it felt like being in the iconic scene of any post-apocalyptic movie (but without the fear of unexpected zombie attacks or horrifying, highly transmissible diseases--more importantly, without the well-justified fear of deadly accidents that occur too often on all highways). 


Being there felt unexpectedly freeing. So much space, under a huge moon... We passed people lounging on the highway, passed under overpasses and alongside graffiti... This, I thought, was how I city should always be.


I thought the same thing yesterday, on my three bike rides. 


Bike ride #1: I went by myself, just to see what there was to see. Groups of kids on tiny bicycles pedaled furiously in what looked to be second gear, wearing little helmets--the first helmets I've seen out in force since I've been here. Families sat in the park, enjoying the sun. Parents walked alongside toddlers scooting along on those little bikes without pedals, or held their 8 year olds up on their bikes with a broom handle stuck under their seats. Again, this is the way a city ought to be. 


Bike ride #2: A friend and I went out riding again, with the long term goal being the beach. We enjoyed huffing our way up hills and enjoying the smooth, recently resurfaced asphalt helping gravity to make us speed down the hill with the wind in our faces. The beach was gorgeous. There weren't as many people as usual there, and the restaurants and hotels hadn't covered the soft sand in for-rent lounge chairs. Perfect couple of hours at the beach.


Bike ride #3: Another trip to the highway! This didn't seem quite as apocalyptic as the trip in the middle of the night had. For one thing, it was daytime. The highway is an amazingly great place without cars.


I would love it so much if we could not celebrate Yom Kippur in other parts of the world too. I love the quiet, the family feeling, and I appreciate that other people are having really meaningful religious reflections as they fast, and most of all, I love the absence of cars.