Thanksgiving in Israel!

When It hit me that Thanksgiving in Israel meant I was not going to get to be at home with my family and grandparents in Texas, I got really sad. So I decided that while it is not done every year, this year OTZMA needed to have a really great Thanksgiving celebration. So about two weeks ago a few of us started to plan thanksgiving, starting with the invitations.

As you can see on the invitation, the thanksgiving meal was not the only festivity of the day. In addition to dinner, we decided (per demand of many of the boys) to have a big football game. I'm sure it surprises no one that I was really excited for this part of the day. In fact, I even told Abby (who came to Thanksgiving with me, which thankfully also made the day feel more like home) that she had to come the night before so she could play in the football game. However I did not know what I was getting myself into. When about a dozen of us showed up to play (with another half dozen spectators
on the sidelines), the boys decided we were playing full on tackle football. Now while I have often joked around with friends that we should play tackle football, I have never actually played (and especially not with large boys...men?). But we began to play tackle football, and it was really fun. While I definitely got thrown to the ground a few times, I still had a great time. And abb came out as MVP! At one point a new spectator showed up and asked who was winning, and the answer was not "this team" or "that team", but simply "Abby". She evaded so many tackles and got half of our touchdowns!

Now even though I am vegetarian, having a turkey at Thanksgiving is a must. But finding a full turkey in Israel is not so simple (neither is finding an oven big enough to cook it...we only have toaster ovens in our apartments). While we ordered (yes, ordered) a turkey a week in advance at the grocery store, when we went to pick it up there was no turkey. Apparently there is currently an agricultural strike in Israel which meant that we couldn't buy a full turkey. So instead, we bought quite a few large breasts and legs. And then my future roommate, Amir, used the conservative shul's oven to cook the turkey. And props to Amir, I heard the turkey was incredible! In fact all of the food was incredible. The meal was potluck, and with 35 people there were a lot of really great dishes. Some of the dishes were sweet potatoes with marshmallows, green beans, stuffing, mashed potatoes, onion and garlic potatoes, rice and veggies, knishes, stuffed mushrooms, pea soup, and butternut squash soup. Plus, we had a few pies and some chocolate balls for dessert. Needless to say, I was really impressed with the cooking ability of my new family.

During the meal, we all went around and said what we were most thankful for. Most people said they were thankful for having a new family in Israel since we were all really missing home. And I have to agree, it was really nice to be able to come together and create whatever kind of homely feeling we could. And since we don't have cold weather, it hasn't really felt like thanksgiving. So in order to combat the weather (and lack of holiday decorations all around Israel), we made our own decorations. A few of the girls made turkey hats, we had nice festive table clothes, construction paper leaves on the tables, and some small candles to set the mood. Needless to say, we turned a once dreary room into a festive room.

GO BLUE TONIGHT AGAINST OSU!!!

Love you all,
Jenn

Upside of no fall? Running outside at the end of November

Recently many OTZMAniks have been missing the fall season. While most of us look forward to changing leaves and crisp cool fall air during fall, this year we haven’t even seen cold weather in Ashkelon. While it’s disappointing to miss something I have gotten used to over the past five years, the upside is that it is warm enough to go running outside. For the past few weeks, I have been running 5-6 times a week. While I started by only running a mile, recently I have been either running 1.75 miles or 2.4 miles (depending on the day). It’s been really nice to be able to get outside and be active as I sit inside all morning learning Hebrew. Hopefully I continue to run in the next few phases of my program so that come Spain at the end of December I will be in shape like the rest of my family.

Not much else to report. I am looking forward to OTZMA’s version of thanksgiving on Thursday. While it will not be my normal thanksgiving at home in Texas with my family (including my grandparents), hopefully it will feel a little like home. I will definitely write about it next week.
Hope all is well in the states.

I survived driving a car in Tel Aviv...

Sorry it has been so long. I have no excuse for not writing sooner. I guess I shall start at the beginning.

My day to day life:
Sunday through Thursday (except Monday) I have Ulpan (Hebrew Class) from 8:30 am - 1:30 pm. On Mondays, the whole group travels somewhere in Israel for an “education day”. Since I last wrote, we have had an education day that was about Israeli Politics and one about Refugees in Israel. In addition to Ulpan, I volunteer with a program called Atidim on Sundays and coaching basketball on Tuesdays. On the weekends, I have been going to Tel Aviv every weekend (minus maybe two or three).
Atidim is a program set in place for children who come from hard backgrounds and have a difficult home life, but that are exceptionally bright and have the potential to do well academically. The program provides extra tutoring for these kids 8 hours a week. For 1.5 of these hours, two other OTZMAnikim and I put together a fun activity completely in English to help them realize English is more than just boring grammar. For instance, this week we did “human bingo” and “categories”. Next week we are planning an activity to help teach them slang.
On Tuesdays my volunteer activity is “coaching” girls basketball. Really, I just practice with the girls and since they are 13 and 14 year olds they think I am an extraordinary player. I get to run around and help them learn easy techniques such as picks and zone defense. It is really fun and gets me back on the court. Plus, they love having Americans around. Its funny how they think we (the OTZMAnikim) are so cool just because we are American. But I can’t complain, since it makes my job of connecting with them much easier.

Education Days: Israeli Politics and Refugees in Israel
During the Israeli politics day we began by doing an activity introducing us to the 12 different Israeli political groups. After a brief introduction to the groups, we met with the Editor in Chief of the Jerusalem Post (one of the largest English newspapers in Israel). The last speaker was a woman from the Israel Religious Action Center who spoke to us about how Israel deals with “Freedom from Religion” and “Freedom for Religion”. While the day was just a very brief overview, it was a needed overview as my knowledge on Israeli politics is very limited.

Our refugee education day started by visiting the Rigozin Elementary School in Tel Aviv (which happens to be the school where Abby interns) where we learned about the children of foreign workers and how the government is treating them. This is currently a hot topic in Israel, especially at the Rigozin Elementary School where many of the children could be deported due to their parent’s status as foreign workers. The principal of the school took an interesting stance on the subject. She stated that if the government doesn’t want immigrant workers to stay in the country after they have children, it needs to enact a law ordering them to leave. However since the Israeli government has not yet made an effective law, it needs to take responsibility and allow the current children (some who have spent their entire lives in Israel as Israelis) to stay in Israel. After leaving the school, we took a tour of south Tel Aviv, where the population no longer looks like Jews but instead like a piece of Africa. Lead by our tour guide from Africa Refugee Development Center (ARDC), we learned about African refugees from Eritrea, Sudan, Etheopia, etc. Since 2006, Israel has only given refugee status to 9 people, while there are currently 26,000 refugees in Israel (10,000 of which have come to the country since January 2010). Without giving refugee status to these tens of thousands of people, the refugees are unable to work, which therefore has a negative trickling affect on their lives. Overall the day was extremely informative and showed me a whole other side of Tel Aviv.

My Trip to the Golan:
This past weekend I took a trip up to the Golan area with Abby. I took Thursday off as a vacation day and we rented a car for the weekend. Since I am 23 (and she is only 22), I was given the exiting task of having to drive the car. At first it was quite scary to drive around Tel Aviv with the crazy Israeli drivers, but I got used to it and it was super fun. Who knew I could survive that?

Anyway, we headed up north on Thursday and went to stay with an Israeli family Abby knows from camp who lives on a moshav in the Golan. For those who don’t know a Moshav is similar to a Kibbutz, but is basically a community of people who live together and normally produce some sort of agricultural product. On the moshav we watched a beautiful sunset, kicked around a soccer ball, had some great food, and even when off-roading in the father’s truck. The next morning we woke up early and drove to the Yehudia hiking trail.

This trail was supposed to be difficult and take us 6 hours, but Abby and I completed it in 3.5 hours! While the trail was not very difficult, it was fun. There was a section in it where you climb down a 25 foot ladder to a freezing cold spring that you must swim across to the land on the other side. While the spring is only 20 meters, it is extremely cold and you have to carry your bag on top of your head in order to try and keep all of your belongings dry.

After the spring, we continued hiking to the “heavenly waterfalls” where Abby and I “cliff” jumped off an 8 foot cliff.

After hiking, we drove to Haifa for dinner. While we planned on staying in a hostile in Haifa for the night, we came across complications and ended up heading back to Tel Aviv for bed on Friday night. However, since we weren’t in Haifa on Saturday, we took a “day trip” to Jaffa (only 45 minutes away by foot) to explore the area a bit. Overall, it was a great weekend trip!


More to come soon, I promise to write more frequently now.