And it starts...

Well – I don’t have any reliable computer/internet access as of yet. Hopefully that will change soon, and regardless of whatever access I end up with, it won’t be something from my dorm room and will likely be limited. Right now, I’m typing on my laptop in Word hoping that I can cut and paste this later.

Israel has been quite an adventure to say the very least. It’s been a moment by moment test of how well one rolls with the punches. It hasn’t been a bad experience, just one that challenges you and stretches your definition of comfort. It’s not very different from camping – it’s fun, if you choose to look at things as new experiences rather than inconvenience.

Getting here was a trip – pun intended. El Al is an airline like no other. Never have I felt so secure though. At JFK, I was grilled by one of the intake interviewers. She was very suspicious of me for some reason. I’m sure I appeared nervous. I was a quite sweaty and out of breath. Delta had me wait in a three-hour line for international departures which lead into a parking garage. People were on the verge of a riot – cutting in line and pushing each other in the heat and exhaust fumes. Not fun. When I got to the counter, the representative informed me that I needed to go to terminal 4 instead of 3. That is to say, I had wasted three hours of my life unnecessarily. Thank God I booked such an early flight to New York!

Anyhow – I can’t relay how thorough El Al security is. I’m sure most Americans unfamiliar with travel to the Middle East would not tolerate the process. In the end though, you really feel secure. El Al has never had a successful incident of terrorism in its history, and the Tel Aviv airport is the safest worldwide.

The plane ride was perfectly long and underscored by the looped feature movie: The Pink Panther with Steve Martin which I recommend only to people in palliative care who can “opt out” via the morphine drip. Also, may it become a proverb: a seat between other seats anywhere on a 747 transatlantic flight will NOT be comfortable. Make it a seat between two mouth-breathers and “uncomfortable” graduates to “intolerable.” I got no sleep, as in Ze-Ro. BUT – I had the regular amusement of watching the ultra-orthodox men march to the back of the plane decked out in full prayer regalia. One guy a few rows up from my seat (think black hat, wire-rim glasses, white beard, long black coat parted by a potbelly with his prayer book in hand) was mumbling to the emergency exit door with not many inches between it and his nose as he bobbed back and forth in abbreviated, epileptic bows. So that and a delicious couple of kosher meals amid a sea of unruly Mexican pre-teens on a Hillel trip was my gentle introduction to the Israeli Immersion Experience.

The country is beautiful. The people are beautiful. I seriously think my brother would go out of his mind with all the Mediterranean women here! There really isn’t one of them that wouldn’t be a total trophy back home. And as far as I am concerned, two words: Israeli. Soldiers. Enough said.

On the topic of soldiers, they are pretty much everywhere. Military service is mandatory in Israel for men and women – typically right after high school for between two and three years. I’m telling you, watch Vogue Magazine, cause an Uzi completes an outfit like no belt or handbag can! Accessorize for safety people! Prada bags and Hummers lag irreconcilably in the game of status symbol intimidation when you can sling your shoulder with a semi-automatic weapon. Guns at the door and the counter can make lunch at a café seem sketchy. You have to have your bags inspected pretty much everywhere and everyplace is gated and accessible only with the right identification. At first it’s off-putting and frustrating, but it quickly becomes part of the routine. I just tell myself to think back several hundred years when people wore swords and crossbows. Our police carry inconspicuous little pistols which are like straws and spitballs next to the stuff they carry here, but they are guns nonetheless. Basically, it’s important to remember that the Leave-it-to-Beaver lifestyle in the US is atypical in the light of global history. But then again, we have snipers taking out people in Home Depot parking lots with rifles from the trunks of their cars. So....yeah.

Yesterday – we went on a tour of the old city. It’s kind of like visiting the North Pole or being one of those kids on the Flying House or Superbook cartoons (Marc, you’re probably the only one who’ll know what I’m talking about). It’s like you’ve been sucked into the pages of a childhood coloring book or the scene on a Sunday-school felt-board. It’s pretty bizarre. We went to the western wall, and for lack of a real one, I wore a complimentary cardboard kippah. Totally hot! Only not really – especially on a windy day. We saw King David’s tomb and the traditional room of the Last Supper. There’s something really old and really cool pretty much everywhere you go.

I think that last night takes the cake for an introduction to Israeli culture though. I am still very jetlagged (or is it jetlug?) so I am up at weird hours and sleepy when I shouldn’t be. Usually at night I just lie awake and listen to the sound of the refrigerator hum in cycle. On. Off. On. Off again. Or the sound of the Muslim guys chanting from the minarets a couple hills over. Anyway, last night at about three, I hear a loud, LOUD bang. An explosion bang. Seconds after, a chorus of chaos. People screaming and the sound of flip-flops flopping quickly down the hall. So I went outside to see what had happened. No one would really tell me what was up and my Hebrew sucks to much to eavesdrop without jumping to false conclusions. But there was thick, black smoke everywhere and a terrible smell. Girls were crying in CNN war-story fashion. And everyone scrambled to collect their things to evacuate. It was interesting to see how many people felt they absolutely needed their CD/Radio thing to survive. It was equally interesting to see how many of the guys took advantage of the opportunity to prance around in boxer briefs making conversation with the blonde international ladies. So... After a lecture earlier this week about suicide bombers and suspicious packages…yadda yadda yadda…two and two equals? – I probably should imitate what I saw the Israeli students doing minus the drama even if I didn’t yet understand what the hell had happened. So I went back to my room, threw stuff into my backpack, and woke up my roommate (who somehow slept through the whole thing – yes, Ambien – not his name, his twenty-first century solution to jetlag). I then went about knocking on doors where I knew other Americans were staying on my floor ‘cause no one else seemed to take an interest in doing so, and, AND for some strange reason, smoke detector technology hasn’t yet emerged here. Go figure. We all stood for a few hours outside the complex while the fire department put out the fire and people were treated for smoke inhalation. I just kept thinking: “I’m going home. Not even one Hebrew class yet, and I already going home!” As it turns out, one of the high quality refrigerators in the building next to mine decided it had had enough and committed a dramatic electrical suicide resulting in a pretty big fire. Summary: no act of terrorism – at least not of the kind which prompts a call to the embassy – just a bump-in-the-night Israeli style. And I am NOT coming home! Yet.