Something for my fans...

I'm glad to hear that so many of you like reading this. I'll work extra hard to keep it interesting. My biggest dilemma right now is laundry and the fact that I can't get reliable internet access off campus. I tried earlier to get online at the café just outside the dorms, but while I had a connection, waiting for each page to load was like waiting for water to boil and my battery died by the time I could post anything. So, I figured I’ll write in Word and cut and paste this tomorrow at school.

Ah…and why did I not just go to school to post it, you ask? Shabbat. Yeah. Sabbath is, I am not kidding, a national holiday. As well it should be. If in fact holidays are holy days, and Israel is a Jewish nation, it makes sense that each Sabbath would be a national holiday. It’s just odd. Everyone in Jerusalem (who isn’t hyper-religious) heads to the beach in Tel Aviv. Of course, I’m splitting shekels as it is, so I stuck around here – with the Arabs and Religious Jews. Nothing is open. Everything shuts down at noon on Friday. Buses stop running. Restaurants close. It kind of sucks. The really odd thing is that when Shabbat ends Saturday evening, everyone comes out of their holes like they do in an ice storm when the power's out:


"Do you have power? I don't have power. Yeah, the lights just went out. When did they go out on that side of the street? Oh, same time? Cool. Guess it's pretty dark over there, right? By the way, I'm Jim. Yeah, I bought the house across the street from you two years back. Nice to finally meet you! You got power? Oh yeah, you said..."


And all these Hassidic families take their kids out for a walk in the city at 11:30 at night! It's so Hogwart's-ish! Kinda freaky. All these bearded people with long black coats and wide brimmed hats. Everyone speedwalking like the Middle East is running out of falafel. And there are all these schoolage kids dancing in the square downtown at like 1 and 2 AM! Then....Sunday has all the nauseating repugnancy of a Monday morning hangover. Back to work. Back to school. Whatever. So the weekend here is essentially Friday afternoon and Saturday, only people sleep through most of it, and cram all the weekendish stuff into Saturday night. It's just strange. Ok. Different. Either way, it takes getting used to.


So after spending a good portion of the day in my room reading – like a good little Jew – I decided to go for an evening walk. Sigh. Not so simple in Jerusalem. I got pretty lost pretty fast. People stopped speaking Hebrew. From the Arabic ja-hah-lal-lahing from the radios of passing cars, green striped vans (Palestinian buses) and the litter in the streets, I knew I had ventured into a probably not so very good area for a guy in shorts, flip-flops, and a University of Rochester T-shirt. Only, every time I tried to retrace my steps, I only got more and more confused. I started to get pretty nervous actually and tried calling a couple of you just to have someone to talk to. Of course, no one answered. *cough* I only remember feeling that insecure about being lost when I couldn't find my way out of the Bronx once. But I held off on calling anyone here cause I didn’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily. So I strolled along and tried my best to blend.


If you know me, you know I can get lost pretty easily in my own backyard. I usually do great in big cities because of the landmarks and big buildings. It’s easy for me to navigate that way. Street names and cardinal directions don’t help. Well – I saw what looked like the tower of Hebrew University and started walking toward it. Only at some point I seriously felt that regardless of how much it looked like the same tower, there was no way it could possibly be that far away from me. So – I fought the urge – the part of me that says keep driving when I’m driving towards Brockport ‘cause it has that “State University feeling” when I’m supposed to be going to Geneseo...anyway...I turned around. Inside, I felt like I was kicking a dog, but considering my track record...


Be proud of me for going against my intuitions and turning around, cause in very fact – wherever that tower was was NOT where I wanted to be...it was in direction Ramallah and Nablus...not exactly where an American wants to be unless he's shopping for a fashionable black hood to wear on CNN. Needless to say – I did make it home. But on the way, I passed a Domino’s Pizza with a line of delivery Vespa scooters with Domino's Delivery lights on them like you see on the top of the '88 Ford Escort that comes to drop off your pizza. Very American, but very not American. That’s probably been one of the greatest parts of being here. Seeing the same old things in totally new ways. It’s like modern art. Like a weird impressionistic blur of East and West, Old and New. Like that cat where the last supper took place. Who on Good Friday imagines a cat hanging out near the table when Judas slips out?


I bought a coke today.


OK - lie. I bought two.

My first serious violation of the ATAWDWCASC Code of Conduct.*

The only thing worse would be eating three meals in a row at McDonald’s while on vacation in Montreal. (Lisa, I know. I know. “What happens in Montreal, stays in Montreal!”) The next worstest thing would be discussing geography with someone who was educated outside the US because…well, you tell me: a boy from London came by my room a few minutes ago and told of an encounter with an American who asked him if London was a lot like England. Yeah. Ummm, three Cheers for the Board of Regents!


Anyway, as I see it, when you buy really American things abroad, if you do it with the same savvy international curiosity as the natives and feign (convincingly) the same awe at the splendor of Beverly Hills 90210, then, and only then, is it ok. Especially when the coke can looks like this. It’s a multicultural experience. I know I keep showing you all weird stuff that’s typical of the US only marketed in Hebrew, it’s just that, I find such things paradoxical or paranormal or something. You just learn to live in a certain world where things look a certain way and you're mind becomes inflexible to alternatives. Imagine Wegman's wasn't Wegman's. What if it were Shlomo's? It could have been. And life would be just fine.


So much of our security is rooted in trivia and routine. Take away the comfort of the familiar, and we lose ourselves. Who are we if that's the case? So – I think that we should be forced to see such AAA's (Artifacts of Alternative Anthropologies) outside of the high school Spanish classroom...to remind us that there are alternate realities and parallel universes a mere plane ticket away. I mean, here the week actually ends on the weekend and begins on the first day of the week. Novel, eh? Why couldn't we count days from sunset to sunset like the Jews? Why couldn't Antarctica be the North Pole?


And yet - this beautiful coke can is also strangely familiar. Isn’t it comforting to know that ever since the coke bottle fell in The God’s Must Be Crazy the rest of the world has had the classic, original formula?


(Soundtrack: “It’s a small world after all”)


For those of you who want an update on the laundry, my walk was an attempt to find a laundromat, and I did. Only I don’t know where I found it. And should I try to find it again, I might die folding my boxer shorts. As my friends, you must know I was meant for more than that. So. I plugged my sink with a gym-sock and hand-washed some stuff in the sink with dish-soap. (Ah, the memories of Poland which tug at my heart…) But I do have cleaner if not clean clothes. So, Baruch HaShem to that!

Tomorrow's Sunday which means I have school. So I best get to bed. Layla Tov!

*American-Traveling-Abroad-Who-Doesn’t-Want-to-Confirm-American-Stereotypes