A New Post?

It's been a while since my last post. Instead of trying to cover everything that's happened, I'm just going to pretend I haven't stopped writing for two weeks.

This Shabbat was really nice. I stayed in Dimona and went to dinner at the other student "village" here. It's less of a village and more of a bunch of students living in the same apartment building. They don't have my view of the desert or way cool caravans. But it was still really fun with lots of singing and good food. After diner a few of us went to Avishag's apartments there and we played the card game Mao. I learned how to play from Orrie the kids in Orrie's youth group when I helped him on an overnight. It was confusing enough in English, so it wasn't so easy in Hebrew. But it was still fun.

Shoko woke me up for Shul the next morning but he didn't really want me to go. He followed me out of the village 3 times, so in the end I put him back in the caravan, which was good because he's going to have to learn to be inside by himself for when he comes back to the States.

I had lunch at Ahik and Shira's with Reut and Shany, which was also really nice. Shoko came too.

I stayed in on Saturday night to get some work done and I got an email saying my class the next day was canceled. So I was able to take it easy and then on Sunday I slept, got more work done and sent in two more applications. Now I just have one and a half left!

Today was my volunteer day in Dimona. We organized some group-building activities for our kids that actually went pretty well. I'm also going to start tutoring in English regularly. I'm supposed to teach one kid, but these two other kids asked the teacher if I could tutor them too. Apparently it's pretty cool to be an American. They asked me to teach them some slang. It was funny because the work in Hebrew for slang is just slang with an Israeli accent, but they asked me if I knew what the word meant.

Now for good measure, here are some pictures of Shoko:



Here's Shoko taking a nap on my bed.





Here is Shoko playing with his buddy Katanchik.

Hanukkah and Flori's Pictures

Hanukkah began Friday night and Boaz and I lit candles together before we all went to shul. There weren't so many people at the village this weekend so we had a smaller dinner together in the Moadon. Shoko spent most of the time either sleeping on couch or running around trying to play with everyone at once.

Shabbat was very low key. I got lots of reading done, took a long walk with Shoko and got some sleep. After Shabbat, Ahik helped me bring his old dog house to my caravan for Shoko. It was really heavy and it ended up taking about 6 of us to get it all the way there. But Shoko seems to really like it and now I don't have to worry as much if it rains and he is outside.

After we finally got Shoko's house in place, I sat to get some major work done on my applications, the first of which are due on Tuesday. I'm on track to have everything ready on time, I just wish there was a common application like for college. Oh well.

Today the village ran another big Hanukkah party at one of the local schools, but this one was for the whole community. I was in charge of the prize booth where I was in charge of exchanging game tickets for crappy prizes. Remember going to the arcade, playing games for hours, getting dozens of tickets and thinking you would get an awesome prize only to have some jerk tell you that you had just enough for some small plastic thing that broke on the way home? I was that jerk. Towards the end I tried to hand out some prizes to kids who didn't have enough tickets, but it was really awful having to tell a 6 year old that even though he had been playing games for hours, he didn't have nearly enough tickets for the police car.

Here are some pictures Flori posted from when she, Josh and my parents came to visit:


Me in front of the sign for my village


Me, Flori and Shoko


Me and Shoko


Me and Flori in the middle of nowhere/my village


My coffee bar in Jerusalem


Shoko playing with his koofi/monkey that Flori and Josh brought for him


Me and newly-engaged people

The Rest of the Week

On Tuesday morning I went to meet with Benny Morris to discuss my paper topic and my thesis. He was really helpful, although now it looks like I'm going to need to go to the archives in Jerusalem and sift through lots of cabinet meeting minutes from September-October 1948. I was a little nervous that my Hebrew wouldn't be good enough, but he asked me to translate parts of Plan D into English for the class.

So yesterday, Thursday, I sat down with Yoni from my class to translate. Plan D is often pointed to by anti-Israel historians as Israel's plot to expel the Palestinians during the war, but after reading it myself, it seems pretty clear that this is a distortion of the facts and doesn't take into account the context in which it was drafted or the fact that most of the plan was never even implemented. It was pretty cool sitting down with original documents from that period and translating them. It took a few hours but we were able to get through the document and come up with a working translation. That felt pretty good.

After we were done translating, I headed back to Dimona to help set up a Hanukkah party at one of the middle schools. I was asked to say the "blessings" (it wasn't Hanukkah yet) and light the Hanukkiyah. After some announcements, a group of girls sang songs and retold the story of Hanukkah. Then I ran a booth where the kids tried to knock over stacks of cans. Which really meant that I just stood there constantly setting up the stacks. But one of the kids decided that it would be fun to stack them with me, so that made things easier. We then had some sufganiyot and headed home.

Today was my turn to help clean up the village. It didn't take too long and Shoko finally realized that it was more fun to wander around than try to "help" with the cleaning.

Shabbat in Carmel and Volunteering

This weekend we went up to the Carmel. We had a really nice hike, which was only for about an hour instead of our usual three. We then went to Usfiya, a Druze village nearby. We went to a Druze house where someone talked us about the Druze religion and Druze in Israel and then they fed us some great pizza and zaatar pitas.

We then went to a small museum about the Israeli Druze. After that we went to a nearby shuk, which really was just a bunch of tourist shops on a street. Not so exciting.
We stayed at a beautiful Kibbutz right on the sea. They had great food and we even had a minyan for Friday night. After dinner we all went to the beach and just hung out on the rocks over looking the sea. It was amazing.

The next day I slept late, which was wonderful. We had a really relaxing day of hanging out on the many hammocks, eating and sitting on the beach again. When we finally got back to Be'er Sheva, I picked up Shoko at Tamar's friend's house and he was so excited to see me, he peed.





Yesterday I got back my first paper for Benny Morris' class. I did well, so I was pretty happy about that. I'm going to meet with him tomorrow to discuss my idea for my final paper, so hopefully he'll like it.

Today I didn't have classes so I spent the beginning of the day going over PhD applications. Then in the afternoon, I went over to the local high school where we made Hanukkah candles with a group of ninth graders. They were the same kids we are teaching English to, but I'm a little confused as to why we did this program instead of tutoring. It seems like our mission there is a little unclear.

Towards the end I got to talk with two of the guys from the group. They asked me about America and were surprised that I was going back. But at the same time, one of them told me that he wants to move to America; but only after he joins the IDF, serves in a combat unit, goes to college here and gets a master's degree here. Granted, he is only in the ninth grade, but it is still very interesting to hear about how he can be so sure he wants to not only serve his country, but serve in a combat unit, while at the same time planning to leave it. It is difficult to understand how someone would be willing to put their life on the line for a country they don't plan on staying in. It wouldn't be so interesting if he was the only one, but this seems to be a common thought among Israelis and it would be interesting to look into why.

Family in Israel, Volunteering and Internet

First I just want to do a little recap of last week.

Flori and Josh got here on the Thursday before last and got to meet a bunch of my friends over at Munchilla. It was fun and I got to introduce Josh as Flori's fiancee for the first time... because they got engaged while they were in Tel Aviv! Congratulations!
Mom and Dad got here the next day and drove out to Dimona where everyone got to meet Shoko. I took them on a tour of Dimona and then we headed back to Be'er Sheva for Shabbat.

The rest of the week was pretty standard since Flori and Josh left on Sunday for Egypt and Mom and Dad were in Jerusalem. So on Sunday, I took the train from Dimona to Tel Aviv early in the morning. We spent the day going through the art fair and the shuk. I got a great mezzuzah for my caravan as a Hanukkah present (thanks Mom and Dad!). On Shabbat we walked along the tayelet and found that part of the beach seems to be designated for dogs. I'll have to bring Shoko next time. After Shabbat, we got dinner before rushing to get me to the train station and them to the airport. It was really great seeing everyone and I can't wait to see them again.


Last Monday, I began my volunteering with kids in Dimona. I'm teaching English to 9th graders. My two students are Daniel and Omer. Nice kids who act exactly like you would expect 9th graders to act. They each made fun of each other and then tried to be the first to finish their work to show they were better. That meant they went too fast and made some mistakes, but all-in-all, I think it went pretty well.

The same cannot be said for my activities today. Instead of tutoring, this week my group was doing group building activities with kids from a local middle school. Well, that is what we were supposed to do. The kids didn't want to do anything and decided that it was funny that my Hebrew wasn't perfect. This was of course in between making fun of the quiet and fat kids. Great kids. Oy. Good thing I didn't get the NYC Teaching Fellowship, by the end of the 2 hours, I wanted to smack them. Although, I found towards the end that if I joked along and made fun of myself they weren't really sure what to do. So next time I think I'll just start with that.

After spending a few hours on the phone last week with Internet companies, the installation guy finally came today. Of course it didn't work right afterwords, but Boaz helped me call up again and now I have real Internet! So please skype me or gchat video with me!

Also, Sam Thompson found the video I was interviewed for a few weeks ago. Here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afpWAdXDNpw I come in around 1:40

And here is a picture of Shoko relaxing in his new favorite spot, right on my top of my laundry bag:

Day Off

Since Flori and Josh are coming to Be'er Sheva tonight and Mom and Dad are coming tomorrow, I decided to take the day off to get things done before they arrive. So for most of the day I have been sitting outside, in the sun, on the edge of the desert, reading about the Zionist resistance to the British in the 40's. Good times. This is even better because the village has become somewhat of a mini-zoo. Shoko is playing with his brother, Katanchik (another dog) periodically walks by and sniffs, and Ganja and her two kittens - Ziggy and Marley - sneak past to drink Shoko's water. This makes for slow reading.

I also just got an email from the head of the village updating us on the situation with Egged (the main Israeli bus company). We have been lobbying Egged to extend it's lines to our village and other students in Dimona, to increase accessibility for the elderly and disabled and increase the frequency of the bus lines to the distant neighborhoods in Dimona. Hooray for Israeli Activism! And in that vein, we are setting up a protest tent in front of the Egged offices. Too bad I won't be able to go since I'll be in Be'er Sheva with my family. I guess I'll cope somehow.

In deference to Zach Stern, here is the Shoko Show:

Monday in the Village

I don't have class on Mondays so I stayed in Dimona today. It was very relaxing. Someone found one of Shoko's brothers, so now they get to play together. It's very cute. It is not, however, conducive to getting work done.

I got to read more of my book for Benny Morris' class, which is turning out to be really interesting. It's called "A Squalid, Senseless War," by Norman Rose of Hebrew U. It chronicles the events leading up to and including the Israeli War of Independence. Morris recommended that I read it, but I was a little reluctant because I have already read a lot about that war. But this has a lot of information on events that I hadn't previously read about, so I'm pleasantly surprised.

I've also been finishing up some work for David Newman for a conference that's going on next year. I'm meeting with him tomorrow to discuss it.

I was also supposed to start volunteering today in Dimona but at the very last minute (I was already on my way over to the school) I got a call from Udi saying it was canceled. But it sounds like I'm going to be helping teach English. I think I can handle that.

Now, here are some more Shoko pictures:



This is Shoko relaxing on my BGU bag that has become the Shoko transporter.





Shoko in a box.



Here's Shoko playing with my blueberry bush outside my house.