My Life in Haifa

Two months ago I moved from Eilat to Haifa. What an amazing two months it has been. It's needless to say that I can feel, in a big way, the upside of living in a lush green paradise over the dry, quiet desert that is Eilat. 

Prior to moving to Haifa I’d only ever visited the city one time, for a couple hours, and barely even got a taste for it. My logic behind choosing Haifa as my new home was this: I want to learn Hebrew as quickly as possible. I should enroll in Ulpan Etzion. The Ulpan Etzion in Haifa starts the soonest after my program in Eilat finishes… I’ll go there!

And so here I am.

I live with two “native” Israelis in a three bedroom apartment that stands atop 115 steps (yes, I counted…). We have an incredible view of the surrounding areas and our neighborhood for the most part is familial and quiet. If I walk one block over I have an amazing view of downtown Haifa and the Mediterranean Sea. 

Everyday I wake up and feel like I’m a character in an adventure. 

During the week (Sunday-Thursday) I attend Ulpan (modern Hebrew language class) for five hours in a class that is, for the majority, comprised of Russian speakers. Three days a week after Ulpan I babysit for the children of the cousins of my landlord. (A connection like this is common in Israel.) On the other two afternoons following Ulpan I usually go to the shuk (the produce market) or study. On the weekends I try to mix it up - going to bars with friends, exploring Haifa’s hiking trails or taking a day trip somewhere. 

Since Haifa has historically been a labor city and is a mixed-faith city the busses run on Shabbat/ Saturday. This makes inner Haifa more accessible for its residents than other cities in Israel.

The lush neighborhood where I live.

My two biggest trips outside of Haifa thus far have been a day trip to Akko, and a four-day-long hike to complete the Yam L’Yam trail. 

The old city of Akko was quite amazing to see. I almost felt like I was in the movie Aladdin where at the beginning you see the marketplace. We ate some spectacular hummus and I found some freshly pressed sugarcane juice. But the best part of Akko, for me, was something we couldn’t have planned.

As my friends, Brooke and Aimee, and I were walking through an alleyway Aimee stopped and peered through a small opening in a doorway of what looked like at one time may have been some kind of large gathering house. Within less than a moment, one of the residents, Eddie, a 60-something-year-old petite man with poor oral hygiene, invites us in to see the view. We took turns getting our picture taken with him and got a rooftop tour of the surrounding scenery.

More recently (this past weekend), with my friends Aimee and Leon, I hiked from the Mediterranean Sea on the coast of Nahariya to the Kinneret at the town of Ginosar. This hike is about 80 kilometers (~50 miles). (For us it ended up being about 5-10 kilometers more since we took a few detours.) The hike is called Yam L’Yam, which in English translates to “Sea to Sea,” a name very fitting for journey. 

We spent three nights in tents, coexisting with all the sounds of crickets, cows and coyotes. I can’t even begin to explain the calm serenity of living outside. That is, until the last day of the hike when the sun was beating down on us like a sledgehammer and it was near impossible to find shade. 

We also encountered a decent handful of Israelis (and one German tourist) who didn’t hesitate to offer us lodging or rides, just out of the goodness of their hearts. There is certainly something to be said for this- you decide what that something is!

The nature of the hike was a first for me as I’ve never backpacked to anywhere. It was a real test of both my patience and my endurance. I’m proud to say that I passed my self test and I’m ready potentially for another: the Israel Trail! The Israel Trail takes about two months to complete and takes you from the lowest latitudinal point of Israel to the highest. It’s safe to say on this trip I definitely got bit with the hiking bug…

Moving on… my friends in Haifa are more than I could have asked for. Prior to moving here I did not know a single person. And now, two months later, I feel like I’m a part of a tight knit little community. The majority of my friends in Haifa are U.S. citizens but I also have many other friends from England, South Africa, France, Australia, Uruguay, Canada, Chile, Ukraine, Russia and of course Israel. 

It’s difficult to ever feel like you are alone when there are so many other young folks without nearby family in the same boat. We look after each other. We are one unit. You never have to worry about receiving an invitation anywhere, you can always assume you are welcome anywhere. 

I feel so thankful to get to live here in Haifa and to be able to experience what feels like the ride of a lifetime. The only thing I could wish for is for mango season to start ;-)

Sorry for the lack of pictures- my phone/ camera was consumed by nature on the hike and I didn't feel comfortable stealing friends' pictures from Facebook. Until next time… see ya later!

Hello from the Bahaii Gardens! A short walk from my apartment.

A Failure to Communicate - The Wrath of the Resh

Let's travel back in time to a few weeks ago: 

I went to a Shabbat dinner at a family's house here in Eilat. This family couldn't have been nicer. The dad drove me and my friend from our apartment building to his house since we'd never been there before. There are four sons and one daughter in the family, and still they made room at their table for us :)

My friend and I get into the car and we start making conversation with our host. "Where are you from?" "Do you have any siblings?" "Why did you want to come to Israel?" "How are you liking Eilat?" When he asks me [in English] where in the hotel I work, I confidently answer back in Hebrew, "Ani ovedet ba cheder prachim." In Hebrew, this translates to, "I work in the flower room." 

Being the upbeat, friendly person that I am, I gave this answer with a smile on my face. Besides- it's not like we are talking about world famine... who doesn't find joy in flowers? The reactions I normally receive are either, "Wow! I'm jealous!," or, "So that means you get to work with flowers? Cool!" And then usually a conversation ensues about the subject.

But no, not this time. We quickly moved on to talking about something else. I didn't think much of it until last night.

It is now time to fast forward to last night.

Yesterday, this same family invited me to accompany them to a special Shabbat dinner 20 minutes outside of Eilat where we would be spending the evening with their extended family. I RSVP'd "YES" faster than a shooting star remembering back to the family's warmth and hospitality during the previous time I'd spent with them.

They picked me up and we arrive at our destination. It is a beautiful house in a gated neighborhood in the desert. No grass. No trees. No commercialism. Just dessert and the star-encrusted sky. We make introductions, mingle and then find our seats at the table. 

Eventually amidst conversation someone asks me where I work and what is my job. Being in my mind the Hebrew expert that I am I confidently say to them, "Ani ovedet ba cheder prachim." The father of my host family looks at me as if he has just had an epiphany of epic proportions.

"Wait - like flowers???," he asks me. I couldn't understand why he seemed so stunned since I told him what I did in the hotel at our last meeting.

"When you came to our house last time, it sounded like you said 'pachim,' not 'prachim,'" he began to explain. Subsequently I learned a new word! Apparently "pachim" means garbage. This man thought that with a big smile, I had told him I worked in the hotel's trash room. I'm guessing he was a bit relieved to find out that the foreign vegan girl isn't weirdly happy about garbage after all. :-p

The moral of the story is that pronunciation is key in the Hebrew language.

The Hebrew "R" is the letter "ר" (resh). It's not pronounced like the English "R." Instead, it is slightly rolled, but not like the Spanish "R." It's a bit more silent, but not as silent as the French "R." 

The letter "resh" in all it's glory.

For months I have been practicing my resh and I know now that it's going to take a lot more practice until I master the delicate balance between saying whether I work in the trash room, or the flower room.

I guess I do have an American accent after all...

The Iron Dome is in My Backyard!

Having a stress fracture of the foot in Eilat has been quite challenging considering I have to use public transportation to get anywhere (my dear car, how I miss you!), BUT I would say I am now 85% of the way to being fully recovered from my injury with just a two to three weeks to go until I can kick back into running and hiking.

Speaking of hiking... this week my group went on an organized hike of one of Eilat's tallest mountains, which just so happens to be directly behind my apartment building. I had to sit out :( However, rest assured that I made sure to find some sort of adventure. I waited for the group at the base of the mountain. And this mountain wasn't just any old mountain. This mountain houses the IRON DOME!!! That's right, the Iron Dome is in my backyard!

That small brown square on the bottom left base of the mountain is the Iron Dome. There are about 12 of them spread all over Israel. Eilat has two.

So while my group climbed, I sat about 100 feet away from one of Israel's most famous defense devices. Is this real life?

The soldiers who guard this particular Iron Dome battery told us we could not take any pictures of the machinery from up close, otherwise I would have posted a much better picture! Up close it looks SO COOL! For the hour or so that my group hiked I sat and conversed with one of the soldiers in Hebrish/Engbrew about what life is like for him now that he is in the army. He has been in the army for about a year, so I would guess he is 19 years old. Let's call him "Shmuel."

Shmuel's diet while on base consists mainly of bread, cheese and boxed tuna. Shmuel stands guard for four hours, and then has eight hours off, and then repeats this schedule again and again. Shmuel has never left Israel despite having family in a a couple other countries. Shmuel gets bored quite often because his post is not frequented at all, with the exception of occasional hikers. Shmuel and his fellow soldiers like to give the hikers a small scare, [harmlessly] questioning them and their motives, when they get close to the guarded area, since he said it is so boring to stand guard all day. I laughed but told him I wouldn't find it very funny if I was on the other side of the joke... Shmuel couldn't remember the word in Hebrew for "cable car" despite being a native Israeli - I knew it though! It's: Ra-kev-el :)

There they go!

They are as small as ants up there!

Some cool facts about the Iron Dome here.

You can now all rest assured knowing I am neighbors with the Iron Dome and that my neighbor is protecting my friends and I 24/7 from any and all airborne threats that could potentially be posed. Because that's the reality of the situation...

Goodnight from Israel 8-)

What to Do When You're Bored

In the past few days I feel I have truly become an expert on how to fill hours in which you are forced to be sedentary. While I would much rather be exploring the city or working in my new job, I am stuck at home with a bad foot...

If you ever find yourself trapped in the same boat (hopefully not), here are 10 things you can do to help occupy your time:

1) Annoy your closest relatives with likes and comments on either old or embarrassing pictures/ posts on Facebook.

2) Find a movie to watch that epitomizes the downward spiral that is Shannon Doherty's acting career. Warning: it will be highly nap-inducing.

3) Become friends with your shoes! (That's Harry on the left, and Sally on the right.)

4) Learn the magic of Osem soup packets! It doesn't quite look like the picture but it sure does taste like the stuff of powdery goodness I've read about on other Israel blogs...

5) Catch up on all those dumb TV shows you wouldn't otherwise have time for :) And also discover that neither HuluPlus nor HBOgo work outside of the US :( So much for catching up on Blackish...

6) Learn how to grow an avocado tree. Yes, this is definitely useful knowledge to have so don't question it! Just watch.

7) Rediscover the greatness of Beyonce.

8) Pester your roommates nonstop about what they did all day in an effort to live vicariously through them:

9) Eat almost all of your food and then realize you didn't plan well enough for your resting time because all you have left to eat is a can of peas and a mango... great... now I have to interrupt the resting and go to the store...

10) Attempt to learn a foreign language by trying to decipher the characters in your doctor's note. Wait... when am I supposed to return to work?

By the time you have completed this list you will realize that people in America are finally waking up and you can now harass everyone you know overseas on Skype!

Learning to live life in Hebrew, and so the saga begins...

The official languages of Israel are Hebrew and Arabic. But here in Israel's resort city, Eilat, I've heard as much Russian as I have heard Hebrew.

I never would have imagined there would be this many native Russian language speakers here. Where did they all come from???! As big as Russia is, are there really no warm spots to take a holiday? Thanks to Google Maps I can see that in actuality there are not - wow!

Anyway... thus far in my program we have had three ulpan classes. What is this "ulpan" thing you ask! Ulpan is Hebrew school. But when I say Hebrew school it's not like the two-to-three-times-per-week religious classes you used to attend at your family's synagogue. It's more like the Spanish class you used to attend in middle school.

Ulpan is very interactive, modern and secular from biblical Hebrew. On our first day of ulpan we learned the word for drunk - מסטול (mah-stool).

Hebrew is a very cool language. It's like a puzzle. Almost every word receives some kind of conjugation when being used in conjunction with other words. There are feminine and masculine conjugations, singular and plural, and definite and indefinite.

One of the most challenging tasks [of being a new Hebrew speaker in Israel] is attempting to read signage throughout town. In English we use capital letters to mark a word as a proper noun. Since Hebrew only has one case, it has been near impossible to distinguish whether a word on a sign is a proper noun, like a place, or rather if it is just a word I have not yet learned.

This yellow banner reads: "Beit ochel Italki" - this means "Italian restaurant." I had to look up the word Italki. However if it had been capitalized I like to think that perhaps I would have been able to decipher the word's meaning on my own. (And let's not forget to note the sign's resemblance to my last name :-D)

I have been trying to force myself to speak Hebrew in lieu of English as much as possible. But let me tell you, in a country where most people speak better English than I do Hebrew it is an uphill battle. I have just learned the past tense, so I can now tell people what I used to do for work in the U.S. and where I used to live. If I had to guess I would say I probably speak Hebrew at the level of a 3-year-old child, if even that well.

By the end of the program my goal is to be able to eavesdrop on Hebrew phone conversations on the bus and to understand 90% of the dialogue. For now, my 20% will have to do ;)