Where Am I?

My new family and I made our way down the cracked sidewalks of Bat Yam, heading towards our new home. Our madricha (counselor) was telling us about our apartment. "It's on the fourth floor," she admitted. My longtime friend and now roommate Jonathan Kunis blurted out, "That's going to be so annoying to get to on Shabbat when we can't take the elevator." She paused and stared. "It's going to be so annoying every day," she told him, "You don't have an elevator."

            Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore. (Side note: One of the things I've learned here is that the actual Dorothy on Shalem does not appreciate Oz jokes.)

            As if that wasn't enough to prove our spoiled-American-ness to us, the next few days of excruciating heat, broken air conditioners and showers, tired feet and strange food would certainly do the trick.

            Fast forward a few more days and we're finally starting our volunteering assignments. I will be working at a local elementary school and I was cautiously excited. I get to the school and am bombarded by a thousand 6^th graders asking a thousand questions in Hebrew. I can speak some Hebrew and I'm always looking to improve so I decided to engage them.

They wanted to know how old I was, so I told them eighteen. They asked why I wasn't in the army. Uh oh, now we're getting into murkier territory. I said that I wasn't from Israel; I'm from the United States (Can you say "duh?") They were confused. "There's no army in the U.S.?" I explained that there was a military, but I didn't have to go to it. Their next question left me completely flabbergasted. "So there aren't wars in America?" All I could muster out was "There are, but it isn't the same as Israel."

Never have I spoken truer words. Israel is not the same as the United States. This goes for the political situation, and so much more. I think that is what has made the last two weeks here so interesting and fun. Every single detail of our cultures is different. Our ketchup is their hummus. My madrichim and I are still struggling to understand each other's worlds. This cultural barrier reaches so much further than merely language. Slowly but surely though, we are beginning to "get it."

I love my life back in the states, but I was there for eighteen years, which is no short time. A friend and I recently realized that by the end of our year here we will have spent over 5% of our lives in Israel. That may not seem like a big deal, but for a kid who spent his entire life in the same small town in New Jersey, it is.

I had been to Israel before, but never like this. The family vacations that I went on here did not involve much travel and mostly consisted of spending time with family members who spoke fluent English. I was here two years ago for a summer teen tour type of thing, but our counselors did most of the legwork for us. If we needed to speak to a store owner, they would be our translators. Not so on Year Course.

My roommates and I found ourselves in a predicament the first time we did our grocery shopping. You see, we had not thought of how to get all of our groceries home. We ran into our madrich and asked him to speak to a cab driver for us. His response? No way. You do it. We did and, trust me, talking to cabbies in broken Hebrew aint easy.

We are DEFINITELY not in Kansas anymore. We have completely left our comfort zones. Nothing here is going to be easy. Volunteering has been and will continue to be a challenge. Our ulpan is difficult. Taking the bus and dealing with our neighbors is hard work. But this is what we signed up for. The way I see it, college would have been easy; this is not. All these challenges though are what are helping us discover what this wonderful country has to offer.

I absolutely love learning about this whole new world and can't wait to see what the coming months hold. Even if we do have to walk up four flights of stairs every day.