Movin' On Up...! (Literally, Jerusalem is a Hill)

Though it seems like a year, ago, it's only been three weeks since I moved from Bat Yam to Jerusalem. On Year Course, our nine months are broken into three sections- Community Volunteering, Jerusalem Studies, and Israeli Experience. On November 23, my Community Volunteering section came to an end and I moved, along with my 200 peers in Section 2, to Jerusalem to begin the Studies part of the year. That Sunday was a fateful day, and though a lot has happened in the past three weeks that I could write about, it's been the change of semesters that centers most in my day-to-day life.

The 23^rd marked the day I stopped volunteering three times a week and going to Ulpan twice a week, and began going to school every day from 8:30 to 4:00. The 23^rd marked the day I moved out of the small, but cute Hadadi 3 apartment and into the posh Year Course apartments in the center of Jerusalem's Talpiyot. And, the 23^rd marked the day that I left the tzofim.

The tzofim are the Israeli scouts that live with Year Coursers in Bat Yam and Holon during the Community volunteering section. They are on their shanat sheirut after high school, taking a year off to volunteer before they join the army. These specific tzofim partner with Young Judea and help us get by while living in the very foreign Bat Yam and Holon.

In a twist of fate, I had three tzofim in my apartment instead of the average one. And it was amazing. My Israeli roommates fast became some of my best friends. They helped me communicate with the locals, they invited me back to their homes for Shabbat, they taught me Hebrew, they helped me with my Ulpan homework, they organized activities for the section, and they helped us all get used to living away from home. But, even without all the help they provided, they would have been the coolest people ever.

Though I'm enjoying Jerusalem a lot, and loving all of my classes (I'm in Hebrew, Jewish Prayer, History of Zionism, Introduction to the Jewish Bookshelf, Arab/Israeli Conflict, and of course Israeli Dancing) I can't help but miss all of the tzofim. Of course, they are only an hour away (it's funny how small Israel is sometimes) and I've already seen them twice in the three weeks since I moved, it is still so different living without them. In the past four months, making these connections with Israelis has been one of the things I am most excited about and thankful for.

So that's the reason that, even though I'm transitioning quite nicely into life here in Jerusalem, I often think back to that Sunday and the provided pizza lunch (alright!). The moment where my apartment had our group hug and final goodbye, the moment where Section 2 got on the bus, the moment where I broke down crying because I was leaving the place that, in the past three months, had become my home.