[Written yesterday.]
As I write this, the first stars are appearing. Not enough to tell whether they're any different here. The moon is the same.
The university and its surroundings by night (I wish it was safer to descend the mountain and go into the city at night) is a beautiful place. The cool air and soft breezes could not be more appreciated.
On campus, the stray cats, who've spent the day as inertly as possible in the shade, emerge as the sun goes down. Six of them were crowding around me just now, including a pitiful kitten with an abscessed eye. I've named some of the cats: Baxter, Klam, Persephone, Miss (pregnant), Khet, and Felicity Jones. After that I realized there were way too many cats in this city to count.
I had my first class today. Don't worry, I won't bore you with the details. It was six hours, with breaks in which I played piano. We've now learnt the alphabet, which means I must begin to read the Torah.
Lyera is doing well in Tel Aviv. She bought some flip-flops she's very pleased with. I'll bus down there in a couple days to visit, and then she has to come to Jerusalem because her course begins.
Me and Simon (my roommate for the month, among some others -- professional dancers/dancing students, who will be leaving soon) cooked our first meal tonight. It was pasta in tomato sauce with tomatoes, carrots, and hot dogs schnibbled up into pieces. It was very good, particularly since my lunch today was a croissant, and there were leftovers. We also bought fruit and stuff.
I dealt with the laundry detergent! My clothes are washed, my items scrubbed. Still no package from El Al, but they did email me a customer satisfaction survey. Everything else -- phone, money, hygiene, etc -- is in order.
Another cat just stalked by my bench. I think it was Baxter. I'm hoping to visit the Old City tomorrow after class.
Also, I'm taking pictures for you! On Sunday or Monday I'll be able to post some with commentary.
So far I'm not overheating. I have decided to learn the hard way about sunscreen. And I think I may have the jet lag system! I was up for 31 hours yesterday = 24 + 7 = one full day + the time difference! A well-kept secret? Or so tired I can no longer tell how tired I am??
I passed through a cemetery filled with birds earlier.
All right, I guess that's it for now. I'm writing this outside on pen and paper partly because of the night and partly because the dancers are having guests over, whom they fed to celebrate their leaving. They should be done by now. I'm going to go up and try some flower petal chips.
P.S. They warn you about diarrhea if you drink the water, but so far it's just my nose that runs! Thank God. -- Or should I say, אלהים.
[Update.]
Because they have headphones in the library, I'm listening to the first music I've heard since I got here, barring the Muslim prayer calls they pump out across the city. It's Beethoven's 9th, which is very relaxing. Just what I need...
...because I was so, so wrong about the jet lag. I'm practically collapsing right now. I guess it should have warned me that when I felt so up and energetic, it was at about 10 pm... It doesn't help that I have the "bomb shelter room", which, safe as it is, features a red light that looks harmless during the day but at night bathes everything in a faint red glow, making it hard and possibly psychologically damaging to sleep. :p
Needless to say, I'm not going to the Old City today. However, I would love to get off this mountain. I see Jerusalem all the time, spread out on the hills below, but I haven't descended to it yet, and it's beginning to bother me. Maybe this weekend, or next week.
Oh, by the by, not all the bus shelters are cement. As far as I can tell, it's the ones on the main roads. But I will report on that when I go to the city itself!
I think the runny nose is (and my dad phoned slightly after, the same conclusion having struck him) due to my mild allergy to cats -- something I should have noticed before! On the other hand, a roommate gave me an antihistamine pill this morning and it hasn't helped, so maybe it isn't that. Which would be kind of good; if it was the allergies and not a fleeting disease, I'd have to take antihistamine the whole time I'm here.
I did pet some stray cats, though, before realizing they were probably disease-riddled and covered in open sores. That reminds me: yesterday on a walk around the mountain I broke up a catfight like five times, before the cats finally bolted in opposite directions. If you've ever heard cats fighting in Canada, you know they make some freakish sounds. Well, the sounds they make in Jerusalem are no less weird, and possibly even more so. Anyway, the long story short is... no more petting stray cats!
Simon and I bought a watermelon yesterday. I thought it was only 3 shekels (around 80 cents), but I forgot that it was priced by weight. Oops...
In Hebrew class today we learned the phonotactics of the language (syllables, stress, special characters, cantillation for synagogue-singin', etc.) and began morphology. I have homework now, which I'll go do right after I write this. It's starting to get exciting!
Best news all day: UPS Israel called to tell me a package from El Al had arrived at customs. They needed a scan of my passport to take it through customs and then they would deliver it the rest of the way. Done and done. Hopefully I get that by tomorrow.
Okay, now to go back in time a bit to answer some questions I received about the last post...
One, getting from the airport to the university. That was a taxi ride.
Just as we left the airport, a man came up to us and offered a taxi ride to Jerusalem for 320 shekels (about $85). Having been informed that a fair price to go to the university is 300 shekels, we told him 300 and no further questions, and he agreed.
However, once we were on the highway, he told us that where we were going was further east than he'd been led to believe and that he would have to charge us a little extra. As I was exhausted and in no mood to barter -- and he was shouting and driving like a madman, two things I only later learned were perfectly normal -- I didn't feel like haggling, so I agreed to 350, which annoyed Valeria, who thought we would've been able to refuse. (Since then she's been teasing me about my lousy choice! :p)
Two, seeing Valeria off to Tel Aviv.
We decided she should take a sherut, which is a cross between a taxi and a bus: multiple people climb on, give their destinations, and it drops them all off one by one. It was a good mix of cheap and not having to walk to the bus station.
However, when we called the sherut company whose number was printed in our student guides, we found it staffed by a very short-tempered woman who repeatedly hung up on Valeria whenever Valeria suggested going to Tel Aviv and not all the way to the airport.
Finally she decided to just take it to the airport and get a cab to where she's now staying. But by then the angry woman had stopped taking Valeria's calls. So I called her.
"Can I get a sherut from the student village in Jerusalem to Ben-Gurion airport?"
"When is your flight?"
"Uh -- could I get there maybe by 2:30 or 3?"
"When is your FLIGHT?"
"I don't have a flight, I just need to get there."
"WHEN? This afternoon?! Tomorrow?!"
"This afternoon if possible!"
"No. I have nothing."
She had just told Valeria earlier that there was only a ride from here to the airport, so I said, "Um, are you sure? From the student village to the airport?"
"OKAY! I have the last one today leaving now! Go to north gate in three minutes!"
"I --"
"THREE MINUTES!"
So we rushed to grab all of Valeria's things, took the elevator down seven stories, and ran to the north gate of the student village. A sherut was just coming into the roundabout in front of the gate, and began honking the instant it was there. (That reminds me: Israeli drivers honk at everything. It's a little nerve-wracking.) Valeria ran to catch it and succeeded. So that was that.
So that was a couple of minor adventures I hope entertained you.
Also, I quickly wrote a poem about jet lag this morning (most of it is in another form in this blog, though).
...
Jet lag
In an Israeli taxi I
thought I had cheated jet lag.
When I slept at last in my cell
I had been up for thirty-one
hours -- a full day plus
exactly the time difference.
I thought: "A secret unlock code."
For I was not weary.
I still felt that way last night
should've read the bad omen.
Now I have awoken,
and midnight melted into morning
without hardly any sleep.
Yet I have a schedule to obey.
But in this land,
upright in bed,
the holy sun in slats on my back,
my seven-a.m. water in my hand,
my shadow lying on the floor --
this is how Samuel was called.
...
This has been a long post. So I'll leave you with just one more observation: in Hebrew people say "ehm" for "um". So... ehm... I guess that's all!
Till next time.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Monday, June 25, 2012
First day/first two days
Even though it's been about 24 hours, I don't know if this is a summary of one day or two. Let's say two, because I've been awake long enough for two...
I'm holding a ticket here that says "Certificate of Kashruth". I got two of these babies today/todays, on my two in-flight meals. (For those of you wondering, yes, "kashruth" is what you say in Hebrew for "kosher"... which makes me wonder what language I've been speaking!) These tickets prove that the meals in question were prepared under the supervision of the "chief rabbi of El Al". For some reason I find this designation funny. What exactly is the rabbi's function at El Al, besides overseeing meals? Does he have a legion of sub-rabbis? Is their authority limited to desserts and sesame snaps??
Or perhaps they bless the small plastic box of chicken paste which permitted me to convert a mere BUN into a formidable CHICKEN SALAD SANDWICH.
As we were landing, I thought about how before there were airplanes, there were no airplane toys. It was always possible to make a little wooden plane, and to imagine it flying. But no one could think of representing what didn't exist yet. Profound? I dunno, I'm pretty tired right now.
"Tea please?" asked the stewardess, walking up and down the aisle, offering people tea. "Tea please? Tea please?" Her accent excuses her unusual use of the word "please".
Sitting in the middle of a plane, out of sight of the windows, is very surreal. After a few hours of artificial lights and unconvincing rocking you begin to wonder if everything you know about geography was a hoax, and they've just stuck you in a chamber with some cool simulation effects and just changed the background scenery on the other end. This illusion is helped by the fact that so far, excluding some awesome reaches of desert sand -- which are at this moment very obscured by the haze -- all the modern conveniences are here in some form or other. For a while I believed my suspicion had always been correct that "other countries" is just a setting on some people's cameras.
But here I am indeed, having just come from a flurry of check-in procedures and orientations and tours. A few observations:
The sun seems brighter and bigger here somehow.
They have cement bus shelters.
There are many stray cats on campus, including indoors. They're very scrawny.
Israel has some good-coloured hills; well-equipped, too. You have the rocks, the shrubs, the non-deciduous trees all in the right place. It feels oddly familiar.
People speaking Hebrew to me (including children, awww) is pretty cool.
As far as I can tell, Israel has a smell. No worries, though; it's a good smell.
I'm going to head back to my dorm -- a 20-minute walk or so from the computer lab -- and probably collapse. Oh, but that reminds me, before I do I have to clear the stuff off my bed... the stuff that is on my bed because I'm in the middle of cleaning it... oh, fine, here comes the story.
At the airport, me and Lyera (I forgot to mention that she's my travel partner) were both questioned by El Al security. At one point the guy asked in his unusual accent, "Did anyone give you anything to bring to Israel? Anything at all?" Reflecting, I said, "Yeah, my friend gave me a rosary he bought there last year, which turned out to be a ripoff, and he wanted me to exchange it." Too much information? Probably! But then I remembered: "Oh, actually, Valeria took it in her luggage."
"So there is a friend?" he exclaimed, and there the fun began.
We were both told to arrive at the gate early for extra questioning. When we got there, he and his small staff took our carry-ons and searched through them, sometimes asking us questions about the contents, while we sat aside and had our feet (and feet alone) frisked. That was all fine, but then he said, "I'm afraid they found something in your luggage."
"Whose luggage?" we asked.
"Both your luggages," he answered.
I theorized that they had been suspicious of a plastic jar full of a thick, green liquid that I had brought. I laughed at myself for doing it afterwards, but I had bought some laundry detergent on a friend's recommendation, and since even the smallest jug was way more than I needed I poured what I did need into said jar.
Soon enough, as the last few passengers were trickling onto the plane, a man in a dark suit came by with a cardboard box containing a good number of my electronics. "These set off the device," he said. In there were, among other things, my power converter, alarm clock, and my phone charger -- all pretty essential things, and the last one irreplaceable on the fly.
There were also some things I didn't really need, so I said, "Oh, you can get rid of this and this," but as soon as I touched it the guy yanked it back into the box. Evidently, they thought my electronics had been tampered with to become extraordinarily dangerous. (Yep, my electric razor, too. You could totally nick a person's neck with that thing. Also a loose AAA battery.)
"Okay, no, I won't touch it, but you can just throw that one out," I said, once again volunteering unnecessary information.
Another man stepped in. "SIR, IT IS NOT YOUR CHOICE!" he declared.
At this point a woman came and sat with Lyera and me and explained that she would Purolator the items to me if I supplied with her my address in Israel. I was frustrated, but at least I would get them back, I thought. So I didn't argue any more but just took an inventory of what they had confiscated.
When this was over, Lyera asked about the suspicious items from her luggage. "Oh," said the guy who had questioned us, "uh, there was nothing. It was okay. You can go." And they sent both of us on our way.
Not so bad, I thought. So they rifled through my luggage and my clothing and whatnot, and probably packed it less efficiently too. But when we opened our luggage in the dorm, the first sign of oddity was that Lyera's suitcase contained a spoon, on top of everything else.
"I did not pack that spoon," she observed. Then she set about assessing the damage.
The spoon looked like one of the spoons I had brought, so I opened my suitcase too to have a look. The first thing I noticed was another of my spoons sitting on a pile of my (misplaced!) underwear, which they had tried unsuccessfully to stack. My goodness, I thought, they put the cutlery with the boxers? What were they --
Then I noticed the green patch on a pair of pants... and when I picked up a set of scissors it slipped out of my grip with the slimy lubrication. One by one I removed my objects, and way over half of them had laundry detergent on them or covering them... I set those on my desk, and the clean ones on my bed, the suitcase itself having a pool of laundry detergent at the bottom, until I found the empty jar.
I admit that the jar, tightly sealed though it was, might have been opened and leaked by normal plane turbulence, and maybe it wasn't El Al's fault. Two things to note, though: I had all my clothes in plastic bags, put on from both directions so there was no opening. If El Al hadn't taken them all out and let them float about loose, they probably would've been spared.
The other thing is that the jar was still closed when I took it out. So unless there was a very slow leak, they had opened it and tried to close it again.
I rarely get really frustrated about anything, but this was pretty ridiculous. On pretty much no basis, El Al's security took us aside for extra questioning and rummaged through our luggage. They confiscated several essential items (I have to severely limit my phone usage till that package arrives, and I can't plug anything in). Moreover, everyone brings power converters, alarm clocks, and charging cables on a flight, so I doubt these things actually set off their luggage-checking device; they probably just searched my suitcase for any electronics they could plausibly claim were dangerous. Afterwards, they suspiciously changed their story about whose luggage was dangerous at all. And they may have even accidentally opened and spilled the jar of laundry detergent all over my luggage, and at very least exposed the rest of my luggage to said detergent. Oh, and they broke my luggage lock in order to do it. El Al, world's most secure airline! What a joke!
Anyway, rant aside, I shouldn't let it detract from the fact that Jerusalem is lovely. Everything, from the vegetation to the architecture to the manners to the scenery to the air and sunlight, feels different in an exciting, if daunting, way. (And it's not even that hot!) I think I'm about at that inevitable stage where my dread suddenly does a 180.
I think I shall go walk that road back to the student village, wash as much luggage as I can, ask someone where the laundry service is (at least I won't need to bring detergent!), and then crash on my bed.
P.S. Oh, yeah, actual Hebrew learning report: used the flight time to learn to read the Hebrew alphabet, when it has the (easy mode) vowels inserted, from a book -- and with the help of a kindly couple who spoke it as a first language. And I bought a copy of the Torah in Biblical Hebrew. Oh, and today/todays I learned that Hebrew has the same punctuation as English, and it's not even flipped right-to-left, which makes it look very funny. Backwards commas and question marks all over the place.
I'm holding a ticket here that says "Certificate of Kashruth". I got two of these babies today/todays, on my two in-flight meals. (For those of you wondering, yes, "kashruth" is what you say in Hebrew for "kosher"... which makes me wonder what language I've been speaking!) These tickets prove that the meals in question were prepared under the supervision of the "chief rabbi of El Al". For some reason I find this designation funny. What exactly is the rabbi's function at El Al, besides overseeing meals? Does he have a legion of sub-rabbis? Is their authority limited to desserts and sesame snaps??
Or perhaps they bless the small plastic box of chicken paste which permitted me to convert a mere BUN into a formidable CHICKEN SALAD SANDWICH.
As we were landing, I thought about how before there were airplanes, there were no airplane toys. It was always possible to make a little wooden plane, and to imagine it flying. But no one could think of representing what didn't exist yet. Profound? I dunno, I'm pretty tired right now.
"Tea please?" asked the stewardess, walking up and down the aisle, offering people tea. "Tea please? Tea please?" Her accent excuses her unusual use of the word "please".
Sitting in the middle of a plane, out of sight of the windows, is very surreal. After a few hours of artificial lights and unconvincing rocking you begin to wonder if everything you know about geography was a hoax, and they've just stuck you in a chamber with some cool simulation effects and just changed the background scenery on the other end. This illusion is helped by the fact that so far, excluding some awesome reaches of desert sand -- which are at this moment very obscured by the haze -- all the modern conveniences are here in some form or other. For a while I believed my suspicion had always been correct that "other countries" is just a setting on some people's cameras.
But here I am indeed, having just come from a flurry of check-in procedures and orientations and tours. A few observations:
The sun seems brighter and bigger here somehow.
They have cement bus shelters.
There are many stray cats on campus, including indoors. They're very scrawny.
Israel has some good-coloured hills; well-equipped, too. You have the rocks, the shrubs, the non-deciduous trees all in the right place. It feels oddly familiar.
People speaking Hebrew to me (including children, awww) is pretty cool.
As far as I can tell, Israel has a smell. No worries, though; it's a good smell.
I'm going to head back to my dorm -- a 20-minute walk or so from the computer lab -- and probably collapse. Oh, but that reminds me, before I do I have to clear the stuff off my bed... the stuff that is on my bed because I'm in the middle of cleaning it... oh, fine, here comes the story.
At the airport, me and Lyera (I forgot to mention that she's my travel partner) were both questioned by El Al security. At one point the guy asked in his unusual accent, "Did anyone give you anything to bring to Israel? Anything at all?" Reflecting, I said, "Yeah, my friend gave me a rosary he bought there last year, which turned out to be a ripoff, and he wanted me to exchange it." Too much information? Probably! But then I remembered: "Oh, actually, Valeria took it in her luggage."
"So there is a friend?" he exclaimed, and there the fun began.
We were both told to arrive at the gate early for extra questioning. When we got there, he and his small staff took our carry-ons and searched through them, sometimes asking us questions about the contents, while we sat aside and had our feet (and feet alone) frisked. That was all fine, but then he said, "I'm afraid they found something in your luggage."
"Whose luggage?" we asked.
"Both your luggages," he answered.
I theorized that they had been suspicious of a plastic jar full of a thick, green liquid that I had brought. I laughed at myself for doing it afterwards, but I had bought some laundry detergent on a friend's recommendation, and since even the smallest jug was way more than I needed I poured what I did need into said jar.
Soon enough, as the last few passengers were trickling onto the plane, a man in a dark suit came by with a cardboard box containing a good number of my electronics. "These set off the device," he said. In there were, among other things, my power converter, alarm clock, and my phone charger -- all pretty essential things, and the last one irreplaceable on the fly.
There were also some things I didn't really need, so I said, "Oh, you can get rid of this and this," but as soon as I touched it the guy yanked it back into the box. Evidently, they thought my electronics had been tampered with to become extraordinarily dangerous. (Yep, my electric razor, too. You could totally nick a person's neck with that thing. Also a loose AAA battery.)
"Okay, no, I won't touch it, but you can just throw that one out," I said, once again volunteering unnecessary information.
Another man stepped in. "SIR, IT IS NOT YOUR CHOICE!" he declared.
At this point a woman came and sat with Lyera and me and explained that she would Purolator the items to me if I supplied with her my address in Israel. I was frustrated, but at least I would get them back, I thought. So I didn't argue any more but just took an inventory of what they had confiscated.
When this was over, Lyera asked about the suspicious items from her luggage. "Oh," said the guy who had questioned us, "uh, there was nothing. It was okay. You can go." And they sent both of us on our way.
Not so bad, I thought. So they rifled through my luggage and my clothing and whatnot, and probably packed it less efficiently too. But when we opened our luggage in the dorm, the first sign of oddity was that Lyera's suitcase contained a spoon, on top of everything else.
"I did not pack that spoon," she observed. Then she set about assessing the damage.
The spoon looked like one of the spoons I had brought, so I opened my suitcase too to have a look. The first thing I noticed was another of my spoons sitting on a pile of my (misplaced!) underwear, which they had tried unsuccessfully to stack. My goodness, I thought, they put the cutlery with the boxers? What were they --
Then I noticed the green patch on a pair of pants... and when I picked up a set of scissors it slipped out of my grip with the slimy lubrication. One by one I removed my objects, and way over half of them had laundry detergent on them or covering them... I set those on my desk, and the clean ones on my bed, the suitcase itself having a pool of laundry detergent at the bottom, until I found the empty jar.
I admit that the jar, tightly sealed though it was, might have been opened and leaked by normal plane turbulence, and maybe it wasn't El Al's fault. Two things to note, though: I had all my clothes in plastic bags, put on from both directions so there was no opening. If El Al hadn't taken them all out and let them float about loose, they probably would've been spared.
The other thing is that the jar was still closed when I took it out. So unless there was a very slow leak, they had opened it and tried to close it again.
I rarely get really frustrated about anything, but this was pretty ridiculous. On pretty much no basis, El Al's security took us aside for extra questioning and rummaged through our luggage. They confiscated several essential items (I have to severely limit my phone usage till that package arrives, and I can't plug anything in). Moreover, everyone brings power converters, alarm clocks, and charging cables on a flight, so I doubt these things actually set off their luggage-checking device; they probably just searched my suitcase for any electronics they could plausibly claim were dangerous. Afterwards, they suspiciously changed their story about whose luggage was dangerous at all. And they may have even accidentally opened and spilled the jar of laundry detergent all over my luggage, and at very least exposed the rest of my luggage to said detergent. Oh, and they broke my luggage lock in order to do it. El Al, world's most secure airline! What a joke!
Anyway, rant aside, I shouldn't let it detract from the fact that Jerusalem is lovely. Everything, from the vegetation to the architecture to the manners to the scenery to the air and sunlight, feels different in an exciting, if daunting, way. (And it's not even that hot!) I think I'm about at that inevitable stage where my dread suddenly does a 180.
I think I shall go walk that road back to the student village, wash as much luggage as I can, ask someone where the laundry service is (at least I won't need to bring detergent!), and then crash on my bed.
P.S. Oh, yeah, actual Hebrew learning report: used the flight time to learn to read the Hebrew alphabet, when it has the (easy mode) vowels inserted, from a book -- and with the help of a kindly couple who spoke it as a first language. And I bought a copy of the Torah in Biblical Hebrew. Oh, and today/todays I learned that Hebrew has the same punctuation as English, and it's not even flipped right-to-left, which makes it look very funny. Backwards commas and question marks all over the place.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Background/scoop/555
I have a bit of time, so for those of you wondering, here's the brief Official Scoop™.
U of T + CFHU grant up a student up to $6,000 to study at U of J for 5 weeks.
I will take a course in Biblical Hebrew about 5 hours a day, 5 days a week.
(They promise that at the end I'll be able to read the Hebrew Bible with a dictionary.)
The rest of time, Israel is mine to explore.
Yes, I'm grateful, even though I'm afraid. :)
U of T + CFHU grant up a student up to $6,000 to study at U of J for 5 weeks.
I will take a course in Biblical Hebrew about 5 hours a day, 5 days a week.
(They promise that at the end I'll be able to read the Hebrew Bible with a dictionary.)
The rest of time, Israel is mine to explore.
Yes, I'm grateful, even though I'm afraid. :)
Tomorrow/today
Leaving tomorrow or today, depending on who you ask.
Finishing packing.
I'll try to be spare with this blog, not too wordy.
I really don't want to go. This is a chronic problem I have with travel. Where I dread it more than death itself. Until I've been there a little while.
Final packing decision: Pablo Neruda poetry or (fairly unnecessary) laptop???
Finishing packing.
I'll try to be spare with this blog, not too wordy.
I really don't want to go. This is a chronic problem I have with travel. Where I dread it more than death itself. Until I've been there a little while.
Final packing decision: Pablo Neruda poetry or (fairly unnecessary) laptop???
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)