Sunday, January 31, 2010
Lo Sababa
When learning a new language, early on you always seem to run into those words which you probably don't use too often in English, but knowing their translated equivalent makes you want to use it all the time. So I've come across two such words in Hebrew, the first being "ha-tool", meaning "cat" and the second one being "sababa", meaning "cool". Now if you've ever been to Israel, or most Middle-Eastern countries for that matter you know why "ha-tool" is a significant word. There are stray cats everywhere in this city! Plus its a fun word yell at them when you walk nearby and then see them dart off into a bush. This post, however, doesn't focus on cats. Instead it focuses on the other word I mentioned, "sababa" or cool. Actually, to be more precise it has more to do with the phrase "lo sababa" or "not cool".
So here's what happened.
The other day after getting out of class at one, a few of my friends from BU said they were going out to an orientation to volunteer for a program called Save a Child's Heart. It's sort of a Ronald McDonald House type of program except instead of cancer it is focused on kids from all over the world who need emergency pediatric heart surgery. This sounded like a really interesting opportunity for me so I decided I'd come along. Having just gotten a bike for myself I figured I'd ride to the center while my friends took a cab. I'd see some of the city, explore a little bit, and get some exercise in the process. Win-win right? I thought so too.
In preparation I turned to my new best friend here, Google Maps. It turned out that the building for this program was not actually in Tel Aviv but in a suburb called Azor, 8.5 miles away. It would take a little longer to get there than I had anticipated, I was up for it. I wrote down some directions and street names on a notes card, grabbed my Camelbak and rolled out.
The ride was very interesting. I started off in Ramat Aviv, a region of Tel Aviv separated from the city proper by a river, and pedaled downtown. I passed by several very tall skyscrapers, the headquarters of the Israeli Defense Forces, and strangely a Harley Davidson dealer. I found that there were many many more IDF soldiers around the downtown area than I was used to seeing around Ramat Aviv, which wasn't really surprising. They were unloading from buses, waiting for buses, and just generally hanging around. I'm starting to get used to their presence but I still take a second glance when I see a guy or girl my age walking around in dark green IDF army fatigues with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder and two full clips of ammo on his belt. Israel's got this whole "citizen soldier" idea down to an art. Now, being from a country which produces incidents like Fort Hood, I sometimes wonder why none of these young kids who are conscripted into the army for a mandatory 3-4 years ever goes ballistic on a crowd. Then I remember that this place isn't like America at all. The concept of a "fellow American" isn't usually the first thing I think about when I consider someone I see in the States, but here, the concept of a "fellow Israeli" is a much more potent thing. The way I see it, Israelis are those kids who were picked on at the playground all the time by bigger countries, so those kids banded together, built their own clubhouse, and look out for each other now. Not a bad plan. They're really serious about looking out for each other too. Israel will release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners just to ensure the release of a single captured IDF soldier. Thats what I call comraderie.
Back to the ride. After I had passed through downtown, I hit a more suburban area. I was pretty stoked to see where the people who worked in Tel Aviv actually lived. There were kids walking back from school, riding skateboards on the sidewalks, and babies crying from inside homes. The homes themselves were all pretty similar. Boxy, tan or blue-grey, with slatted windows instead of panes of glass. I'd describe it as "quaint".
I pedaled out of the residential area into what looked like a pretty sketchy part of town full of grungy shops, grungy eateries, grungy factories, and junk yards. Definitely not a place I'd like to be going though in the middle of the night. It was after this part of my ride that I hit the highway stretch separating Tel Aviv from Azor. I guess you could say I was biking along a "highway" but but there were no on-ramps or off-ramps so I just consider it a really busy road that just happened to have three lanes in each direction. It was here that it happened. Maybe it was because I had bought my bike from a shady Israeli drunk who had stolen it or maybe the tires were just a bit worn out, but as I was pedaling along the side of the road I ran over a small piece of wood and heard an obvious "pop".
Lo Sababa.
So there I was on the side of a very busy road roughly seven miles from my dorm with no choice but to run with my bike the mile or so left to the orientation. And thats what I did. I hung a left at the first sign on the road point to Azor and made my way through less busy streets attempting to find Borochov St. I got a little nervous and made an attempt with my limited Hebrew to ask where this road was. I approached an older woman on a bus bench and asked, "eifo borochov?", at which point she simply continued staring at me blankly and then shook her head as slowly as one possibly could. So much for that.
Nonetheless I eventually located the Save a Child's Heart house and walked in on my friends already being introduced to the place by one of the staff. From what she said this organization sounds pretty awesome. SCH goes to countries with poor medical facilities and finds kids who are in desperate need of heart surgery, flies them out to Israel and puts them up in the SCH house to stay for the weeks or months while they are getting pre-op checkups, surgery, and post-op observation. While I was there I saw some other volunteers playing with a group of Angolan children in the living room. There were Disney characters painted on the walls, children's drawings everywhere, and even a string of flags representing several African countries. It really was a poignant sight to see, knowing that all these young kids would probably be dead if it weren't for organizations like these.
This day was one of the many reasons I love living here. Yeah, while the whole bike flat was "lo sababa" its those unforeseen events which create the best memories. The volunteering opportunity was everything I had hoped it would be and I expect to be stopping by there every now and then once I get that flat fixed up. The ride back to the dorms wasn't to bad though.
I took a bus.
Notes from the Holy Land is the blog I set up to chronicle my life as an American student studying in the Middle East during the Spring of 2010. Check back often for laughs, curiosities, photos you'll wish you were there for, and hummus. Lots and lots of hummus. Also, check out my more local blog: Notes from the B-Line.
Friday, January 29, 2010
My Best Day
Downtown Tel-Aviv
I'll be honest, and though I may change my mind in the future I'd have to say that today was the best day ever! Why, you ask? Well, today I went to Jaffa. Jaffa is a formerly independent city which was absorbed into southern Tel Aviv as that city grew, hence the official name of the city, "Tel Aviv-Yafo". Anyway, I woke up this morning intending to go for a run and promptly fell back asleep. (I'd been up until 1 AM the night before at a too small, too smoky club which unfortunately ended up being full of skeazy, 30-something Israeli dudes).
By ten I was finally able to get myself up and ready to go downtown with my fellow BU Engineers. When we finally had gotten off at the bus stop we weren't even in Jaffa yet but the view just pulled us off. Before us was the rocky coastline of the shores of the Mediterranean, to the south lay the 7,500 year-old port of Jaffa outlined on a hill, to the north was the hotel-lined beaches of Tel Aviv, and above was a cloudless, 75 degree sky. It. Was. Awesome. After taking this all in for a few minutes and taking several hundred photos apiece, we began walking along the shore towards Jaffa. When we reached the main area I could tell this place was very different from most of Tel Aviv. Most of the buildings were quite old, one to two stories tall and made of stone which had slowly been worn down over the years. There were even a few minarets around, reminders of the substantial Muslim population in Jaffa.
A street in Jaffa
It being lunchtime, we made our way into a restaurant called "DR Shakshuka" where we were lead out into and seated in an outdoor section shaded by loose, green cloth hung between two buildings. "Shakshuka" is a traditional Israeli/North African dish made of poached eggs in a tomato sauce with peppers and spices. Though I'm not normally a fan of poached eggs I'm always curious about cultural foods so I ordered shakshuka with veal. It wasn't exactly a beautiful dish, but I could tell it was one of those recipes which were cobbled together over centuries by utilizing easily available, local ingredients as a means of serving one need: sustenance. Not to be aromatic, not to look pretty, not to impress others, but simply to feed. I've come to learn that these are some of the best meals to order while immersed in another culture and the shakshuka did not disappoint, especially when paired with the homemade lemonade mixed with a bit of mint.
Shakshuka with Veal
After lunch I met up with my friend Ian who had come to help me find a cheap bike in Jaffa. For the past several days I have been looking to find a bike as a means of getting around without having to pay the 5.80 shekels to take the bus all over. Ian, who is pretty knowledgeable when it comes to אופניים (offanayim) as well as haggling in Hebrew, had bought a bike a few days earlier, albeit a $300 one, and had heard the cheapest bikes could be found were here. So we began poking around the local flea market which turned out to be full of junk and was later directed by a local to a "bike shop" down the street. It actually was just two open metal sliding doors on a God-knows-how-old building with a pretty wretched-looking, yellow spray-painted bike frame mounted above it. And that was just the outside. As we came close we were beckoned by an old-ish, toothless-ish man sitting in a lawn chair across the small street holding a bottle of Heineken. My friend whipped out his Hebrew skills and told the man we were looking for a bike at which point he told us to take a look inside, pull one out which we liked and that we would talk about it then. The inside of the shop was full of so much junk it was hard to move around in the small room. There were broken stereos, old pots, bird cages and rusty refrigerators strewn among piles of bicycle wheels (obviously stolen) and bike seats (also obviously stolen). Among this heap we did manage to find a decent full bike and wheeled it out to talk price. Though we had told the proprietor I was willing to pay 200 shekels for it, after Ian had been conversing with the Israeli man who was speaking slurry Hebrew for a few minutes he offered it to me for 150 shekels, roughly $40. It was a steal, which was ironic because the bike itself was most likely stolen. But hey, me deciding not to buy it wouldn't un-steal it so why not?
The "Bike Shop"
Following this success I picked up a decent bike lock at the flea market and we were on our way back to Tel Aviv. With the sun getting lower in the sky, Islamic calls to prayer boomed out of loudspeakers mounted on the nearby minarets as we began riding north along the coast. Up to this point I had never noticed how bike-friendly Tel Aviv is. Riding along wide sidewalks by the beach wasn't difficult at all thanks to the bike lanes. The weather was amazing so I had to stop several times to take pictures of the blazing sun lowering itself over the Med. Further down the boardwalk Ian and I came upon another great find forthe day, a weekly fruit and vegetable market. All the stuff was fresh and local so we made a mental note to come back earlier in the day next Friday. Not after making some purchases, that is. Needless to say I now have a "dragon fruit", a fruit I had never previously heard of, is ridiculously purple on the inside, tastes a bit like mushy watermelon, and according to Wikipedia, consumption of which may result in "a harmless reddish discoloration of the urine and faeces". As a guy, I'm pretty curious about that last part. After the market we finished our ride back to the dorms and here I sit, recounting this great day. I walked around an amazing part of the city with an amazing history in amazing weather, ate awesome local food, got a cheap stolen bike thanks to the inebriation of its owner, biked alongside a beautiful vista, and picked up a fruit which may or may not make me pretty stoked a few hours from now. This was the best day.
Sunset on the boardwalk
My big victory
Notes from the Holy Land is the blog I set up to chronicle my life as an American student studying in the Middle East during the Spring of 2010. Check back often for laughs, curiosities, photos you'll wish you were there for, and hummus. Lots and lots of hummus. Also, check out my more local blog: Notes from the B-Line.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Scaling the Language Barrier
Hebrew is a tough language. Hell, learning most languages are pretty tough to learn. But there's just something about this one in particular which makes me scratch my head and wonder if the guy who formalized modern Hebrew over a hundred years ago got trashed one night and thought to himself, "I'm just going to throw in some crazy shit to screw with people who try to learn Hebrew!" Now, all languages have their exceptions, "i before e, except after c" and all that good stuff but I'm only a few weeks into learning the language and this is getting a bit ridiculous. Here's some strange rules mixed in with some fake ones I made up. See if you can spot the difference.
- There are six pairs of letters which can sound the same.
- The sound of certain letters can change with respect to their position in a word.
- The sound of certain letters can change with respect to their position with respect to other letters.
- One letter can be pronounced two ways regardless of the letters around it.
- Special words and letters are only used on the Sabbath.
- There are two forms of the Hebrew "alefbet", one for speaking with and one for reading.
- In many cases the written letters in Hebrew look nothing like their reading version.
- Letters can be easily identified by "vowel labels" which can complement a letter. These "labels" are never used in common print nor in written Hebrew.
- On Tuesdays in November an entirely different dialect is spoken.
- Sometimes a distinct letter turns into a vowel sound for another letter.
- Some Hebrew words can only be spoken by whales because the frequency is below human hearing.
The Hebrew Alefbet
Notes from the Holy Land is the blog I set up to chronicle my life as an American student studying in the Middle East during the Spring of 2010. Check back often for laughs, curiosities, photos you'll wish you were there for, and hummus. Lots and lots of hummus. Also, check out my more local blog: Notes from the B-Line.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
My First Shabbat
Yesterday was my first Shabbat-eve dinner or Sabbath as it is better known in the West. For those not in the know, Shabbat lasts from sundown Friday to roughly one hour after sundown Saturday. It is the end of the Jewish week and typically a day of rest. At a security meeting for my dorm the other day the counselors mentioned a Shabbat dinner for overseas students on Friday night right across from my dorms. Since what I previously knew about a truly Jewish Shabbat was only that it existed (and since I didn't come to Israel to surf Facebook all day), I decided it would be a good learning experience for me. So I threw on a polo and headed over with one of my roommates who himself was more Jew-ish than Jewish. "Jew-ish" means exactly what it sounds like, a more or less non-observant Jew, a.k.a. the typical American teenage Jew. We entered the room, which consisted of several tables pushed together and covered in plastic wrap and many mismatched chairs nearly full with people. My roommate and I each put on a kippah (yamakah), stacks of which were by the door, and stood against the wall behind the table with some others as the rabbi started prayers.
Having been exposed to predominantly Christian meals in the past I was surprised to find that these Shabbat prayers were quite... long. It wasn't so bad because I wasn't the only non-Jew in the room and even many of the Jews didn't know enough of the rabbi's prayers and songs to go along with it anyway. Hence the term "Jew-ish". However it was definitely easy to tell when the important prayers came around because even these people were taking part in them. So I sat and I stood and turned this way and that for a good forty minutes until the (rather easy-going) rabbi announced it was time to serve some food. Unfortunately many were lured there for the promise of a free meal and didn't RSVP with the rabbi so there ended up being food for twenty or so being served to fifty-odd students. But as the rabbi said about this, "The Jews have made do with much less for many more." Food was soon passed around, rationed, and as courses were finished more praying and singing commenced while people began to slip out. We shared the small amount of wine which was present and "le chaim-ed" until it was gone at which point the rabbi noted that we would now be "le chaim-ing" with vodka. Which we then did. I was beginning to really like this religion.
Luckily for us, shortly after about fifteen people had slowly left the dinner, some real food was served: chicken, fish, soup... more vodka, and those who had left missed out on it all. I wasn't crazy about the gefilte fish but overall the food was quite good. As I was leaving I thanked the rabbi, returned my kippah, and was genuinely happy I had come; a feeling which I was mostly sure wasn't due to my impaired state. Will I go again? Probably. Perhaps not every week but this an opportunity I'm pretty sure won't come around so often when I am home. Le Chaim
Notes from the Holy Land is the blog I set up to chronicle my life as an American student studying in the Middle East during the Spring of 2010. Check back often for laughs, curiosities, photos you'll wish you were there for, and hummus. Lots and lots of hummus. Also, check out my more local blog: Notes from the B-Line.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Shalom Tel Aviv!
I made it here alive. Holy crap, I'm in Tel Aviv, Israel. This seems so surreal. That past 24 hours have been full of planes and waiting and walking and rooftop adventures so I guess it'll be best for me to start from the beginning. So we got to Newark around 9:30 am EST and spent a good amount of time in line for El Al security. Now, in case you don't know, Israel's de facto state airline, El Al, is more or less the most secure airline in the world. They know what they're doing and they make damn sure you know that. At the questioning station, (yes they have those), their people went through the standard fare. "Did you pack any weapons?", "Did you pack the bags yourself?" et cetera. However, interspersed in between those questions are ones like, "Are you Jewish?", "Do you know anyone in Israel?", and "What was the last holiday you celebrated?". Overall, I think I answered their questions pretty well. I stayed calm answered truthfully most of the time. But alas, I guess I got some combo of wrong answers and my boarding pass was stamped twice with a the letters "SSSS". I soon learned later from another student more familiar with the Israeli security procedures that this meant I was lucky enough to receive extra security screening. Oh joy.
Now allow me to to describe the rather strange security procedure several other people as well as myself had to go through. After passing the initial security screening and passport check and after dropping off my checked luggage, I was instructed to go directly to Gate 58 even though my departure gate was Gate 55. Arriving at the terminal I begin following the row of gates, 55, 56, 57... where it stopped. There was a small hallway beyond this but no obvious gate number like all the rest. I walked around the terminal, puzzled, for a few more minutes until I decided to poke my head into the little hallway beyond Gate 57. About ten feet down the corridor I stumbled upon a door with a faded El Al logo and block letters saying "Gate 58" underneath. Despite the sketchiness of the door and the fact that there was no other personnel or instruction around, I knocked several times on the door. A few seconds later an El Al security officer opened it, checked my boarding pass and told me he would have to take my carry on bag for screening and that I would get it back before the flight departed. So I gave it to him and he promptly shut the door behind him. After waiting for nearly an hour, I was now standing outside the door with half a dozen others on the flight who were also marked for additional screening. We soon came to the conclusion that none of us were Jewish and that this was the reason we were marked. I've heard of racial profiling but I seldom hear of, let alone experience religious profiling. As the terminal emptied of people boarding our flight, we joked about El Al secretly scheming to make us miss the flight to keep us non-Jews out of Israel. Not soon after, we were brought into the room one by one, our shoes and personal items were swabbed and tested for explosives and then we were escorted, yes, escorted from this this fictional "Gate 58" to our gate.
The flight itself was pretty cool. I'd never been on a plane more than 3 1/2 hours so this 10 1/2 hour trek over the Atlantic was sure to be interesting. The food was decent, I watched a few movies I'd already seen, watched as Orthodox Jews got out of their seats every now and then to pray, and tried to sleep. I woke up at some point six hours in or so and saw lights below us. Well there was my first taste of Europe! There was something different from the U.S. about seeing the lights at night though. It was almost if the lights of these European cities I couldn't identify were warmer, more of a gold color rather than the orange to white-ish hues I would recognize from flying in America. They were centralized too and seemed to melt together like veins of gold flowing over the land, concentrating in a few areas while disappearing into nothing in others. In contrast, I'd say American lights are more like constellations in the sky; a bunch of bright white lights spread out over a big area, each with its own individual glow. Deep, I know.
Ben Gurion International Airport
Azraeli Towers, Tallest in Israel
When we finally started landing it was a bit surreal. We came over the Israeli coastline and BAM!, Tel Aviv was right there before us. From the sky it seemed like the city was only full of a bunch of modern skyscrapers surrounded by thousands of squat buildings, all the same off-white color. After I disembarked and got into the terminal, that whole "stranger in a strange land" mentality started to come around. All the signs were in Hebrew of course, but it even seemed more alien because I couldn't even pronounce the words. At least I know if I flew into Mexico or France or Germany, I could get the gist of a ton of words because I could at least manage to pronounce them. No luck with that here. As different as Israel may have been, I found it a little ironic that the moving walkways in the terminals had "OTIS" stamped into them referring the the company in my home state of Connecticut that makes them. But other than that one instance, I truly felt up the river without a paddle.
I'll spare you all the exciting details of arriving and checking in to TAU, but I will say was really anything but exciting. The good stuff happened when I was all unpacked in my
awesome suite. Our dorms had just been renovated a few months earlier, (which was definitely a good thing considering the horror stories about the way they had used to be). There was a flat panel TV, a balcony, news beds, a new refrigerator, the whole works! Anyway, after the room ogling was finished a couple of my roommates and I went down to the super market located inside a nearby mall to get some room "essentials". Of course this meant taking advantage of the lower drinking age for the majority of our purchases but hey, why not? And so the night continued with us celebrating and toasting our way into the beginning of our first full day in the city. Towards the end of the night three of us were exploring the dorms, upstairs and downstairs, and found that we could get onto the roof. This easily became one of the highlights of my first night in Tel Aviv. From the roof you could easily see the lights of the city and the surrounding burbs. This was about as far from Boston as one could get and exactly where I wanted to be, drinking cheap Israeli beer on a warm Israeli night with the largest Israeli city laid out before me. Shalom Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv University
Notes from the Holy Land is the blog I set up to chronicle my life as an American student studying in the Middle East during the Spring of 2010. Check back often for laughs, curiosities, photos you'll wish you were there for, and hummus. Lots and lots of hummus. Also, check out my more local blog: Notes from the B-Line.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Pre-Flight Check
My flight to Tel Aviv doesn't leave for another twelves hours which means I have roughly five hours to sleep before I leave for Newark after three solid hours of packing. I'll sleep at some point. You could say I'm excited, I mean who wouldn't be? But that real "excitement" feeling doesn't seem like its going to hit until I'm about 35,000 feet over the Med looking at Spain out my left window and Morocco out my right. For now its the last minute mental double-checks. Did I pack this? Did I pack that? How reliable will my Grandma's old bathroom scale turn out to be, showing my three bags at just a hair below the fifty pound limit? Gah, its endless. I should be giving myself a bit of a break from all the stress. I mean, just getting to this point required me to dodge so many bullets it would put Neo to shame. Between my last minute application essay and holding my breath on Christmas Eve waiting for my last final exam grade to be posted, I wasn't sure if I'd sitting in a cold dorm room in Boston shaking my fist at New England winters which seem to never end. No matter. I'm at home, packed for my flight, and writing a blog post when I should be sleeping. This semester will be epic and tomorrow will go just fine... As long as an Asian guy doesn't walk the wrong way through a security gate, that is.
Notes from the Holy Land is the blog I set up to chronicle my life as an American student studying in the Middle East during the Spring of 2010. Check back often for laughs, curiosities, photos you'll wish you were there for, and hummus. Lots and lots of hummus. Also, check out my more local blog: Notes from the B-Line.
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