Yom HaMe'ah

The time was 5:30pm. The date? October 15th, 2012. After a sleepless night and a stomachache that would've rendered even the most determined woman incapacitated, I had finally fallen asleep. It was a sleep that would not last long.

5:35pm - a knock on the door. I awoke with a start. As one of my roommates entered my room, I mentally prepared a stern lecture about respecting each other's personal space. Then I saw her panicked look. She asked if I was packed. When my face betrayed the fact that I had no idea what she was talking about, her jaw dropped. "They didn't tell you?" she asked. I shook my head. And then she delivered the news. "Yom HaMe'ah," she stammered. "It's tomorrow." She explained that our group's social worker had succeeded in pushing forward our Yom HaMe'ah to make sure that we would not be excluded from the jobs that draft in November. Unfortunately, this also meant an inadequate amount of freak-out time. Half an hour later, I found myself sitting on a bus to Haifa, trying in vain to ignore the butterflies that were furiously attacking my stomach. And thus - with a slight over-dramatization - began Yom HaMe'ah.

In case you don't remember, Yom HaMe'ah is a day when Israeli girls go to a bland office building in Haifa and for eight hours, travel from station to station. Each station is specially designed to test a certain skill. They have eight hours to try to show the army that they deserve a job that doesn't include guarding ketchup or pressing the same button on a keyboard all day long. Being an Israeli girl (which I will never get used to saying), I, too, arrived at 8am and waited for directions. They split us into groups and had us introduce ourselves. Don't be fooled: the smiling girls in your group are not there to help you. They are also there to prove themselves at each of the stations, and they will do anything necessary - anything - to stand out. I don't even know how to describe the intense feeling of competition that pervaded the air. In my last post, I likened Yom HaMe'ah to The Hunger Games, which was unnervingly accurate. However, there was also definitely an element of Mean Girls at play. Think Hungry Girls, and there you have Yom HaMe'ah.

The first station was one that tested how we lead and teach a class. Each member of my group got a topic and eight minutes to read a double-sided piece of paper. The paper outlined the information we would need for a four-minute presentation to follow. As the Israeli girls in my group breezed through their readings, I stumbled through mine, coming face to face with scientific phrases and psychological blabber that I hardly would've understood had it been in English. Luckily, the words I did understand provided me with enough context to give a decent (I hope) presentation, but I couldn't help feeling like it was infinitely harder for me than it was for the rest of my group, like they had an unfair advantage just by virtue of being born in this country.

The rest of the stations passed by without getting any easier. I won't give you the grueling details, but suffice it to say that I was mentally exhausted and ready to give up after the first few hours. Of course, I know this is what I came here to do, and so I carried on, but my obvious disadvantage kept me stressed. I wish I could say that today was a success, but the truth is that I have no idea. In a week or so, I'll be receiving my Manila with a list of possible jobs for me dictated by today's performance. I think I'll only be able to decide how successful I was when my Manila comes and guarding ketchup isn't listed as one of my jobs.

On the upside, here are some new pictures of my cats. :)

Post-Honeymoon Stage

A very wise Doctor once spoke of a dark and dreary room known only as The Waiting Place, “… for people just waiting. Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow. Everyone is just waiting.” At this point, that’s exactly what it feels like on the kibbutz, waiting for the army. This blog post is titled “Post-Honeymoon Stage” because now that I’ve been here for a little over a month and a half, I’m finally realizing what people were talking about when they said things were going to be hard. Honestly, Dr. Seuss may as well have written, “Waiting for their draft dates to come or their nose rings to go, or their medical test results to come or their sense of freedom to go, or the bureaucracy to end or waiting around for a fax to send or waiting to get Sal Klita money to spend. Everyone is just waiting.” (The Sal Klita is one of the benefits that people get for making Aliyah, and it includes a monthly stipend. That is, when the government remembers to give it to us on time.) We’re all just waiting with bated breath for the next step of our enlistment process. Once in a while, a member of my Garin will get an update that moves him/her ahead in the process and the rest of us, while congratulating the lucky kid, will silently be asking ourselves why we didn’t get the same update. My most recent update is that I received my date of enlistment! Of course, it’s only a technicality. I won’t get my real enlistment date until I know what position I’m going to hold. But for right now, December 17^th is the closest thing I have to any sort of official date, so I’m excitedly telling everyone about it until I hear otherwise.

The next thing I have to look forward to (it’s virtually impossible to convey via text the heavy sarcasm that is plaguing my voice in my head right now, but please note that this was, in fact, sarcastic) is something called Yom HaMe’ah. This is a day for all the girls who are enlisting to go and show off their skills to the army. Some of the girls in my Garin have already done it, but since my medical results got held up, I couldn’t go when they did. From what I’ve been told, you’re with a group of vicious Israeli girls and you go from station to station, each station designed to test a different skill. In order to succeed, you have to stand out from all the other girls by showing off in a way that is all too reminiscent of The Hunger Games. Following Yom HaMe’ah, you receive something in the mail called a “manila,” brilliantly named after the manila envelope it comes in, which contains the list of jobs that the army believes you could do well. After that, I’m not sure, but I’ll keep you updated.

Aside from the army stuff, the only other especially interesting thing that’s happened here was Lila Lavan, or White Night, which is basically just an all-nighter. Pictures of that (and other things, including the cats I’ve taken to feeding) are attached. At 11 PM sharp, the girls suited up into long-sleeved black shirts and pants and stood outside our apartment. The next 4ish hours were a grueling combination of running, push-ups, teamwork “games,” mud fights, carrying two cinderblocks in our backpacks for no obvious reason, and crawling on our stomachs through thick, mushy mud (which, oddly enough, was a product of the first rain of the season, which consisted of maybe 15 raindrops). As a Lila Lavan survivor, I think it’s safe for me to say that if that’s how the army is really going to be, I’m quitting.

But in all seriousness, Lila Lavan was actually really fun. I truly believe that you’re never closer to a person than when you’re covered in mud, with streaks down the sides of your face from the sweat, and a little bit of blood running down your legs, with dirt in your hair and up your nose, with any trace of your normal scent hidden behind the grime of this distinctly putrid mud-sweat-blood paste, and that person still wants to be your friend. It allowed us girls to bond in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced before. These girls are like my sisters. (But I still love Sarah a little more. No offense.) It only sucks that we had to do things that – 5 days later – still have me sore. Oh well.

However, despite the soreness, despite the bureaucracy, despite the waiting, despite the ants that I’ve learned to treat as 8^th and 9^th and 10^th and 11^th and 12-trillionth roommates, despite the no-shorts-on-kibbutz rule, despite the overwhelming heat, and despite the tarantula that I swear I saw on a run a few days ago, the most frustrating thing that I’ve faced thus far is still the fact that Israelis approach me, and without me even saying a single word, they automatically talk to me in English. Is there something about me that is so obviously American that everyone just assumes I don’t speak Hebrew? It feels like I’m living in Where’s Waldo, where I am Waldo, and instead of being disguised in a crowd of red- and white-striped shirts, I’m in like a mime convention or something, where the only other colors are black and white. It’s the easiest game of Where’s Waldo ever. I’ve affectionately renamed it Spot the Tourist, and the Israelis are winning. It definitely doesn’t help that, most of the time, I am the only blonde in a 20-kilometer radius. (Note my usage of the metric system. I’m really working on that.) But how am I ever supposed to learn to comfortably speak Hebrew if everyone is talking to me in English? I’ve decided that what I’m going to do is tell people that I’m Swedish. The Swedish boy in my Garin told me that I could easily be a member of the Swedish mafia (which has to be one of the sweetest – albeit, weirdest – compliments I’ve ever gotten), so I’m just going to go with it. When people speak to me in English, I’ll give them my most European look and say “Ja, ja, hej,” until they realize that if we’re going to communicate, it needs to be in Hebrew. All I need to do is drink cider and wear brightly colored, traditional Swedish garb, or whatever they do in Sweden. I wonder if they sell that on eBay?

Happy Sukkot!

P.S. Feel free to post your comments! It makes me feel like I wasn’t wasting time when I wrote this novel of a blog post because someone is actually reading it. 

My Garin

A free street concert in Haifa

Scary Bug #1

Scary Bug #2

Oreo and Pikachu <3