Year one in Israel - mazal tov, me!

Time flies when you’re having fun, or so they say, and I was somewhat astonished when my first year of teaching at the Anglican School ended the other week – where did all that time go?  The last month of school felt frenzied: I had spent most of it working manically (timetable, exams week, marking, marking, marking…) before the final week of trips and slacking around.  I’d also been playing pretty hard over the past few months, lots of late nights and parties and general frivolity, so by the time school finished I was ready for a month in bed.  Now that’s all over and done with I can catch my breath a little, sit on my balcony undisturbed and reflect a little on a crazy year

The view from my balcony - not so shabby

Moving overseas has felt somewhat like my first year at university: new place, new people; lots to see and do; a degree of uncertainty, trying to find my feet.  People kept on saying to me, “Wow, you’re doing really well!” which reflects well on my ability to blag it in any given social situation.  I’ve been very blessed in meeting lots of people and making friends who have taken me under their collective wing and shown me the ropes.  Living in Jerusalem can feel like being in a pressure-cooker – it’s an intense place, with lots of noise and commotion and drama, and you do need to get out fairly regularly in order to preserve your sanity.  At the same time, the thing that strikes me most as I look back on the last year is that the decision to come here was absolutely the right one.  There are many reasons for this but here are the ones that most readily come to mind:

• I love my job and my new school.  I really do.  I came to the school after 4 hectic, stressful years in middle management in the UK and just being a class teacher, with little administrative responsibility, was bliss.  I’ve been able to settle in to the new school without the pressure that management brings and get to know both the school and the students well.  However my family warned me that I’d get bored fast and, as usual, they were right.  The next academic year brings new responsibilities and a move back up into the sort of management that I like, but for the past year I have thoroughly enjoyed being able to leave school an hour after lessons finished, rather than four hours.  As I said to my boss on my way out the door one day, “Next year, I’ll be here until the sun goes down.  This year, I’m making hay while the sun shines – see you tomorrow…” 
• On another job-related note, I’m now teaching post-16 for the first time in a few years and it has been a treat: really high-level history; the need to learn new content to deliver; intense classroom debates about historical interpretations – how interesting, I hear you say, but for a teacher nothing beats watching students grapple with your subject and come out the other side having sharpened their intellect (one hopes) and actually enjoyed the process.  You tend to remember your teachers from school (Mr. Bayliss and Mrs. Bankoff taught me A-Level History, inspired me to go to Oxford and left me with a lifelong love for the subject – thank you…), but for teachers it’s something of a different story as hundreds of students pass through your life, some of whom make an impression and some of whom don’t.  Well, this year's Grade 12 made a big impression on me and I thoroughly enjoyed the time we spent studying Mao and Stalin and the collapse of communism and arguing over different interpretations of the outbreak of the First World War.  I shall miss them.  Sort of.
• I loved growing up overseas and I’m finding that as an adult I still love the expat life, especially in a place like Israel where there are so many different cultures and people and religions and ideas and sounds and sights and smells.  Just walking to school in the morning sun makes me smile.  Of course I miss British things – reading The Times, listening to Radio 4, going to the pub to watch the rugby on a Saturday afternoon, an orderly queue (good grief, how horribly middle-class I sound) – but Jerusalem increasingly feels like home, at least for the present.  The thing about growing up overseas and at boarding-school is that I feel relatively rootless and whilst I am very British and am sure I’ll live there again one day, I don’t feel tied to it so can make my home wherever I lay my cheap hat (bought at the Yehudiya National Park to stave off heat-stroke during a long hike). 
• Israelis are still rude and loud and sometimes obnoxious, but once you get past that grumpy surface they can be warm, generous and hugely entertaining.  Even though I could barely communicate with the nurse in the doctor’s surgery this morning, she looked at my name on my health insurance card and said, “Anna-Marie – yofi!” – basically, “What a nice name!”  Now, isn’t that lovely?  I’ve also now got to the point where the guys at the stalls I go to regularly in the shuk know me and chat to me in Hebrew, which I find I can now understand more of and occasionally even reply to correctly since the girls (women?) in the office at school keep teaching me little phrases in Hebrew to help me get by.  Actually, the school’s Arab caretakers are also teaching me some basic Arabic so I’m making progress there too.  Keef halak/halek? 
• I’ve been very blessed to settle into the Church of the Nazarene and be part of the community there.  It’s a small church but I like that; people really know each other and look out for each other.  Not that they don’t do that in larger churches, but I like the cosy feel that you get in small communities.  I feel like this church is my church now and it’s great to know that there is a place I can go and people I can turn to when things with my faith get tough.  Finding God here has not been easy (as you'll know if you're a regular reader) and there have been choices I’ve made this year that I have regretted or that have made that search harder, but as with many journeys of faith I feel that I have made it through the valley, guided by the one who doesn’t leave or forsake us – ever.  Phew. 
• There is so much to see and do that there's rarely a dull moment.  Heading to the beach in Tel Aviv (though not at the moment, it’s jellyfish season and I got stung on my legs, arms and boob last time I went swimming) and enjoying the relaxed atmosphere of the city; wine-tasting in the Golan Heights; trips to Nazareth and Lake Galilee (Kinneret, they call it here) and Jaffa and Haifa and Akko; hiking in the many national parks; wandering round the Old City in Jerusalem, dodging the ever-persistent shop-holders and going to the old guy on Beit HaBed whose shop looks like a total dive but whose baklava is divine.

Looking back, there are also so many individual highlights that I can't possibly fit them in here but I feel the need to mention a few: 

• A weekend camping and hiking in the northern Galilee with friends in the Yehudiya National Park as well a return trip there with the kids from the school which saw me jumping fully-clothed into a large pool in the Zavitan canyon, then jumping fully-clothed the next day into the Jordan River – actually, falling in head-first, getting my leg stuck in the raft ropes and scaring the life out of the Grade 10 girls in the raft with me who thought I was drowning. 

Hiking in the Yehudiya National Park

• Christmas, again in the Galilee, with the lovely Holmes family and a memorable day cycling round the Hula Valley as hundreds and thousands of migrating birds squawked and flew overhead. 
• Late nights with Tamar and Amos and other friends at the Blue Hole, drinking Goldstar in the warm night air.  It should really be called the Black Hole, the number of times I have gone to that place for one drink and ended up leaving in the wee small hours of the morning (though perhaps that's because Ori the lovely bartender always gave me free drinks). 
• Hitting the dvd shop in Bethlehem to stock up on movies, tracking down a Christmas tree at a gaudy shop then having probably one of the best meals of my life at Reem al-Bawadi with Anis, Allison and Tamar – a memorable evening. 
• Going with David Pileggi, the vicar at Christ Church, and other pilgrims on a walk through the Old City down into the Kidron Valley and into the Garden of Gethsemane on Maundy Thursday.  Walking in the footsteps, perhaps, of Jesus and his disciples.

I feel like I could go on and on about my first year here but I don’t want to be an expat bore (or is it too late for that?)  This year has been tough, exciting, frustrating and wonderful in equal measures.  Like I said earlier, moving here was absolutely the right decision for me at this stage of my life.  Here’s to year two in Jerusalem – l’chaim!