Year two in Israel
Glory, glory - the summer holidays are finally here. Our school calendar is a little different to the UK one, with less holiday time during the academic year but a full two months in the summer, which makes up for the total exhaustion I feel in December after 2 and a half months of slog without a proper break. And before you say to yourself, "Why is she complaining when she gets so much more holiday than average Joe?", in defence of all teachers everywhere it's a pretty knackering job and we need regular breaks so that the children don't kill us, or the other way around. Anyhow, the summer holidays are finally here and I am celebrating the luxury of days without a proper schedule by writing another review of the year, my second in Israel. Once again, mazal tov me! Or מזל טוב אליי!
This year has been different to my first, obviously - more settled into my life here, more work to do, different challenges, lots and lots of fun, some hard times, but fewer I think than my first year here. I'm still working through a lot of my thoughts and questions and problems on the God front, but am properly stuck into the Nazarene Church and it has been a massive blessing - a community of people who don't judge but who just love each other, love God, love life and try to work out how to do life in this crazy, complicated country. My faith still feels shaky but less so than it did a year ago and whilst I have days where I feel like I'm walking through fog when it comes to seeking God, I have other days of total clarity which more than make up for it. The bottom line remains, as I think I've said before, the notion that whilst I don't always see a meaning or purpose in life that answers my questions, I am convinced that life has no meaning without God.
I'm still living in Nahlaot, in my little apartment with my pink bedroom and my housemate Allison and our ridiculous kitchen table that is more like garden furniture and my glorious balcony. Now that the weather has settled into summer and a fairly solid 30°C every day I spend more time sitting out there, reading or hanging with friends or just listening to the sounds of Nahlaot life: the guys in the courtyard out the back of my block, barbecuing and singing and smoking tremendous amounts of weed; the family down the alley whose toddler throws a tantrum with almost frightening regularity at 6 every evening; the dogs barking at each other; the synagogue at the end of the alley coming into life on a Saturday morning, thereby ruining my lie-in. I do have to report, however, the sad demise of my beloved director's chair, which I've had since the age of 9 and which I shipped out to Israel, but it couldn't withstand the exposure to the elements on my balcony and died a death midway through last summer (though personally I think my rather muscly Israeli friend who sat on it one night might have contributed more than his fair share to its destruction).
I have now progressed to a stage of ease with Hebrew where I can chat with the guy at the hummus stand in the shuk, although the group of brothers in the makollet I have been buying milk and yogurt from for 18 months now remain grumpy and miserable, despite me being breezy and polite as I stop in on the way to work most days. The guy in the makollet in HaDavidka where I buy credit for my phone is much friendlier, which is nice but was a pain when I bumped into him at a bar in town last night with two of his friends who insisted on buying us shots; they were clearly on the make and were irritatingly committed to getting either my phone number or my friend Brittany's ("You have beautiful eyes, Brittany. Would you like to come to a barbecue with us?")
Actually, learning Hebrew has definitely been one of the highlights of my year, despite my dad's repeated protestations that once I leave here it will be somewhat redundant unless I move to Brooklyn, and I'm pretty sure the Jewish community there speaks Yiddish anyway. I keep telling him that maybe I'll marry an Israeli and live here forever... Anyway, learning Hebrew has been a challenge but a fun one. I recently passed my second ulpan course, Aleph +, not pronounced plus but pronounced in a French manner, which I think is ridiculous, with 88% in the exam (showing off, sorry) though my ulpan partner-in-crime Keeley got 90% (clever girl). I have managed to get enough of a handle on the language to be able to deal with the staff at the restaurant we went to for Graduation dinner this week - I had been put in charge (apparently I'm a 'responsible adult', according to our receptionist Julie - not sure where she got that idea from) and had to pay the bill, navigate getting the families from school to not buy boooze and put it on the school's tab and keep the waiters/waitresses happy. I'm still a long way from fluency, obviously, but according to one cab driver this week my accent is very good and lots of my Israeli friends tell me they're very impressed with my progress. I'm even sending text messages in Hebrew, though I frequently get things wrong - one attempt this week to say 'what's up?' to Tamar was apparently more like 'thief'. Oops. Julie says I need to do a blog post in Hebrew one day, so watch this space. אני אנסה אבל זה לא קל.
Another highlight has been having visitors from home this year. In October Damien and Alex came out for a week of fun and games over Sukkot (I refer you to http://abrunskillabroad.blogspot.co.il/2012/11/ive-been-ill-for-most-of-past-week.html, if you didn't read the post last November. And if not, why not?) and then in April this year my lovely friend Celia from my last job in Henbury came out for Pesach, bringing her husband Dave with her (well, someone had to carry the luggage). We had a fairly similar itinerary to the October trip: a weekend road-trip to Masada/the Dead Sea/Galilee/Banias/Akko/Tel Aviv then a few days in Jerusalem, where I was at work so they had to explore by themselves - probably a good thing since I'm not the world's greatest tour-guide. We went a bit off-piste at Ein Gedi, where we followed the trail of Israelis past the big sign saying "No Entry" - Israelis do love to ignore official signs, except, bizarrely, the green/red man at traffic lights which they observe with an almost religious fervour - to a mud-hole and smothered ourselves in free Dead Sea mud; we climbed Masada much earlier in the day (I'd learned my lesson from last time) though it was still too hot for Dave's northern blood; and we sat drinking gin and tonics on the balcony of the guest-house overlooking the Kinneret, enjoying the peace and quiet. Bliss.
I've had some other quality road-trips this year too. We went away as a church to the north for the weekend in May, staying at in Tzfat in the Galilee and hiking to the Zavitan Falls in the Yehudiya, which were beautiful but very, very cold. I don't mind the cold water, all those childhoods swimming in the sea off Mothecombe Bay in south Devon, but after the warmth of the sea at Tel Aviv it was a bit of a shock. A few weekends ago we went away for Amos' birthday and camped at a place called Hurshat Tal, where a gently burbling stream of water from the Hermon mountain runs throughout the campsite, cold enough to do an excellent job of chilling our crates of beer. The next morning a few of us went for a swim in the massive pool there, also fed with water from the Hermon, and it has to be said that all my friends who are Israeli really couldn't cope with the cold. Most refused to go in; the one friend who was game stood at the side of the pool for about 10 minutes and then finally jumped in, on my advice ("Oh come on, jump in, it'll be easier if you get it over with fast"). This turned out to be a bit of a mistake on my part, as he resurfaced with a look of utter horror on his face and swam straight for the side of the pool to get out again. It took another 10 minutes to convince him to get back in and he told me later that he had thought he might actually die, the shock of the cold had given him such strong heart palpitations.
As well as playing pretty hard this year (leading Steve to create the phrase 'pulling a Brunskill', now in circulation amongst some of my friends - I shall leave its precise meaning to your imagination) I have also worked much harder than I did last year. This is mostly because I was given a lot of new responsibilities in school, which has been very good for me, not least, as my mother says, because I get bored easily. Little international schools tend to get people multi-tasking very fast, so this year I have been exams officer, IB extended essay coordinator, timetabler and Assistant Dean, all of which has added to my workload and made it much harder for me to slack off at 3.30 p.m. and go for happy hour beers. The upshot is that I have been promoted and made Dean of Students, with another two years on my contract (maybe three) and an office of my very own from the start of the next school year in late August. Dean of Students basically means head of pastoral care (Head of Year, we'd call it back home) and is a step back into middle management, similar to where I was back home before I left. I'm looking forward to the new challenge but I have to say that right now the thing I'm looking forward to most is that office - I've never had an office of my very own and the prospect fills me with joy. There's so much scope for imaginative interior decorating, though my proposal of adopting one of the stray kittens currently living under the sports equipment shed at school was met with stony silence from my boss. What's wrong with an office kitty?
A list of other highlights, worthy of a mention here, would include:
Now that I'm staring down the barrel at two months of summer holiday (au revoir, alarm clock), I'm looking forward to long, lazy days at the beach and long, lazy evenings in the warm air. I'm heading home in July for three weeks, to celebrate both another wedding and a significant birthday of my dad's (end of one decade, beginning of another), so I'm also looking forward to catching up with the people I love, sitting in the pub on a Saturday afternoon and lying on the sofa at my parents' home, with Radio 4 on in the background, mum pottering in the kitchen and dad singing to himself upstairs. Then it's Crete for another jaunt with Dave and Severine, and back here to enjoy the sunshine before the next academic year starts and I'm chained to the desk in my office. It's OK though, because I'll have a kitten to keep me company.
It's been an awesome year.
This year has been different to my first, obviously - more settled into my life here, more work to do, different challenges, lots and lots of fun, some hard times, but fewer I think than my first year here. I'm still working through a lot of my thoughts and questions and problems on the God front, but am properly stuck into the Nazarene Church and it has been a massive blessing - a community of people who don't judge but who just love each other, love God, love life and try to work out how to do life in this crazy, complicated country. My faith still feels shaky but less so than it did a year ago and whilst I have days where I feel like I'm walking through fog when it comes to seeking God, I have other days of total clarity which more than make up for it. The bottom line remains, as I think I've said before, the notion that whilst I don't always see a meaning or purpose in life that answers my questions, I am convinced that life has no meaning without God.
I'm still living in Nahlaot, in my little apartment with my pink bedroom and my housemate Allison and our ridiculous kitchen table that is more like garden furniture and my glorious balcony. Now that the weather has settled into summer and a fairly solid 30°C every day I spend more time sitting out there, reading or hanging with friends or just listening to the sounds of Nahlaot life: the guys in the courtyard out the back of my block, barbecuing and singing and smoking tremendous amounts of weed; the family down the alley whose toddler throws a tantrum with almost frightening regularity at 6 every evening; the dogs barking at each other; the synagogue at the end of the alley coming into life on a Saturday morning, thereby ruining my lie-in. I do have to report, however, the sad demise of my beloved director's chair, which I've had since the age of 9 and which I shipped out to Israel, but it couldn't withstand the exposure to the elements on my balcony and died a death midway through last summer (though personally I think my rather muscly Israeli friend who sat on it one night might have contributed more than his fair share to its destruction).
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| The view from my lovely balcony when it snowed |
Actually, learning Hebrew has definitely been one of the highlights of my year, despite my dad's repeated protestations that once I leave here it will be somewhat redundant unless I move to Brooklyn, and I'm pretty sure the Jewish community there speaks Yiddish anyway. I keep telling him that maybe I'll marry an Israeli and live here forever... Anyway, learning Hebrew has been a challenge but a fun one. I recently passed my second ulpan course, Aleph +, not pronounced plus but pronounced in a French manner, which I think is ridiculous, with 88% in the exam (showing off, sorry) though my ulpan partner-in-crime Keeley got 90% (clever girl). I have managed to get enough of a handle on the language to be able to deal with the staff at the restaurant we went to for Graduation dinner this week - I had been put in charge (apparently I'm a 'responsible adult', according to our receptionist Julie - not sure where she got that idea from) and had to pay the bill, navigate getting the families from school to not buy boooze and put it on the school's tab and keep the waiters/waitresses happy. I'm still a long way from fluency, obviously, but according to one cab driver this week my accent is very good and lots of my Israeli friends tell me they're very impressed with my progress. I'm even sending text messages in Hebrew, though I frequently get things wrong - one attempt this week to say 'what's up?' to Tamar was apparently more like 'thief'. Oops. Julie says I need to do a blog post in Hebrew one day, so watch this space. אני אנסה אבל זה לא קל.
Another highlight has been having visitors from home this year. In October Damien and Alex came out for a week of fun and games over Sukkot (I refer you to http://abrunskillabroad.blogspot.co.il/2012/11/ive-been-ill-for-most-of-past-week.html, if you didn't read the post last November. And if not, why not?) and then in April this year my lovely friend Celia from my last job in Henbury came out for Pesach, bringing her husband Dave with her (well, someone had to carry the luggage). We had a fairly similar itinerary to the October trip: a weekend road-trip to Masada/the Dead Sea/Galilee/Banias/Akko/Tel Aviv then a few days in Jerusalem, where I was at work so they had to explore by themselves - probably a good thing since I'm not the world's greatest tour-guide. We went a bit off-piste at Ein Gedi, where we followed the trail of Israelis past the big sign saying "No Entry" - Israelis do love to ignore official signs, except, bizarrely, the green/red man at traffic lights which they observe with an almost religious fervour - to a mud-hole and smothered ourselves in free Dead Sea mud; we climbed Masada much earlier in the day (I'd learned my lesson from last time) though it was still too hot for Dave's northern blood; and we sat drinking gin and tonics on the balcony of the guest-house overlooking the Kinneret, enjoying the peace and quiet. Bliss.
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| Enjoying the Galilee evening |
I've had some other quality road-trips this year too. We went away as a church to the north for the weekend in May, staying at in Tzfat in the Galilee and hiking to the Zavitan Falls in the Yehudiya, which were beautiful but very, very cold. I don't mind the cold water, all those childhoods swimming in the sea off Mothecombe Bay in south Devon, but after the warmth of the sea at Tel Aviv it was a bit of a shock. A few weekends ago we went away for Amos' birthday and camped at a place called Hurshat Tal, where a gently burbling stream of water from the Hermon mountain runs throughout the campsite, cold enough to do an excellent job of chilling our crates of beer. The next morning a few of us went for a swim in the massive pool there, also fed with water from the Hermon, and it has to be said that all my friends who are Israeli really couldn't cope with the cold. Most refused to go in; the one friend who was game stood at the side of the pool for about 10 minutes and then finally jumped in, on my advice ("Oh come on, jump in, it'll be easier if you get it over with fast"). This turned out to be a bit of a mistake on my part, as he resurfaced with a look of utter horror on his face and swam straight for the side of the pool to get out again. It took another 10 minutes to convince him to get back in and he told me later that he had thought he might actually die, the shock of the cold had given him such strong heart palpitations.
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| Zavitan Falls in the Yehudiya national park - parky as |
A list of other highlights, worthy of a mention here, would include:
- seeing the Red Hot Chili Peppers live in Hayarkon Park, Tel Aviv - an awesome concert, not in any way diminshed by the fact that it was September so the weather in Tel Aviv was steamy enough to make everybody drip with sweat. This in itself wouldn't have mattered if every guy there - and there were probably 6 guys to every girl - took their t-shirt off, so instead of their sweat being mopped up by clothing it was mopped up by my clothing as I attempted to push my way to the front.
- wind-surfing on the school trip to Eilat. I hadn't done it since I was a teenager in Bahrain, but it came back to me eventually and was a lot of fun. I did manage to completely wipe out at one point, trying to avoid hitting two of the kids, and without realising scraped my leg down the side of the board. I then bled copiously, unnoticed until one child screamed "Miss, what's wrong with your leg?" and I looked down to see a stream of red flowing into the water. I have a nasty scar to remind me of that day forever.
- going clubbing in Tel Aviv for Purim with a group of friends - completely, utterly mental.
- Monday night beers with Tamar at the Blue Hole until they CLOSED IT and we had to relocate. Each time I've bumped into the bartenders in town they've all asked, with concern, "Where do you go drinking now?" We've still not found a suitable replacement where the bartenders will give us so many free drinks, but we're working on it. It's worth mentioning here that my life in Israel has been made qualitatively better, on every level, by having Tamar as a friend. She is utterly brilliant.
- My first Jewish wedding, Naomi and Shimon's, about which I blogged at length last month so I feel no need to repeat myself.
- A summer evening's barbecue in a garden in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City, on the same night as the 'supermoon', the one night per year when the moon is closest to the earth and therefore bigger and more beautiful, culminating with a run through the streets of the Old City to hit the rooftops near the Kotel in order to catch a glimpse of the international space station in orbit (thanks Beeman).
- Happy weekend afternoons watching 6 Nations rugby in the 'home cinema' at the Nazarene with my boys Chris, Dan, Mario and Mikey (we miss you, Mikey), where the quality of the live feed was never reliable but the quality of the banter always was. This has lately been replaced by equally happy weekend afternoons at Cafe Etz (open on Shabbat, woo hoo!).
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| Out with my boys - not sure what I'd do without them or their constant quoting of Dumb and Dumber |
Now that I'm staring down the barrel at two months of summer holiday (au revoir, alarm clock), I'm looking forward to long, lazy days at the beach and long, lazy evenings in the warm air. I'm heading home in July for three weeks, to celebrate both another wedding and a significant birthday of my dad's (end of one decade, beginning of another), so I'm also looking forward to catching up with the people I love, sitting in the pub on a Saturday afternoon and lying on the sofa at my parents' home, with Radio 4 on in the background, mum pottering in the kitchen and dad singing to himself upstairs. Then it's Crete for another jaunt with Dave and Severine, and back here to enjoy the sunshine before the next academic year starts and I'm chained to the desk in my office. It's OK though, because I'll have a kitten to keep me company.
It's been an awesome year.
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