There's been a general theme to my first week in Israel. Nobody asks me to repeat my name for them. If anything, they try (fruitlessly) to correct my pronunciation of it. I never have to worry about food being Kosher. A pharmacist saw my last name, pronounced it correctly, and asked what part of North Africa my family was from. I still get a warm and fuzzy feeling from seeing and hearing Hebrew everywhere, an extension of what I'd feel when hearing someone speak Hebrew on the subway back home, but it's starting to wear off and become the norm. Unlike the U.S., in Israel the average response to, "I'm staying in Israel for a month or two then backpacking across South East Asia" is something on the order of "that's nice. I spent 6 months in India myself." All of a sudden, after a lifetime of being different from everyone else, I'm average.
Well, not entirely. I still don't speak Hebrew fluently, which doesn't so much make me an anomaly but rather reflects negatively. That negativity was far more pronounced in the States however. When I'd meet another Israeli in New York, upon hearing I was born in Israel, he or she would immediately start speaking Hebrew to me, at which point I'd have to respond sheepishly "אני לא מדבר עברית".... "I don't speak Hebrew." The look of disappointment I'd receive was usually the same and always conveyed "oh, so you're not really Israeli. Your parents are." I'd feel like I had to apologize. Here, the response is the exact opposite. Because I've come to Israel. I'm struggling to speak the language when I don't have to and to connect with where I come from. In a country built by olim hadashim, such an endeavor is universally appreciated. So for now, I'm not entirely like everyone else, but I'm heading in the right direction.
At first, this new found assimilation is both comforting and disappointing. I like being different, but I also like the feeling of being home. Out of this dissonance comes a challenge for me to differentiate myself by my actions rather than my background. This trip came at a high point in my life. I had never been more content than I was when I decided to leave New York. I may not have had a job that I imagined myself working at for very long, but socially and introspectively I was at peace with who I was. But I left anyways, not just because it was a now-or-never situation, but because I needed to get outside of my comfort zone. It's only been one week and the resulting shake up is already proving to be a major turning point in my own personal development. I can only imagine how pronounced it would have been had it taken place in a more socially tumultuous point in my life, like high school for example.
So, apparently I'm trying to find myself by taking a year off to travel the world. What a cliché. I guess my actions aren't all that differentiating either.
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Tel Aviv is a fantastic city. There's a learning curve of course, but with a decent map in my pocket and a list of people I can call for help, it hasn't taken too long for me to get the hang of it. The fact that you're never more than a few blocks from the beach is an amazing, and beautiful, selling point. I'll post pictures just as soon as I can get Windows Vista to recognize my camera. I've spent many hours reading at cafes, catching up with my friend Jenna, drinking with Sara and her friends, visiting galleries, meditating on the beach, and aimlessly wandering and exploring the city. I've also spent a lot of time with my brother Tomer, catching up and walking along the beach to the ancient city of Jaffa for some seafood. It was late by the time we got there so I'll have to come back during the day to really explore the oldest city in the world.
My cousins Assaf, Rachel, Reut and I spent the weekend at their parents, my dad's younger brother and his wife, in Tiberius, a resort town in Northern Israel. They have a beautiful house with a gorgeous view of Lake Kinerat- the Sea of Galilee. My dad's sister Zehava and her husband Shalom joined for an afternoon as well. A lot of eating great food, looking at old family pictures, shopping in the town center, and relaxing took place. The first night there, Reut and her boyfriend took me out, first to a night club, where the biggest dog I've ever seen was lazily wandering round the dance floor, and then to a bar, where I discovered the best bang for your buck is Arak, both at nearby Kibbutzim. It was a really good visit.
I move in to my apartment on Thursday, and take a Hebrew placement exam at Ulpan Gordon Sunday. Today I think I'll do something touristy....
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
First day on the town.
I took a bus from Ramat Gan to Tel Aviv yesterday. This was a big win for me as I had no idea what I was doing. I had to speak Hebrew to someone on the street in order to figure out which one to take and from where. This probably wasn't necessary as odds are extremely high that she spoke English; but that just makes me more proud of myself. There's a constant temptation to just speak English with people here. Nearly everyone is fluent. Fortunately, I haven't noticed much of the Paris-effect where locals get frustrated by your attempts at their language and just tell you to speak English. So far it's been mostly the opposite. Most Israelis I've talked to have encouraged my Hebrew attempts and several pointed me in the direction of the local Ulpan, a school for Hebrew.
They're not all saints though. To many, broken Hebrew is the sign of an easy target. I ended up in a screaming match with a taxi driver at 2:30 am last night who figured he could get away with charging for the time he spent driving around lost in Ramat Gan, including the 5 minutes he was parked at a police station while inside asking for directions. Live and learn. Next time I'm bringing a map and locking down a price up front. Many Israelis, my dad included, are quick to point out that it's not the same country it used to be. Too many people are out to screw each other in a land that was built on a foundation of helping one another. So far, however, the good has still far outweighed the bad.
I got off the bus at Dizengoff Square, an iconic area of Tel Aviv and began my search for a cell phone. Travel tip: there are four major GSM frequencies, called bands. Two are used in America and Canada as well as some Latin American countries, two are used everywhere else. A quad band phone will work everywhere. A dual band phone will either work in the Americas or everywhere else. They don't really make single band phones anymore, but those work in a smaller area. I bought a dual band phone in Mexico last year so assumed it would work here, but found out right before leaving that Mexico uses the same dual bands as America. Long story short, you can't go wrong with quad band, otherwise have two dual bands. I bought a small Nokia at a shop on the street and loaded it with a 50 shekels worth of prepaid minutes. Incoming calls are free so hit me up at country code 972, 052-741-9627. I'm also on Skype a lot, which is considerably more free. My username is yaron.guez.
After getting the phone I tried Israeli sushi (good stuff!), spent some quality time with my brother Tomer, and looked at the apartment that my cousins Assaf and Rachel had found for a possible sublet. The apartment is right near the beach, the north end of Dizengoff Street. It's a studio with a great view of the ocean, tiny kitchen and bathroom, and is fully furnished, including a big couch (who wants to visit?), TV, satellite, and WiFi internet. The owner, an eccentric, sweet, multi lingual, Israeli woman charges per week. The rent is a good deal more expensive than I wanted to pay, but after calling around to a few other places we realized that it's the going rate for furnished short term apartments as there's a lot of tourist demand. So, later that night, I signed a makeshift lease for a month. I move in next Thursday. I'm really excited. It's right by a lot of bars, clubs, an Ulpan, a park, and a river that people go bike riding along. My brother, who lives down the street, said I can borrow his bike whenever I want. He also lent me his laptop with a cellular internet card. It's going to be a great month.
That night I got together with my friend Sara from MA. We're friends from USY since 9th grade and she's since made aliyah. She's currently studying at Tel Aviv University and has been here for the past 2 years, so she knows the city extremely well. She's taken up the task of being my tour guide, which is fantastic. We went to an English pub where she works at. What better way to get acclimated to a foreign city then to hit up a bar full of English speaking ex-pats? I met a great and interesting group of Jews who had made aliya from Chicago, London, Long Island, South Africa, Russia, Toronto, and Memphis (one of 12,000 Jews in Tennessee apparently). Everyone I talked to about it had an interesting reason for leaving their home country and moving to Israel. It was a great time. At the end of the night I got a call from El Al telling me they had found my second lost bag. Excellent!
So between learning a bus route, practicing Hebrew, getting a cell phone, spending time with my brother, meeting his girlfriend, getting an apartment, spending time with Sara and meeting her friends, getting my luggage back, and fighting with a taxi driver, I'd say it was a fairly productive day! Tonight I head to Tiberius with my cousins Assaf, Rachel, and Reut to visit their parents- my Uncle Shuki and Aunt Geula. I'll be there until Saturday.
Oh, did I mention that it's GORGEOUS here? Pictures to follow, but so far it's been constantly sunny and warm (60s and 70s). Coming from -5 degrees New England, it's in-cred-ible. A guy could get used to this....
They're not all saints though. To many, broken Hebrew is the sign of an easy target. I ended up in a screaming match with a taxi driver at 2:30 am last night who figured he could get away with charging for the time he spent driving around lost in Ramat Gan, including the 5 minutes he was parked at a police station while inside asking for directions. Live and learn. Next time I'm bringing a map and locking down a price up front. Many Israelis, my dad included, are quick to point out that it's not the same country it used to be. Too many people are out to screw each other in a land that was built on a foundation of helping one another. So far, however, the good has still far outweighed the bad.
I got off the bus at Dizengoff Square, an iconic area of Tel Aviv and began my search for a cell phone. Travel tip: there are four major GSM frequencies, called bands. Two are used in America and Canada as well as some Latin American countries, two are used everywhere else. A quad band phone will work everywhere. A dual band phone will either work in the Americas or everywhere else. They don't really make single band phones anymore, but those work in a smaller area. I bought a dual band phone in Mexico last year so assumed it would work here, but found out right before leaving that Mexico uses the same dual bands as America. Long story short, you can't go wrong with quad band, otherwise have two dual bands. I bought a small Nokia at a shop on the street and loaded it with a 50 shekels worth of prepaid minutes. Incoming calls are free so hit me up at country code 972, 052-741-9627. I'm also on Skype a lot, which is considerably more free. My username is yaron.guez.
After getting the phone I tried Israeli sushi (good stuff!), spent some quality time with my brother Tomer, and looked at the apartment that my cousins Assaf and Rachel had found for a possible sublet. The apartment is right near the beach, the north end of Dizengoff Street. It's a studio with a great view of the ocean, tiny kitchen and bathroom, and is fully furnished, including a big couch (who wants to visit?), TV, satellite, and WiFi internet. The owner, an eccentric, sweet, multi lingual, Israeli woman charges per week. The rent is a good deal more expensive than I wanted to pay, but after calling around to a few other places we realized that it's the going rate for furnished short term apartments as there's a lot of tourist demand. So, later that night, I signed a makeshift lease for a month. I move in next Thursday. I'm really excited. It's right by a lot of bars, clubs, an Ulpan, a park, and a river that people go bike riding along. My brother, who lives down the street, said I can borrow his bike whenever I want. He also lent me his laptop with a cellular internet card. It's going to be a great month.
That night I got together with my friend Sara from MA. We're friends from USY since 9th grade and she's since made aliyah. She's currently studying at Tel Aviv University and has been here for the past 2 years, so she knows the city extremely well. She's taken up the task of being my tour guide, which is fantastic. We went to an English pub where she works at. What better way to get acclimated to a foreign city then to hit up a bar full of English speaking ex-pats? I met a great and interesting group of Jews who had made aliya from Chicago, London, Long Island, South Africa, Russia, Toronto, and Memphis (one of 12,000 Jews in Tennessee apparently). Everyone I talked to about it had an interesting reason for leaving their home country and moving to Israel. It was a great time. At the end of the night I got a call from El Al telling me they had found my second lost bag. Excellent!
So between learning a bus route, practicing Hebrew, getting a cell phone, spending time with my brother, meeting his girlfriend, getting an apartment, spending time with Sara and meeting her friends, getting my luggage back, and fighting with a taxi driver, I'd say it was a fairly productive day! Tonight I head to Tiberius with my cousins Assaf, Rachel, and Reut to visit their parents- my Uncle Shuki and Aunt Geula. I'll be there until Saturday.
Oh, did I mention that it's GORGEOUS here? Pictures to follow, but so far it's been constantly sunny and warm (60s and 70s). Coming from -5 degrees New England, it's in-cred-ible. A guy could get used to this....
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
!אני מגיע לישראל
The snow put a damper on things Sunday night. The L wasn't running and the M14 bus took so long to get to 8th ave that a cab to JFK became a necessity. Virgin Atlanta is a pretty classy establishment. They put up with my elaborate luggage rearrangments after finding out that the one-way carry-on filled with gifts (I'm leaving it in Israel) was way too heavy to actually carry on. In the end I ended up with a small day pack of the bare essentials as my only carry on and crossed my fingers that my checked luggage would make it okay.
I didn't cross them hard enough. We were held up for over 2 hours on the tarmac while they searched fruitlessly for a tow with chained wheels, gave up and equipped an existing tow with chain wheels, and de-iced the plane (a pretty cool spectacle to witness. It felt like a going through the car wash as a kid). Despite some beneficial wind streams that brought us to London in only 5 hours, there still wasn't enough time for any of us to catch our connecting flight to Tel Aviv. 3 trips through security and back and forth across Heathrow later and I got a boarding pass for an El Al Flight leaving an hour and a half later, plus a pretty good understanding of how to get around Heathrow. An hour and a half seemed like plenty of time for them to load up our luggage off of Virgin and onto El Al. No such luck, and there was a massive line at the El Al lost-and-found in Tel Aviv as a result. Hopefully it'll just be a day or two before I get my stuff.
Oh well, it happens. The flights were comfortable and went by quickly. I also finally got to watch Wall-E (man, those boys at Pixar just don't miss) on the flight and got a decent amount of sleep. More importantly I got here safely, had no problems with security or customs, and got picked up by my cousins Assaf and Rachel Gazit upon arrival. I've also already learned a bunch about what to pack for a carry on and what just takes up space, how to get my bag dissassembled fast enough to not piss off people behind me, and how best to get through airport security, and that's all very important.
I'm at Assaf's apartment in Ramat Gan, now. It's a gorgeous apartment right next door to Tel Aviv. Tomorrow I'm heading into the city to try to meet up with a couple friends, to get a quad band cell phone, and maybe to stop by Ulpan Gordon to schedule a time for my Hebrew placement exam. Rachel found me a great furnished apartment sublet on the beach that I'll probably get to see tomorrow too. I hope the price is right!
Yaron is excited!
I didn't cross them hard enough. We were held up for over 2 hours on the tarmac while they searched fruitlessly for a tow with chained wheels, gave up and equipped an existing tow with chain wheels, and de-iced the plane (a pretty cool spectacle to witness. It felt like a going through the car wash as a kid). Despite some beneficial wind streams that brought us to London in only 5 hours, there still wasn't enough time for any of us to catch our connecting flight to Tel Aviv. 3 trips through security and back and forth across Heathrow later and I got a boarding pass for an El Al Flight leaving an hour and a half later, plus a pretty good understanding of how to get around Heathrow. An hour and a half seemed like plenty of time for them to load up our luggage off of Virgin and onto El Al. No such luck, and there was a massive line at the El Al lost-and-found in Tel Aviv as a result. Hopefully it'll just be a day or two before I get my stuff.
Oh well, it happens. The flights were comfortable and went by quickly. I also finally got to watch Wall-E (man, those boys at Pixar just don't miss) on the flight and got a decent amount of sleep. More importantly I got here safely, had no problems with security or customs, and got picked up by my cousins Assaf and Rachel Gazit upon arrival. I've also already learned a bunch about what to pack for a carry on and what just takes up space, how to get my bag dissassembled fast enough to not piss off people behind me, and how best to get through airport security, and that's all very important.
I'm at Assaf's apartment in Ramat Gan, now. It's a gorgeous apartment right next door to Tel Aviv. Tomorrow I'm heading into the city to try to meet up with a couple friends, to get a quad band cell phone, and maybe to stop by Ulpan Gordon to schedule a time for my Hebrew placement exam. Rachel found me a great furnished apartment sublet on the beach that I'll probably get to see tomorrow too. I hope the price is right!
Yaron is excited!
Friday, January 16, 2009
So this is happening
Yaron could not have asked for a better final night in Massachusetts, 0 degrees or not.
Yaron is extremely fortunate to have such a sick group of friends.
Yaron can't say that it's really sunk in yet, but it's starting to.
Yaron, has a new travel blog, http://GuezWhereIAm.blogspot.com.
Yaron's new blog will automatically feed into Facebook. So, if you want to come along, add him to your "More about these friends" list here.
Yaron is jealous of his future self, the one off confidently traveling the world, as opposed to the one presently sitting in cold ass New England trying his best not to freak out.
Yaron has a very complicated and expensive, yet seemingly miniature travel backpack, that is apparently supposed to last him for the next year or so.
Yaron also has an awesome pro travel mentor in one Tracy Foley.
The International Student Identity card, AAA International Driver's Permit, portable braided clothes line, bottles of Acidiphillous, Immodium, and Motrin, silk sleeping bag liner, Rick Steves Packing Cubes, year's worth of double edge razor blades, over priced though apparently water impermeable Columbia rain shell, EMS Thermal, mini MagLite, Somalier, Leatherman, iPod AC charger, eye mask, ear plug set, guide books, GSM phone, audio books, sketch pad, journal, and massive list of family members (clan...tribe?) in Israel certainly help as well.
Yaron has two brand spanking new passports, fresh from the United States of America as well as the State of Israel.
Yaron has several copies of a letter from the General Consulate of Israel temporarily waiving him of his obligation to serve in the IDF.
Yaron happens to have accounts with the only two banks that don't charge overseas fees for credit card purchases or ATM transactions.
Yaron has an extra carry on bag filled with gifts for the family.
Yaron can't wait to get the hell out of winter in the North East.
When he stops to think about it, Yaron is excited, terrified, and anxious all at the same time.
Yaron is trying not to think about it.
Yaron is wondering when this will really sink in.
Yaron is extremely fortunate to have such a sick group of friends.
Yaron can't say that it's really sunk in yet, but it's starting to.
Yaron, has a new travel blog, http://GuezWhereIAm.blogspot.com.
Yaron's new blog will automatically feed into Facebook. So, if you want to come along, add him to your "More about these friends" list here.
Yaron is jealous of his future self, the one off confidently traveling the world, as opposed to the one presently sitting in cold ass New England trying his best not to freak out.
Yaron has a very complicated and expensive, yet seemingly miniature travel backpack, that is apparently supposed to last him for the next year or so.
Yaron also has an awesome pro travel mentor in one Tracy Foley.
The International Student Identity card, AAA International Driver's Permit, portable braided clothes line, bottles of Acidiphillous, Immodium, and Motrin, silk sleeping bag liner, Rick Steves Packing Cubes, year's worth of double edge razor blades, over priced though apparently water impermeable Columbia rain shell, EMS Thermal, mini MagLite, Somalier, Leatherman, iPod AC charger, eye mask, ear plug set, guide books, GSM phone, audio books, sketch pad, journal, and massive list of family members (clan...tribe?) in Israel certainly help as well.
Yaron has two brand spanking new passports, fresh from the United States of America as well as the State of Israel.
Yaron has several copies of a letter from the General Consulate of Israel temporarily waiving him of his obligation to serve in the IDF.
Yaron happens to have accounts with the only two banks that don't charge overseas fees for credit card purchases or ATM transactions.
Yaron has an extra carry on bag filled with gifts for the family.
Yaron can't wait to get the hell out of winter in the North East.
When he stops to think about it, Yaron is excited, terrified, and anxious all at the same time.
Yaron is trying not to think about it.
Yaron is wondering when this will really sink in.
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