as a desperate plea to get me to stay, haifa has built a "roll bar" called sanchos...the logo has a donkey in a sombrero... this is as close to a mexican restaurant as haifa has, and it sprung up in the last 2 weeks. apparently 5 months of bitching and someone actually listened... however. as i said to my friend aaron laurito "i dont trust israelis making anything that rhymes with your last name"... mainly burritos. or fritos. or cheetos. or doritos. tostitos. taquitos. fajit...os. you get the point. actually, after a really fun dinner with my friend aviad at a non-specific asian place across the street from "sanchos," he made me go in and look at the menu before casting it off (as a native haifa-n, he is doing anything he can to get me to stay, i think he may have had to do with the building of sanchos come to think of it...). there was one vegetarian thing on the menu, and it was some sort of 'chimichanga.' i dont think so. for those of you who are familiar with hebrew, and those who arent, there is no hebrew letter for the sound "ch" so they use the letter tzadik, which usually makes a "tz" or "ts" sound, and put an apostrophe by it. there were far too many tzadik's in the spelling of "chimichanga" for me to be willing to put my appetite on the line... plus ill be home in 2 weeks for REAL mexican food (and byt hat i mean chipotle...and perhaps proper mexican food too), if ive held out for 5 1/2 months, i think i can make it...nice try haifa. trying to open a mexican restaurant really was one of the sweetest things anyone has ever done for me. but alas, america awaits.

i do love it here. a lot. things are great. you havent heard from me in a while because ive been busy dammit! and because most of my time spent on computers is spent translating documents for work at the shelter, responding to emails, straigtening out things for the end of the semester, and working on my thesissssss....which, already, i get the feeling will be the end of me. and its still december.

some highlights since last i wrote (with pictures! though i must say there are about 8billion more that im still trying to track down from people. in europe adam and i took a combined 1200 pictures, or something absurd like that. since arriving in israel on august 5th, i think ive taken a grand total of 4 pictures of my own... 3 of which were of my friend liz on study tour in a ridiculous grandma bathing suit (leopard print AND paisley [or amoeba, drew]) that she bought at the gift shop so she could go into the dead sea. and i think the other one was of my tan line at its most stark. clearly thats how i want to remember my 5 months in israel. anyway, here are some picutres and updates, hopefully more will happen at some point.

chanukkah! chanukkah in israel involved approximately 219823 sufganiot, which are delicioussss jelly donuts dusted with powdered sugar. they are everywhere, and were often free...including the free one i took on my way into the gym... you know you're in good shape when you find yourself licking powdered sugar off your fingers are you open the door to the gym... (my 2nd time there, ha). it was worth it. do you know how many times i passed the free sufganiot tables and didnt take one?? 8. 8 times i gave up free sufganiot. only taking one showed a lot of restraint. they are so delicious. instead of making potato latkes, israel makes donuts for chanukkah, as the whole religious/traditional significance relates back to the oil that lasted for 8 days...so the point is to use a lot of oil. gross huh? i love being a jew. (and repeating myself, because i feel like i already wrote that somewhere. oh well). anyway, chanukkah started out with my friend tamar from gw (who is at ben gurion university in beer sheva for the semester) coming up to haifa for shabbat. we made a big shabbat dinner, which included austen and some of my roommates. i made latkes from scratch...it was pretty baller. austen and tamar worked on decorations while i cooked, and made a menorah (actually, a chanukkiah... menorah is the generic term for 7-branched candelabra, whereas chanukkiah is the 9 branched one used on chanukkah) out of a sweet potato. we're scrappy. TAMAR still has the pictures of the latke/sweet potato menorah making processes. bother her until she sends them to me. tamar@gwu.edu. haha.

after dinner we went out to kiryat chaim, an area outside of haifa where tomer lives and went out with some of his friends, and appreciated the tasteful decor and music selection of one of the jillions of smoky, painfully loud, trying-too-hard-to-be-trendy bars in israel. a really tasteful trend in many israeli bars is to have tv screens in random corners that play fashion channels...but they are not american fashion channels, so a) the clothes are awful, if present at all and b) more often than not its just 1/2 to 3/4 naked women posing or strutting. it makes things super awkward when you're at a table of 8 and there's only one straight male present, and he tries so hard to not look at the screens when everyone else is shamelessly drawn to them.

in the chanukkah spirit, i got an email from my major/thesis advisor in which we talked about allt he stuff i shoudl be doing, bla bla bla, i had a lot of meetings with professors, bla bla bla...he gave me a recommendation for a restaurant in tel aviv that makes legendary sweet potato latkes. true to fatkid form, emily and i met up in tel aviv one night during chanukkah to try said sweet potato latkes, and clearly got the large order. they were indeed delicious, and that was probably the best restaurant ive been to in israel. leave it to yaron. of COURSE it was delicious and cute and trendy and populated with attractive gay men. obviouslly. clearly emily and i followed this dinner with a trip to max brenner, the chocolate restaurant a few blocks away in tel aviv... it was one of the more impressive food comas we've ever induced. mmmm.

speaking of chanukkah and embracing new cultures (which we werent really speaking of...) last week i went to an indian chanukkah party, at the community center for jews from india. it was AWESOME. the people were so friendly and so welcoming (and forcefed us SO many free sufganiot). i didnt know very much about the jewish community in india, and i actually still dont, but i do know that they know how to throw an awkwardly long chanukkah party/performance. the performers included the von trapp family of the indian jewish world (a family of like 4 hot daughters, a mom, a dad, a little 11 year old daughter, and 12 year old son who only danced in one number but was dressed to match the dad so was thus adorable). they were GREAT and so fun. they even pulled some of my friends up on stage to dance with them (more pictures of that to follow). there was also some singer girl who looked sedated/suicidal the whole time she was up there, her stage presence was overwhelming. and an older man who we thought was getting up to give a speech or soemthing, and instead sang about 17 hindi folk songs, to the delight of the audience. it was great. and followed by a trip to the sandwich place with which i am obsessed. mmm.

the father, far left, was dressed like a sparkly pimp. some wife and daughters in between, and the awkward man on the right was called up and given a cake for his birthday. he stood uncomfortably while people snapped pictures. all in all a great moment.

yair (far left) and micah (awkward white kid in the middle) rockin out w/ the family. micah is from oregon and within the last week-2 weeks i discovered that he is great. he signs emails "cowabunga." im a big fan.

the next day i went to the shuk in the morning, just because i love cheap produce. i took a different bus number, because it was there...and got to see a whole different part of the city and totally different views of the bay. it was lovely. when the bus dropped me off, however, i appear to have staye don too long, becuase im pretty sure i got off in moscow. or st. petersburg. or any other russian city. haifa has a large russian ghetto, basically, and it is right by the shuk, near where i work, and really overhwhelming for non-russian speakers, even if you do speak hebrew, english, and a little arabic... apparently that matters not. woof. anyway, i love the shuk here because i recently discovered a whole underground part! its awesome. AND i bought three avocados, 2 carrots, 5 cucumbers, and 6 clementines for a dollar. ok the clementines the guy gave me for free because he thought i was cute (meaning that i had all my own original teeth and did not smell like beets or dried saliva). but the rest was for a dollar. amazing.

that night, a bunch of us went out for my friend nils' birthday. there are some amusing pictures from that, but i only have like 2. so ill just show you nils and the pyrotechnical birthday dessert... but there were like 8 of us at the hookah bar by the beach, it was loverly.

i really need to get better pictures.

this was the start of last weekend. the next day nils, micah (oregon, in my arabic class, wonderful), eran (also in my arabic class, from missouri) and i went to chag shel chagim - the holiday/coexistance festival i mentioned before. i only got to go for a little bit the week before, so this time we headed out earlier in the day, to maximize the time we'd be there...aka so i could eat as much street food as possible (mmmm...so much multicultural deliciousness). it was SO much fun. ill let the picutres speak for themselves...

israel's klezmer version of the village people. (ps, wtf is the guy on the right playing?)

adorable little arab girls in the street eating corn on the street. i love haifa.

um...these were hot pink pointy pleather boots...that were 30 shekel (like 7 dollars). normally in a group, i can point out something funny and make another girl try them on, but i was the only girl, so i was forced to take one for the team in the name of comedy and try them on... i a) felt bad for the guy selling them and b) have no shame when it comes to comedy, so i bought them... (ps, note my santa hat, its from cyprus)

shortly thereafter, nils ducked into an open stairway and tried them on... they fit him, which is disturbing in and of itself... i think the scarf was the result of some sort of hijaab joke... oops

ok. this post is already super long...but there is more to be reported. next time, look out for christmas parade in nazareth, overseas christmas party, a hipped out bar/"dance space" in the forest, free food, pizza hut jokes, an israeli fashion haircut, thesis adventures, a few more israeli gay guys, and more food.

im off to do some actual work and then head to tiberias for the night to visit my friend aaron! he is on one of the "leading up north" trips, and will be staying after to play with me next week, but im super excited to see him for the first time since early july! yay! and tomorrow may involve another parade (youd be even more excited if i had gotten the chance to tell you about the first one...) in my friend basheer's village. basheer is a pocketsized arab kid who lives in the dorms and shuffles around pocketly...he is adorable, and is the reason i learned to say "come live in my pocket!" in arabic. i also signed in his boytoy last night, but thats neither here nor there. anyway, basheer is apparently going to be in the parade drumming or something, and invited me and some others to come to his vilalge to see it. i hope i get to go! after that its apparently new years eve, which is weird and hard to beleive and not that big of a deal here and called "silvester" for some reason. not sure what will happen there... but theres lots going on, clearly. ill write more and post more pictures soon, and guess what? ill be home in like 2 weeks. crazy. if youre going to be in dc for the weekend of the 13-15, you are invited to my official repatriation party! and how are we celebrating my triumphant return to america? helping me move! oh, and beer. and pizza and/or mexican food,t hough i will have already eaten at least three burritos within 24 hrs of landing.

ok. its freezing. im hungry. enjoy.

-am

lost in translation

its 1am and i should be in bed, i have class at 8 tomorrow and have obviously not yet done the reading or homework. thats neither here nor there. 

 

this weekend was great, cooked a really fun shabbat/chanukkah dinner on friday night for some of my friends and roommates, and enjoyed the greatness of haifa. the festival on saturday was AWESOME, i hope to go back this weekend too, if im in haifa. and sunday (christmas eve) im planning to go to nazareth for a christmas parade and mass!

 

speaking of which, christmas in israel is great. for so long we were missing tacky lights and santa hats, and then we started hanging out in the arab christian neighborhoods and felt right at home again...except that the loud christmas music ocming out of all the stores is in arabic...but its still the same tunes... jingle bells, silent night, the whole shot...rewritten in arabic. sort of bizarre, but i really want those cds. i like christmas music, and i like arabic...so really, its a win-win.

 

the other weird translated song i encountered was today, during the chanukkah party at the shelter.  our shelter hosted the women and children from another shelter in haifa for a big chanukkah party which included lots of sufganiot and snacks, presents for the kids, and a goofy song-leader who really captured all the kids attention and was great. i mean, a total doof, but they loved it.  before he started playing all kinds of hanukkah songs, the cd he turned on to get the crowd warmed up sounded strangely familiar...in fact, it was bonnie tylers "holding out for a hero" from the footloose (and shrek 2) soundtrack... well while i was amused at recognizng the opening bars of the song and thinking it was a strange choice for a kids chanukkah party, i was astounded when the singer began...because it was in herew.  mexican food they dont have, but a hebrew translation of "holding out for a hero" is easily accessible to any average joe. amazing. i love israel.

 

the other odd translation semi-related instance was when carmella, one of the house mothers at the shelter, gave me a lift part of my way back to the university today (they call hitch-hiking and giving people rides "tremps"... i dont know why. but if she wanted to drive me 3/4 of the way back instead of waiting forever for a bus, ill take it). anyway, i was in the car with carmella, her husband, and her adorable 2 year old grandson, shlomi, whose hebrew is completely unintelligible.  shlomi started singing chanukkah songs, but didnt know any of the words, so carmella sang loudly with him, to teach him the words. one of the songs, the way i have always known it gorwing up, has a part wher eit says "bla bla bla bla bla ness gadol haya sham" and carries on. ness gadol haya sham means "a great miracle happened there" and that is what is written on dreidels in america/everywhere but israel. (well, the initials for that phrase are on the dreidel). anyway, thats how ive always known it. carmella was singing to her grandson and had a whole differnt set of "bla bla bla"s before she got to the "ness gadol haya PO" - a great miracle happened HERE. the dreidels in israel have a differnt last letter than everywhere else in the world...the great miracle happened HERE. while i was here last year over chanukkah, and even own a dreidel that has the PO (here) on it, it didnt really click until this little 2 year old was learning the song.... and they had no idea that everywhere else in the world we sing "ness gadol haya sham"... one of those "israel moments"

 

oh and i got 4 avocados for 7 shekel...which is about $1.70

 

i love israel. but dont worry, im still excited to come back :-)

 

happy chanukkah everyone!!!

-am

 

ps- many pictures were taken this weekend. MANY. austen and tamar made a menorah (well, a chanukkiah) out of a sweet potato. i made latkes from scratch. there are pictures. i dotn have them yet, but when i do... you will see them.

i had to listen to my brother DRIVE to pancheros and order 2 burritos while i was on the phone with him. not cute.

hello all

 

i've been sick for the lasst 2-3 weeks, and have been cracking lots of jokes about sars/bird flu/sids/other pandemics, but actually most of that is untrue. im getting better (mostly  by will and foce), and am heading back to classes and my internship, after way too much time watching will & grace dvd's and being super bored.

 

i come home in a month. exactly. i leave israel one month from now (well, yesterday technically) on january 11th, overnight in london, and will be back in detroit on firday, january 12th. ill be heaidng back to dc some time that weekend, to move into my new apartment and start my semester by tuesday, january 16th. this is kind of crazy but exciting. im not going to get sentimental about leaving, im more focused on the exciting things like BURRITOS and friends and family!

 

ok. i should go, i have more work to do, and am hoping to head back to my internship tomorrow.

 

sweet burrito-ful dreams,

-amy

 

ps- sorry this was useless. im hungry. and just getting back into the swing of being a functional human being. baby steps.

hello friends (and stalkers)

im still sniffly. and still kind of sick. it's been on and off since the cruise, which at this point, i just find funny. i caved and bought a celsius thermometer. sratch that, my mom bought it for me. i don't know what a fever is in celsius, but i think the idea of a thermometer might scare my immune/inflammatory system back into proper functionality. i hope.

speaking of my mom SHE WAS HERE! she arrived on thanksgiving evening and was here for 10 days, she is currently on the plane back to the states. it was wonderful having her here, but her trip was definitely not what we expected. the first weekend she was here was spent with me in haifa. unfortunately, this was at the peek of my illness's resurgence, and the whole weekend was spent on campus as i was basically on my deathbed. good times. she insisted she didn't care and was here to see me and not as much israel. mom's are good for bs like that. anyway, the first saturday night i sent her off to tel aviv to meet up with her group tour, who would be returning to haifa the following day. she did, and after her first day of touring, we met up for dinner after my internship. while dinner and dessert were lovely, and i was glad to be seeing the world outside the confines of my room, it was at this point that my mom told me a bit more about her trip. while we were anticipating a bus full of 30-40 jewish geriatrics, kvetching their way through the holyland, what she ended up with was a bit different. 8 people on her tour. among them, one catholic pakistani man from new york, and 6 people from the phillipines. allow me to elaborate a bit more about her filipino tour buddies... 2 priests, 2 nuns (in full gear), and 2 enthusiastic women, all from the same parish back in the phillipines. and my mom. i hope she took a group picture.

after her week-long church fest with most of south-east asia, i met up with my mom in jerusalem for the weekend, which was spent pretending neither of us were sick, and carrying lots of toilet paper (she contracted the cold to end all colds as well. i think the nuns are ok though). we went to the shuk and pretended to run errands for relatives with awkward requests of things to bring back, and had a lovely shabbat with emily and drew (she had never met drew, after my having been friends with him for 5 1/2 years). saturday was spent enjoying hotel breakfast, sleeping a lot, and being super sick...but it was then that i BOOKED MY FLIGHT HOME!!! due to a series of convoluted unused return tickets and one WONDERFUL woman at the northwest elite frequent flyer line, i am coming home and it's costing me less than $200. amazing. im leaving israel on january 11th, spending the night in london playing w/ my friend joel, and then returning to detroit on friday, january 12th. it has yet to be determined how much time i will be in detroit before returning to dc before the semester starts on january 16th, but i do know that detroit metro airport has approximately 5 weeks to get a chipotle...mmm

anyway, weekend in jerusalem was lovely, returned to haifa last night, my mom joined in on my "social inequalities in israeli education" class today, hoping that it would be interesting and relevatnt to her, as an educator. instead, she immmmmediately understood why i spend those 3 hours each week playing on gmail... it's a class that's dreadful in its own right, but made even MORE dreadful because of the fact that it has such potential (camp nowhere, anyone? vw?) after sending a bunch of stuff back with her, risha headed out this evening, and im so glad she was able to come.

looking forward, im here for like 5 more weeks. still have lots of classes and lots of grants to translate at my internship... AND lots of friends coming over winter break! (and by winter break, i mean when all of you have winter break and i have... more class) im really excited to see people, and find it really funny that i'll be seeing some of you less than a week before i head back to america, after 6 months wandering the globe. fitting.

speaking of globetrotting, im trying to figure out some last-minute trips to jam into the last few weekends i have here. im ignoring the fact that i prettymuch have SARS, and am hoping for one last trip with austen (cairo?), and one with em (prague?). we shall see. clearly i'll keep you posted.

finally, here are a couple of pictures from the last few relevant events that were photographed... first, a picture from the pride parade austen and i went to in jerusalem a few weeks ago, because it's just so cute...

also, here are a couple of pictures from when our friend ian was in town a couple weeks ago... i guess i havent updated since then. the first is ian, me, em, and drew at the kotel before shabbat.

please note drew's "unattended bag" in the bottom right corner... we were about 20 seconds away from a bomb squad running in to blow it up. awkward.

the next three are a really amusing series, taken on our various nights out in j-lem... we opted against overpriced bars and in favor of 5 shekel beers (about $1.23 for 1/2 a liter) in a cooler outside a conveneince store, and taking advantage of israel's lack of laws prohibiting open bottles...aka we walked around, people watched, made fun of packs of high school religious kids poised for west side story-style dance off's, and in general laughed a lot and really enjoyed the fact that all of us got to play together in israel (ian is one of drew's bests friend from home and a good friend of emily's and mine, thus the 4 of us is a group that works well, but doesn't get to play together that often, let alone in the holyland. pretty cool, eh?)

proud? that's me and ian, emily, and drew, respectively. creative, i know. whatever, it was cheap and we were having fun. i hope my uncles are proud of me, as they are the ones who have commented on the abundant photographic documentation of my (even more abundant) beer drinking. enjoy.

ok. i thought i had more, but that was a lie. ian owes us pictures. and video of the dancing hassids on top of the na-nach-nachman van, wigging out to a techno remix re-written to praise rav nachman me'uman, in the middle of downtown jerusalem. only in israel. i will miss things like that... but the close proximity to to burritos makes it a little easier... mmmm

ok. be in touch friends. and if any more of you are coming to israel before january 11th, let me know!!!

much love (and sars) from the holyland,
-am