OTZMA Take 2!

Alright, now that I’ve watched Episode 100 of “How I Met Your Mother”… time to BLOG UP!!!

(Sorry. That was dumb.)

(Not sorry enough to delete it though. Anyway…)

First off, a sincere apology. Not for disappearing the past month, because I didn’t have Internet during Sar-El, and I really just wasn’t going to take the time to write anything while on vacation with my family. No, my apology is actually for even earlier. I took a look back this week at what I’ve written the past few months, and noticed that I wrote a whopping total of two posts during November. TWO!!! And neither one was really all that good! When I started this, I promised myself that I wasn’t going to be one of those bloggers that started hot, then never posted after a few months. And damn it, I’m keeping that promise. Also, cause, you know, there’s really not much else to do in Yokne’am. But I’m keeping that promise nonetheless! I will say though, thank you to everyone for repeatedly checking for more posts while I was gone – as of the time I am writing this, Show Me the Shawarma is at 907 hits! I remain unconvinced that it’s more than my parents checking this site 50 times a day (each), but thanks, Mom and Dad! Let’s see how long it takes to hit 1000…

Before getting into the good stuff, I’ll just let you know that I’m not planning on spending any time writing about Sar-El or vacation. Let me sum it up. I didn’t like Sar-El. Most others in the group did, but it wasn’t for me. Honestly, anything I have to say is going to come off sounding negative even if it wasn’t, and I don’t care to spend more time focusing on it. As for my vacation, it was great spending time with my family and being with my parents for their first time in Israel, but there’s nothing to really write about. We saw a lot of ancient Roman-era cities. I got sick for a few days. We spent a lot of time in Jerusalem. Israelis don’t believe in New Years Eve. And everyone went home. The end. Moving on.

So as previously implied, I am now living in the wonderful city town of Yokne’am! Unfortunately, I have yet to take any pictures of the apartment, so for now you’ll have to take me at my word that for what we need, it’s pretty nice. We arrived to find a fully stocked kitchen (Sidebar: A running theme of the past few weeks has been that our staff in Yokne’am is awesome.), with a real stove, oven, and even a microwave! Much better than the propane stove we had in Ashkelon. Next, our living room, complete with couch, table, artwork on the walls, and a TV with 7 stations. The one time we’ve watched it, it was on “Russian TV”, which is news about the former USSR countries in English. Come to think of it, it might also be the last time we turn it on. Moving on, we have the bathroom, complete with really old washing machine and clothesline! I can’t remember if I’ve brought this up here before, but Israelis just don’t believe in dryers. They would much rather use a method made popular by the Puritans. I kid, I kid! (Sidebar: Not really.) Anyway, we then have Andi and Tali’s room, and if you climb through the massive open space at the top of the wall where a window should be, you finally reach my room! Or you can use the door. Whatever works. Here you have my couch/bed, which can pull out into a king-size bed if you don’t want any space to walk around in the room. Across from there you have my wall of drawers and cabinets, which is actually affording me the chance to unpack and spread out for the only time this year. Ah, having my own room again. An underrated commodity.

(Yokne'am. The whole thing.)

So with the written tour being out of the way, let’s talk about what I’ve been doing the past few weeks. Upon arrival last Monday, we were given the day to move in, relax, and had a brief discussion over dinner with Arkady, our main contact and volunteering coordinator. The next day, Arkady took us around town (Sidebar: That took like 10 minutes) and then to Haifa to tour the Bahai Gardens. Google it – they are absolutely gorgeous. The rest of the week was pretty much spent getting acclimated and checking out some volunteering options. Over the weekend, I made the 30 minute bus ride to Haifa for Jeremy’s birthday, where a small group of us went to a concert by the Israeli hip-hop group Hadag Nahash. You’ve actually probably heard them before – if you saw “Don’t Mess With the Zohan” or any of it’s trailers, one of their songs is pretty prominently featured at the beginning. Sure enough, that was their closing song, and I was very surprised and impressed. The rest of the weekend was spent in Yokne’am, as Allie came up to visit for the first time and we had Shabbat dinner with the Hirshes. Hey, if I can’t introduce her to my real family, might as well take her to the adoptive family!



This week started the real volunteering. We’ve been spending every morning at a local elementary school called Daliyot, where my and Andi’s adoptive moms are on the administrative team. I’ve been bouncing around from class to class getting used to the school, but it’s been great so far. The older kids are a lot of fun, and while we’re mainly helping teach English, they’ve been enthusiastic about helping us with our Hebrew as well! It’s also amazing how impressed they are that we’re from America, and how well they remember us after just one meeting. After just 3 days, I can’t walk through the halls without at least 7 kids saying hi to me with a huge smile on their face!

Today was by far the most interesting day. I started off in a 4th grade class, where they were studying math. Not much help there, but they all asked me to stay for their 2nd class, which was English. It was a lot of fun, as I really got to help some of them and the rest had a good time just talking to me – even when they weren’t supposed to! Even though they wanted me to stay longer, I left to go sit in on Ofra’s class before being moved again. Turns out there was a kid named David down in 1st grade with some behavior problems, and they wanted me to bring him up to Ofra. For some reason, the kid connected with me, so they asked me to shadow him for the rest of the day. He actually was pretty good, and interestingly enough, he would only work when I was there with him! Who knows what I did to connect with him, but I think the plan is for me to spend one class a day with him from now on. The real show was at the end of the day. David’s teacher was in a meeting during art, so the art teacher was running the class. With a few minutes before the bell… she disappeared. The main teacher was still in the meeting, so that left me alone in the classroom with a bunch of 1st graders at the end of the day. Ever seen a 1st grade class with no teacher? Now add on that none of them spoke English, and you might have a sense of the chaos I was facing. Furthermore, the rest of the hallway left, so I was alone down there with no idea what was going on. Finally, I called Ofra, and through all the madness and screaming I think she made out my cries for help. The teacher apparently was told what was going on and came to save me – turns out that some classes, including this one, stay later! Doesn’t explain why the art teacher left though… Anyway, this freed me up to go join Andi in a cool little program where some kids play with animals as part of a type of therapy. I was given two little turtles to play with (Sidebar: How do you play with a turtle anyway?), and well… a turtle pooped on me. So I’ve got that going for me.

There’s more to volunteering than just Daliyot, but it’s 1AM and I’m tired, so it’s time to wrap this up. I’ll try to get the pictures up soon, and remember, expect more posts from now on! After all, to sort of quote the poet Stinson, “Nothing suits me like a blog!”

(OK, no more ridiculously bad HIMYM 100th episodes references. Promise.)