איפה הכפיים!!????

On Thursday night, I went to the volunteering evening event at Shalva with Meir. All of the National Service girls were there and they were screaming and singing in Hebrew, and there was a creepy photographer who took a picture of me while I was pantomiming "blink," and I met this nice girl named Sara who made alliyah with her family from New York 7 years ago when she was ten. It was a really intimidating experience because we got a lecture on volunteering rules all in Hebrew, and a guidelines sheet in Hebrew, and we played an ice breaker in Hebrew, and we went around the room and spoke in Hebrew. I was glad to have Meir there to translate, and it was nice to meet Sara, and I saw one of the volunteers I worked with a few weeks ago and he remembered my name but I didn't remember his name and it was kind of awkward, but nice. We left the event early because it was going to go so late, and the trip home from Shalva takes a long time. It was one of the best decisions I'd made all week.

On Friday morning, we set off for ירוחם!!!! It took two hours on the coach bus, and I slept on Seffi's shoulder the entire time. I went to sleep to the sights and sounds of downtown Jerusalem and woke up to an endless stretch of desert mountains and blue skies. The first place we visited upon arrival was a surprising treat-a LAKE!! Yes, there is a lake, developed by the Ministry of the Interior a few decades back by redirecting several desert streams to this one place. JNF monopolized on the water resources there and planted a forest. We picnicked there, and I took a nice walk with Becky down to the lake and we stood on the boardwalk for a while and admired the oasis. There were three big donkeys and lots of stray dogs and it all felt very alive. We saw a lot of boys on trick motorcycles and four wheelers racing around and it was a little scary and annoying. Our Yerucham liaison took us on a little tour after lunch down to the lake to give us some history, and to a well that most people believe is the well that Hagar found after an angel spoke to her when she had been cast out of Abraham's home and into the desert around Be'er Sheva. It's pretty cool that Yerucham has biblical history. I'm a fan.

After this little tour, we went to the hostel, got our rooms, and prepared for Shabbat. We lit Channukah candles and Shabbat candles and davened Kabbalat Shabbat in the bomb shelter, where we ate dinner as well. Everything was beautiful and lovely, and it was so amazing to see all forty Channukiot lit together. The meal sucked pretty hardcore though, which was a disappointment, and unfortunately it began a trend that continued the rest of the weekend.

After dinner, a lady came to speak to us about the purpose of volunteering in Yerucham and she was pretty crazy. The truth is that she seemed like a really incredible person, a do-gooder and stuff like that, but she was just nuts. It was hard to listen to her for a long time, and she talked for a long ass time.

Then a Chassidic rabbi came to lead our tisch. I was highly disappointed that no Marzipan or sufganiot were available at the tisch, and it was rather difficult for me to get in the proper Friday night mindset without such sweets. Anyway, the Chassid was really quite interesting and strange, and he told us lots of semi-mystical Shabbos stories, and a led a few songs. It was a great experience I think, and he seemed like a really nice man. He didn't look at us with judging eyes when boys' and girls' legs touched each other because of the way we sat, and he didn't seem to mind that we weren't wearing everything short of a burka.

I read a lil CITR before beddy and we had a little pillow talk in my room. Before everyone came home though, I thought I had such a great idea-I would take the first shower! I never get the first shower in my room at Beit Nativ, but it seemed like my dream would finally come true. The shower was a disaster. There was no place to hang up the shower head, there was no plug for the tub drain, there was no door, there was no soap, there was no towel. I hated everything. David came to the rescue and provided me with his semi-wet towel, and a little bit of soap. I improvised and used the hand washing cup (which they have in the bathroom, but forget about soap, that's for heathens) to plug the bath, and I took a half bath/half shower kind of thing. It was terrible. I was not clean afterward. Then, the icing on the cake: I stepped out of the shower into two inches of water on the bathroom floor. I spent a good forty five minutes squeegeeing (wow-I totally did not expect that word to be recognized by spell check!) the disgusting bathroom tiled floor. I gave up on the towel because it was still too wet, and I was generally cold and uncomfortable. I thought the water level would never go down. The worst was when a bit of water slipped out under the door and into the main room. It was such a fiasco. I'm still scarred.

The next morning, we got up early for breakfast but there was no breakfast. Luckily I wasn't hungry, but otherwise I would have probably thrown a hissy fit and had fun doing it. We got really lost on the way to shul, which is funny because it's Yerucham and you can see one end of the town from the other, and once we got to shul, it was already the end of the Torah service. The shul was beautiful...on the men's side. I liked it though, and I could see enjoying it a lot more once we are part of the community and we have host families there and all that. Fun Yerucham fact: there are 27 synagogues in Yerucham, most of them small congregations established to honor a rabbi back home in Morocco.

We had a little study session on Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) after lunch, with a much more normal lady. I learned a little bit and enjoyed it kind of, but I was hungry by that point and everyone was pretty cranky. Sometimes study sessions feel like pulling teeth when no one wants to participate.

Lunch was a nice reward after a long and somewhat tense morning for the group. I got through about four pages of CITR after lunch before my Shabbos nap took over. We all woke up for another tour of Yerucham, which started to get a little comical because there is one main street and we'd been on it several times that day. We saw a lot of cool stuff though, like a hugeeee playground and work out park, a monument, a few schools, an example of one of our living spaces (apartments) next semester, and lots of stray dogs. Fun Yerucham fact: population=9,500.

We got back to the hostel in time for some Ma'ariv, Havdalah, and Channukah celebrations. We have gotten really good at singing Al HaNissim. It really gets us going, I have to say. Channukah is fun, even without the snow.

On Saturday night, we went to a performance at the community center. The theatre was state of the art and everything was really nice. The music was Indian, because there are lots of second and third generation Indians living in Yerucham and neighboring Dimona. There were even little girls who did Indian dancing for us. They were beautiful. During intermission, I ran into a big group of them in the bathroom and tried to speak to them in Hebrew and get basic biographical information from them. They were all really skinny and small for their ages, and I was surprised, especially because they had mature and beautiful faces, and they were doing mature dance moves. I was talking to them when Razie came in, and they were all instantly enamored by her. One of them actually asked me how to say "you...beautiful?" and then once I supplied her with the "are," she tapped Razie on the shoulder and said "you are beautiful." I was insulted, to say the least! Damn underdeveloped and underfed skanky Indian dancers.

I will continue after Talmud...but I promise actually after Talmud this time