Bookends

You may remember my first Yerucham post. It was pretty sad and despondent. I was upset about the stove, the shower, the mold, the space, the dirt, the isolation. Well, now I am ending my time in Yerucham and once again I find myself sad and despondent, only this time, for a different reason. The apartment with the smelly shower and gassy, broken stove has become my home.

Taking the pictures down from my wall and packing my things from my one shelf (I don't have a closet here, which was another problem initially) has been a torturous process. We're not going to pack on Shabbat, and Sunday is an apartment cleaning day, so I must live the next three nights in a bare room. On the bright side, we all did a major clothing exchange in the apartment today during which we ran around from room to room in our underwear bargaining with clothes for different clothes, so I got some cute new stuff!!

Everything has come full circle now, and I cannot help but be reflective and sentimental. It is totally surreal that I only have 10 more days in Israel. I remember my first day like it was yesterday, from Lainie cleaning up my vomit in the bathroom at Agron to hyperactively memorizing every name in the Yerucham track to the walking tour when I realized Adina and I like talking about the same people to meeting Meir in the parking lot when we were unloading from storage. Even without rereading my blog, the memories are vivid (although I am quite glad I have my blog in case things get fuzzy!). I can't believe how much I've changed, I can't imagine how things have changed at home or with my friends from high school.

I'm scared to go back to "real life" in America, where people have so much more fashion and tact than I do, where I can't get kosher meat at any restaurant I pop into, where there are more than 100 people I know in the whole country, where public transportation is expensive and inefficient, where grades and finals are the meaning of life, where patriotism is something for hicks, where Judaism is a minority, where English is the language heard everywhere, where nothing is older than 300 years, where movies are made with fancy equipment and happy endings, where Rabbis call out page numbers during services, where graffiti is inappropriate where God doesn't feel as close, where the beauty of nature is masked by suburban developments, where I don't hike for eight hours just for fun, where Passover is an extra day, where the sun is colder and further away.

I can't wait for the "I'm home and I love it!" post in a few weeks, and the "Cornell is the best place ever!!" post in a few months...