A week later was Yom Hazikaron, Remembrance Day. In honor of this, my program did a day-long seminar at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum. We didn’t actually go inside. Instead, we walked through a giant stone maze in the shape of Europe, with the names of destroyed Jewish communities engraved in the walls. We saw a real boxcar from the Holocaust. We learned about the Righteous of the Nations—non-Jews who saved Jews during the war. They are allowed to immigrate to Israel, a right normally reserved for people of Jewish ancestry. We walked along Har Herzl, where fallen Israeli soldiers are buried. There are some truly amazing stories under those flower beds. There was a stool at each grave, but most of them were too old to have people visit them. The soldiers are buried in order of their deaths, and we saw all the soldiers killed in Gaza within three rows or so, with photographs and patches from their army unit. We saw army units touring the site, and it was insane to think these kids have to sign up for a job which may land them a plot on that green hill. The land where the next 20 soldiers will be buried is covered in fake grass; they don’t bother tending real grass there, as there’s a fair, morbid chance it will be dug up soon.
When Yom Hazikaron ends at sunset, Yom Ha’atzmaut begins. That is Israeli Independence Day. There was a party in Rabin Square with two fireworks shows and very lame music. Kids sprayed each other with foam and shaving cream. Clubs had drink specials. The next day everyone goes to the beach and barbeques. There was a modest air and boat show in Tel Aviv.
6.2 I cut my friend Lucky’s hair off. She came with scissors, and I hacked away. I didn’t use a comb or any products. I just held out her hair and snipped. And it looked ok! I’d never cut hair before, and it was truly a process of trial and error—on someone’s head.
6.3 My sister came to Israel with her 8th grade class, and I got to hang out with her a few times. Being with middle schoolers reminds me how miserable it is, and how glad I am that I can go more than a week without weeping. She’s really becoming a person, and I feel sad that I missed so much of her life while I was at college and in Israel. I hope to not live at home again, but I don’t want to leave here there with Mom and Dad! Her friends treated me like a rockstar. They were shy to approach me, they excused themselves embarrassedly if they’d spent more than two minutes in my presence, and they asked my sister about me. When she is 18, I will be 27. I feel so much closer to 27 than she does to 18. That is horrifying.
6.4 I have been to a gym three times—with my friend at our university. The walls are glass and one can see over Monterey Bay. There are little decks where you can do yoga outside. It’s modest, clean, and safe. That was my only experience with gyms. I’ve decided to be a burlesque dancer, so I went gym hunting here in preparation. A friend and I spent six hours going all over Jerusalem. We first went to Studio 6, in Talpiyot (which is in the boonies.) It’s an all-women’s dance studio. A crude papier-mâché statue of a nude obese woman stood on the desk. Next we took a bus to the bus station, and tried to find Jump. It was located under the parking lot of the Jewish Agency Archives building. It was a bomb shelter, so it had no windows. It had some women’s only areas and classes. We took a tour, then were lead into the commitment room. Upon asking for a student discount, we were lead further into the commitment room, behind a door with shuttered windows. We were offered the one-time low, low price of 920 shekels for 3 months, which they were only offering to us. They also sold Hydroxycut there. I want to look and feel healthier, not have a stroke at 23, thankyouverymuch. We called the bus company a number of times to figure out which buses to take during this saga. I pushed the button for English, but was met with mixed results. We figured out to take the 17 but to Rehavia for the third gym. We asked the bus driver to let us know when we got there, and he mumbled in Hebrew “if I remember.” He did remember, and he gave us some directions to our street. We kept asking people we met, and they all told us different things. But we made it! Razim is a women’s gym, also in a bomb shelter on the -7 floor of a building. The walls were wood-paneled, and they didn’t have good classes.
After a few days, I chose Studio 6 even though it’s a shlep, and I’ve loved it. Yoga classes in jeans, glasses, and Hebrew—so hard! But I am committed to not making a complete ass out of myself when I make my stage debut, so I keep going.
6.5 I guess the point of me being here is my internship, right? I work 4 days a week, about 3:30 hours a day. I help in 7 classes. In Sarah’s 3rd grade I help one American boy. He is a chatty motherfucker. When he makes mistakes, he says he did them on purpose. When I point out that his handwriting is illegible, he shows me how it is, in fact, legible. When his sentences are ungrammatical, he reads them back with a few more commas and words to show that they do make sense. There is one American girl in Sarah’s 4th grade who I have worked with, but she is usually in Ulpan, so I go to the English library. The English library has a graceless layer of dust coating it, and hundreds of mostly useless books. I have been cleaning and sorting the picture books according to difficulty for a non-English speaker, but that is not the same at all as for a native speaker. There are a few dozen editions of nursery rhymes, which are extremely difficult if you don’t speak English. In addition to all this, there are young adult novels, like Babysitters’ Club and such. As if that isn’t enough crap for me to deal with, there are also teacher editions of books from the 70’s, a few magazines, dictionaries, non-fiction works, and whatever other crap people leave in there. Perhaps because the library has been in disarray for so long, or perhaps because they are Israelis, books end up everywhere all the time. Students take them out and put them back wherever they like, or just leave them in a pile. I like working in the library because I can be anal-retentive and alone. In Sarah’s 5th grade I work with the sister of my 3rd grader. They both love to read. She is chatty, but not to the point where I want to break her teeth. I actually write lessons and assignment sheets for her. In Sarah’s 6th grade I work with a bad boy who has an English parent. He’s nice to me, but that’s because I don’t put many demands on him. We mostly play hangman. He starts each class by saying “I hate Sarah.” He said she’s weird. I said I’m weird, and he agreed, but said it’s ok. I don’t do much in Tali’s 4th grade, so I usually work in the library. Her 5th graders are my hardest class. She gave me 4 of them, and they can’t read English. One class I have them with another tutor who is great, and one class I have them by myself. It was a lot harder before they had books. They won’t stay in the classroom! The one girl is scared to read in front of the boys, and she always tries to impress them by being aggressive. One boy doesn’t have his book, one boy is wild, and one boy is somewhat sweet and studious when he wants to be. They are learning how to write letters and a few simple words now. I work with one girl in Tali’s 6th grade. She also is on the most basic level. We work in the hallway, and other kids come and chat with her on their way to the bathroom or after they’ve been kicked out of class. One girl from her class gets kicked out every day. She sits by us and sometimes tries to speak English to me. She talks about me in Hebrew in front of me. What hasn’t dawned on her yet is that speakers always have higher receptive abilities than productive. So while I may sound absurd when I talk, I can still understand most of what she’s saying. She tells other students that I wear my sweatshirt because I’m poor. (It’s old, and I altered it and sewed it up with dental floss.) One time she mocked me and then got embarrassed. She turned to her friend who told her to say “I no smile you,” meaning that she wasn’t mocking me, I assume. It made me laugh. The thing is, my Hebrew is where it is (surprisingly not bad) because I mocked my Hebrew teachers as a child. The syntactical mistakes they make in English are not mistakes in Hebrew. The way they pause and inflect becomes an accent in English, but it’s true Hebrew. My 6th grader and I always have a few moments each time where we can’t understand what the other is saying, and we slow down and use easier words and gestures, and still stare at each other blankly until we laugh and give up. She gave me attitude at first, but now she works willingly. That gives me satisfaction.
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