Happy Channukah

SO it's been another week since my last post. Judging from the sheer lack of comments on this blog, I take it I'm keeping everyone happy. No complaints, everyone's okay with the length and the details and the pics... What's going on with my fan club? Many of you seem to think that just because I post blogs it takes off the pressure of you having to keep me informed with personalised emails about what's going on in your own lives... comments or emails guys, both are kindly welcomed and a response guaranteed.

So, winter has finally come. Exhibit a:
I love these blue gatkas. The problem is so does Eli. We invent some sort of competition each morning to fight over who gets to wear them. Really, we should just buy another pair. But even if we bought another pair, I can see what would happen.. we'd still fight over who gets the blue gatkas. My blue kathmandu gatkas simply rock and there is no comparison. That's all there is to it.

I worked all week at Wall Street. Signed my contract officially now. My first lessons went pretty well. One of the classes was disastrous but apparently everyone's had one of those, so I felt better knowing that... I had one rude girl who was about 22 and she kept saying "this is boring" in one of the social activity's I'd planned... gggrrr kids can be so mean.

But in another class, I had a woman who was very impressed with me and she took it upon herself to actually go the director of the centre and put in a complement for me, and this came back to me via my manager, who gave me the big English thumbs up! YAY!

In one of my Survival classes (a lovely euphamism for... well, you can pretty much guess their level of English) we were working on the concept "blah blah blah, SO THAT blah blah blah"... ok? knowing where to connect 2 parts of information in a sentence with 'so' or 'so that'... so I prompted my class with "we come to Wall Street..." -and I was expecting a response to go something along the lines of: "so that we can learn English." And what did I get instead?

"so that we can be American"

I was a little taken aback by this, especially since it was coming from a man who would've been in his 50's... and so I asked another student, and they just thought about it for a while, and then nodded and enthusiastically agreed with the first man's response and said "yes yes.. we come to wall street so that we can be American" and then I had a class of students all nodding and agreeing in synchro saying "we come to Wall street so that we can be American"

so I said, "but I'm not American. I'm Australian"
And this threw them a little bit.
They seemed dumbfounded. So I continued by saying: "and that teacher there is from Ireland, she is not American either, she is Irish. And that teacher is from England, she is not American either, she is British, and that teacher is Canadian and that teacher is south african...." etc...

and one asked, a little confused, "you also speak American?"
and I said, "In Australia, we speak English. In Ireland, they speak English too. In Canada, they speak English too, and in South Africa they speak English too. And in America? What do they speak in America?"

they thought about this, and one said "ah, so it's the same. English and American."

So my lesson took a bit of a tangent where I found myself teaching the difference in differentiating nationality from language, and many were shocked to hear that in Australia we speak English, like in America. They reviewed their reasons for being at Wall Street, but I still had one stubborn student who seemed to genuinely want to be American. In the ever-wise words of Eli, "Nuuuu..what can I do?"

So that was that.

What's nice though is that I was officially welcomed as a new member of staff to Wall Street and I was presented with a welcoming gift- a very cool mug. Also, my manager took me out for a coffee during work hours. How sweet is that?!

Oh yeah, I also hung out with Shir last week- Shir, for those who don't know, is a friend of mine who I went to school with and who moved back to Israel after yr 12 and I hadn't seen her in 5 years. So it's all very exciting. Here she is, everyone say "Hi Shir!"


What else? I came home one day and as I was walking up our flight of stairs, I could hear a wonderful synchronisation of Eli's saxaphone playing with Sharon's electro music. Sharon is our next door neighbour and he has the full studio set up in his place- with computers and microphones and keyboards and everything... so I found Eli and Sharon jamming away in Sharon's apartment. There was a great vibe in there as both were very excited about the prospects of using this music in clubs and bars... it had taken 4 weeks of being next door neighbours for both of them to realise they could each pick a bit off the other one's talents. And it's true, they were making beautiful music: I tried to capture the moment.

Oh yeah, I went to visit my Aunty Guta and Uncle Henry (my mum's sister and her husband). They were staying at Uncle Henry's sister's place in Rishon. Uncle Henry's sister told me how she went travelling after she finished her uni degree at UNSW, the plan was to buy a round the world ticket and end up in Israel, but when she was in Israel, she was on a bus and some guy tripped her and she fell, literally into his arms, and then.. well... some people fall in love and some people literally fall into love. So she never made it back to Australia and she's been married to him ever since. aaaaaaaaawwwww
The following day, my aunty and uncle and I went to visit another relative, this time in Ashdod. Her name's Sveta, and she's Yula's dad's sister (for those that can make the connection). She didn't know I was coming so it was a big surprise for her and she almost fell. I'd told uncle Henry previously that I'd only eaten a bowl of cornflakes all day since I knew what lay ahead at Sveta's place.. and sure enough, there was heaps upon heaps of delectable Russian food. But Uncle Henry, being the big mouth that he is, actually said to Sveta, in a joking way, that Sarah here hasn't eaten all day because she knew you would have cooked so much food, so the poor woman interpreted this meaning that I was ravished and she cooked up even more food! There was no way to stop her. Here's a pic of her grandchildren, which are, well.. let's just call them my cousins, Nata and Sally. Sally is super cute. She is intelligent and sweet and cute and cheeky- just like that little boy with the glasses in Jerry Maguire, but cuter!
There were 4 languages going round the table. Sveta would say something to Aunty Guta in Russian, Aunty Guta translated to Uncle Henry into Polish, Uncle Henry would tell me in English and then maybe I'd pass it on to my cousins in Hebrew if they hadn't been paying attention... it was absolutely insane!

Other than that, on Friday arvo Eli and I made our customary trip to his mum's place near Haifa for Shabbat. We ate and slept over, (I'm beginning to think there's some sort of hidden agenda going on beween the Russian and Moroccan families on our sides-it's like some kind of unspoken competition, who can win our love more by feeding us til we reach exploding point.) On Saturday, we went to Eli's cousin's barmitzvah. This was interesting. Eli's grandma does the Moroccan 'lalalalallalala' thing with her tongue-for circumcisions, barmitzvahs and weddings. It's really loud and it sounds like a wild bird. A little hard to describe. Anyway, I was standing right next to her at the time she let it out, and boy did I get a shock! Such a big noise from such a small woman! After the service we went to eat a massive Morroccan lunch. Very loud, very yum, very nice....

Eli's mum coloured her hair bright reddy-orange. Very punk style. She bought Eli a present for his bday but didn't want me to feel left out or something so she got me a poncho. I think I've secretly always fancied having a poncho. Like Converse All Stars and overalls and clogs, I never had these fashionable items when I was growing up because I couldn't bring myself to buy them, but I still managed to be cool somehow without them. Now I own a poncho, wahoooo!!! Here I am, wearing it, and this is Eli's mum. Not the best picture, but still.

Right now, Eli's made me lunch (which is what I would call dinner... I've basically switched around my eating habbits so that what I would previously have eaten for lunch has now become dinner food (salads, cheese, bread etc) and what was dinner food has now become lunch food (rice, chicken, meat etc..) so I gotta eat basically, which is the moral of all my stories, and then I gotta go to work.
It's a hard life but somebody's gotta do it.
merry christmas and happy channukah (we are celebrating both at Wall Street)
lots of jam donuts and other oily things,
xxxx
ps- my street is like mini Venice right now, Tel Aviv gets so flooded in the winter I think I'm going to need gum boots- and not just for the fashion statement.