Hectic Days

be-jeeeeeeeesus I've been slack with this blog! Appologies to one and all. I've been seriously busy, perhaps more busy than I've ever been before in my life, but I'm not complaining because it's all good and it's been 'fun busy' and I will try now to re-cap what I can remember of it...

So, in the last 3 weeks or so, we have become closer with our buddies Tzvika and Pini and we see them and hang out together a lot. This has a lot to do with the fact that: we live 10 doors down the road from each other; that I keep bumping into them at Wall Street; that Pini is studying film and has a collection of fantastic DVD's which he lends us (I finally watched A Clockwork Orange which has been on my 'must see' list for years now and which I have persisently forgotten about every time I've gone to hire a movie)... but it may also have something to do with the new love affair I have begun with Churchhill. Unbeknowst to me til now, I can actually feel love for dogs. Well, this dog at least. We've started a work-out routine. I take him for walks several times a week, or, more accurately, he takes me for walks, as I spend most my time running after his tiny ass saving him from traffic and bigger dogs. He's about 4 months old and has no street sense and no common sense whatsoever, but he has unlimited energy and boundless love and affection- especially for me for some reason. I actually taught him how to fetch sticks! My cat never impressed me to this extent!

Anyway, in addition to hanging out with boys and dogs, Yula's Israel program came to an end so I had a cohort of Aussies which I became responsible for to show them a good time around Tel Aviv. We had a few big nights, going out to bars in a ridiculous grp of about 10 people... It's a small world because Shir joined us and it was because she was hanging out with her friend from Melbourne who she'd met at Habonim (youth movement) camps about 7 yrs ago, and this girl was on the program so that's how we all met up randomly. In addition to this, a girl from Sydney called Ilona was also on the program and Ilona and I met the first time when we started at ticketmaster7 together over 2 years ago! Here's some evidence of a good night had by all-
The nightlife in Tel Aviv is great, and it's all within walking distance from me. Our tiny apartment once again was converted into a hostel and we regularly had 2-3 people stay over at a time. Last Friday we had 10 people over for Shabbat dinner which was awesome. This included our neighbours and also a random Druzic guy who Eli met whilst security guaurding (is that a verb??) What is Druzic I hear some of you ask? Well, it's a faith, and a religion and a people- a very interesting people at that. Extremely secretive. They're sort of Arabs, but not Arabs, some would say they are sort of Muslim, but they're not Muslim, and there's only about 1 million of them in the world. Either way, whoever they are, they make excellent food. And in fact our guest brought us some delicious dessert made of coconut and jelly and rose and I don't know what else was in there... Educate yourselves about these interesting people at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druze

Speaking of great foods, Jordana went to Sinai for a few days and came back with Sachlav mixture. Sachlav is a drink best drunk warm, it's milky based and has coconut, flour, pinenuts, sometimes banana or chocolate or rose, other kinds of nuts mixed inside.. it's very special. Apart from sachlav, Eli treated Jordana and I by cooking up his most excellent shakshooka- a Morroccan dish which is tomato based and eaten best hot with eggs and chilli and bread. Mmmmmmmmm.... I've also tasted the most amazing teas in my life! I made friends with a guy called Yossi who works on rechov Levinsky (for those who know it) in a spice shop. There's a whole strip of these shops which basically all sell exactly the same thing as the next: spices, herbs, teas, dried fruits, nuts, seeds, dates etc...

So Yossi sold me paprika and sultanas one day, and then noticed that I had a bit of a cold and insisted on making me his 'special' tea. I declined, so he gave me a handful of dates and nuts instead for the road. He dabbles in homeopathy so he told me walnuts are the best for a cold. Every time I walk past he gives me dates. It's funny, I am given bread, dates, borekas, fresh juice and the occasional beer for free from 5 respective places. Haha, have I settled in or what? I don't think I'm given anything in Sydney! Anyway, the other day he made me some strange concoction of a little bit of this and a little bit of that, a sprinkle of this and a few drops of this and a squeeze of that- he wouldn't tell me what he put inside exactly because it's his secret 'special' tea, but I could taste rose and mint and I had pinenuts floating inside... it was an anazing taste sensation! Apart from that, Eli and I went to visit Yeffy's place 2 Fridays ago. Yeffy is the band leader of the band Eli belongs to- I wrote a bit about him in past blogs. He's Yemen. He lives in a moshav, which is like a village, and when we went to his place, there were 5 generations sitting around the table!!! I remember in Sydney being in a room with Lena, Lena's mother, grandmother and great grandmother (4 generations) and being conscious of that- which is the closest I've ever come to this. What an incredible feeling it gave me! I felt strangely envious.

Oh- I bumped into Taly Dribbin- a girl from Melbourne who I met with Lena when we were backpacking 3 years ago. We met her in Spain and then Paris and then I bumped into her in melbourne last year and then I bumped into her again in Tel Aviv at the markets last week... crazy!! What else?

oh yeah- they're doing a lot of construction in our street- right outside our place in fact. For 4 days we had problems with the water in our unit (Eli and I have a knack for finding places with water + electricity problems!) so after the night that I dragged about 10 people to my favourite Indian restaurant and then had 3 people sleep over, we woke up the next morning wth no water- which meant no toilet. Disaster. My neighbour's shower came in handy, as did the exclusive gym next door to Wall Street to which my manager is a VIP member. With the approval of my manager, in between classes I was able to steal away with a hot shower, 2 hot towels, a warming/drying presser maching thingy which warmed my underpants, lovely shampoo and conditioner at my disposal, followed my a hair dryer and body moisturising lotion. I can tell you, showered teachers are happy teachers. I began to think the construction in my street perhaps wasn't so bad afterall. Unfortunately all the problems have now been fixed, so now I have no excuse to turn up to work unshowered. :-)

Oh yeah, speaking of work- we were supposed to have a big staff meeting last Tuesday night. So we all turned up to the conference room as we were meant to. And our boss (the one with the gym membership) told us to get into groups of 4 and head down to the taxi rank and tell the cab driver 'East Restaurant'. So having no idea what to expect, we did as we were told and ended up at a really stylish, modern, gourmet Asian restaurant/lounge/bar. We were surprised to learn that there was in fact going to be no meeting and we were getting together instead just to eat dinner and drink and be rewarded for a great 2005 and a good start to 2006... so we ate a 6 course meal and we drank shamelessly til the weeee hours and then our cab rides home were also paid for. Have I mentioned that I love my job already??

I took the last 2 days off of work as I had a cold. Eli's also sick. It was bound to happen and I blame the Australian cohort entirely- everyone was sick. Jord's still sick. Yula has pneumonia for goodness sakes! (Yula's on the plane on her way home as I type this actually) So I got to spend time with Jord which was super. The quote of the day today was:

"In Israel, you're set. Everywhere's a rubbish bin; everywhere's a toilet; everywhere's an ashtray and everywhere's a parking spot!"

Last night we went for dinner to Shelly's parent's place. Eli and I met Shelly in Sydney last year. The connection was: Shelly's mum is very good friends with a cousin of Eli's. For those who know, Shelly's boyfriend is Ran. Ran's mum and Shelly's mum are also best friends. It's a small world. So both of them were in Sydney last year so some of you met them. They were also travelling with a third guy, Rotem. So last night, Eli, Jord and I went to Shelly's, and Ran was there as was his mother. After an excellent dinner the 5 of us went out to a house party as it was Rotem's birthday. EVERYONE smokes in Israel. It's hard to comprehend that it's a developed country, almost 'modern', with groundbreaking medical research and everything, and yet- there is an abundance of cigarette advertisements and absolutely no effort on the part of the government to restrict the selling of cigarettes to children or to up the price on packs. They're dirt cheap and everyone smokes everywhere (including offices and other such public places like post offices and shopping centres and furniture and clothes shops and all restaurants- no such thing as 'smoking sections' yet in Israel... even the bucthers cut meat in the markets with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths.) So what was really interesting about last night was that Shelly's parents are extremely liberal, and since the age of 14, she has been allowed to smoke with her parents inside the house. So now, the whole family, including her 16 year old brother, smoke together around the table. It seems so strange to see a father hand his son an ashtray and light his cigarette for him. It took a while for Jord and I to get used to this...and then to be passing around the table Shelly's photos from her trip,including ones of her topless with Ran at a beach, and her parents were totally fine with it?! Hello??

Anyway, in other news, yes, Hamas won the Palestinian election last week. We shall see what will become of this... Until next time.. Love and peace
xxx
Sarah

Bringing in 2006

I HAVE PUT NEW PHOTOS UP: CHECK THEM OUT at
Wow, has it been go-go-go over the last 2 weeks or so! If anyone thinks all I do is work and party my life away in Israel, well... you wouldn't be so far away from the truth.

First thing's first: Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a great NYE wherever they were and whatever they were doing, and I wish everyone a happy and successful year ahead. New Years isn't taken that seriously here in Israel, and in fact, for some bizarre reason it's known as Sylvester... so my Sylvester was pretty good.

Celebrations started early when, on the 29th of Dec, Wall Street kicked off the festive season with a Christmas/Channukah/New Years Salsa party. We lit the Channukiah, we decked the place out in Christmassy decorations and got professional Salsa dancers (who also happen to be our students) come and entertain us and dance with us. It was a great party. I've decided I love being paid to party. In fact there is nothing cooler. Here's a photo of Carl, my very cool manager,(next to me) and some of us teachers (including our 1 and only male teacher who is the BIGGEST gossiper and drama queen out of all of us 13 ladies!)-->

Ok so mine and Eli's place has become a mini hostel, which has been a lot of fun. But it's also meant I haven't had any time to do emails or blogs or some other domestic chores which desperately need attending to. In our spare time, Eli and I have begun to play basketball at the courts around the corner from our place (I feel like I'm constantly writing 'around the corner from our place', but I swear it's true, everything literally is around the corner!)

Anyway, on Friday December the 30th, Leanne and her bro arrived in Tel Aviv. For those who don't know, Leanne is my pal from Sydney. She was in Israel with her fam to celebrate the unveiling of a plaque dedicated in honour of her great grandfather who was one of the founders of Jaffa (the old part of Tel Aviv town) during the late 1800's. Cool. So I finished work that day and went to meet them at central station and walk them back through the dodgy streets of Tel Aviv to my place in sweet sweet Florentine, where the mice roam the streets for food and the cats roam the streets for mice... That Friday we had 6 guests over for dinner and Eli and I cooked up a storm. Eli's best friend Tal, and his wife, Dania, came over for dinner too.

After dinner, and after Tal and Dania went home, the 4 of us went roaming around our neighbourhood and chanced upon lots of parties. We have a lot of run-down and unused warehouses and garages around the area and there were heaps of mini doofs going on inside these that we kept stumbling into ... Fridays aren't usually like this, it's just because it was December 30th, and the next day was a Saturday so no one works... so people were celebrating Sylvester 1 night early as opposed to going all out on Saturday night and having to go to work on Sunday hung over (as New Years Day is not a recognised holiday here). Clever calculating Israelis.

So we boogied on down at the Rasta Bar. Here we picked up some flyer for a NYE party for the following night.. it said free street party.. 'party til the police break it up'. At this stage we still didn't have solid NYE plans. In fact, by 11pm on Dec 31st, we still didn't have solid NYE plans. We were weighing up several options. In the end, we phoned the number on the flyer and found out the address of the party. Oh, I forgot to mention I got an excellent and surprising phonecall from a very drunken Lena in Japan (Thanks honey!) Anyway, we infused a Pomella with vodka and the night (obviously) got off to a late start. (Pomella by the way is a big green fruit, the size of a honey melon, the texture of an orange and the taste of a mixture between a lime and a grapefruit). We literally stepped outside our building onto the street and midnight struck, and the night began. We caught a taxi to the party, which ended up being really close to the Azrieli, where Eli and I work. This is the Azrieli by the way, just so you can get an idea where I spend most of my days here in this holy land: We found ourselves at a massive psy-trance rave in an underground carpark belonging to a dilapidated building/construction site in the middle of the city. Amazing DJ's. Crazy atmosphere. Quite dark (literally... it was hard to see), and best of all- it was free!

After we had enough of the rave, we headed home. We came across a huge street party going on next to our place (yes, just around the corner in fact). Musicians had set up right infront of a shop and hundreds of people were dancing in the streets. One guy climbed a tree and was singing at the top of his lungs. There was a very impressive fire twirler and some very saucy dancing. Eli of course ran home to get his sax so he that he could join in the fun. I bumped into Sharon (my neighbour), his girlfriend and some of their friends. The party was going off and every time a car would try and drive through, everyone would part and dance around the car and offer the driver cigarettes and drinks... it was so funny! Alhough I've never been to Brazil, I felt I'd been strangely transported there.

We got home at 4:30am exhausted. So, all in all, my Sylvester was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I had to work the next day- which wasn't so bad. I had a lesson where my students wanted to know how to say 'drunk' in different ways, like maybe off drugs or something else... so I wrote up on the glass 'drunk, high, stoned, smashed, toasted, off his rocker, off his trolley, off his nut, wasted, etc...' Later that day, we had a staff meeting in this room and I'd forgotten to rub off this vocab. Carl, my boss, stopped mid-sentence as he caught sight of what was written on the wall and said "alright, who's the responsible one for teaching our students this vocab?" and I said "oh, that was me" and Carl goes, "well that's all very good, but you left out 'shicker'. If you're going to teach a unit of vocab, teach it thoroughly", which I thought was pretty funny, but then I said "I didn't want to teach the students vocab which no one these days uses anymore" and Carl was utterly shocked that in fact no one uses this term anymore.. (fair enough, he moved to Israel from London 12 years ago and isn't really in with the lingo) and the staff meeting digressed onto a different tangent. haha :-)

On Jan 1st, my buddy from Melbourne, David Schenkel, arrived in Tel Aviv. That night, we hung out at the port with Yula's program. For those who need to be filled in, my cousin Yula is leading a tour program of Australian 22-25yr olds around Israel for 3 weeks. Included in this program is noneother than my favourites, Jordy and Grant. So Eli, Schenkel and I got to meet up with everyone and chill out at a bar. After that we went back to their hotel where we broke rule No.1: No guests allowed in the hotel room. Woopsies :-)

It was great to see some more familiar faces. Even though I'm far away, I feel like I'm right at home here. Eli entertained everyone as he just couldn't get Schenkel's name right. He called him 'Shnekel' which amused everyone to no end, and then decided, from now on, his name would simply be 'Shekel'. In fact, the currency here is known as NIS, which stands for the New Israeli Shekel, so Eli decided even better, he would officially name Schenkel 'The New Israeli Shekel', and it has stuck ever since. The 2 of them got along famously, bonding over music and the like. They had a jamming session together with Sharon next door.

I met up with the program again after work the next day, quite spontaneously. I had an hour to hang around the Azrieli with them, so Jord and I headed straight to the supermarket. Overseas supermarkets rock. You can learn so much about a culture just by wandering through them.

Anyway, on Jan 3rd, Leanne came back so then I had Leanne and Shekel stay over for a couple of nights. We went to a cool Indian place to eat dinner, where you can take as much food as you like and pay as much as you want. We also went for a few drinks. Alcohol here is quite expensive but in that Indian place, they don't measure out the shots, so even though you pay 30shekel for a vodka and lemon juice...(a bit less than $10) it comes in a big glass and you get approximately 1/3 of the glass filled with vodka (perhaps 3 shots worth) so in fact, it's not so bad afterall.

Annie and Shekel are the 2 biggest chatterboxes I ever met in my life. And I mean this in only a good way. Their constant chattering away is very soothing, I quite enjoy it. They just don't stop. I've sent them on their merry way to Petra, Jordan. Leanne should be coming back to stay at my place tonight. Yay!

What else??? Ahh... we've made friends witha bunch of 4 guys who live in our street 10 doors down. Let's call them Israeli boy group C for simple sake ;). We hung out at their place the other night, and then we invited them back to our place for Shabbat dinner on Friday. They are hilarious. Only one of them can speak English as he was living in the states for the last 8 months, but the rest are crap. So crap in fact, thet we realised on Friday night that 2 of them attend Wall Street at the Azrieli and I'm going to be their teacher! Small world. Here they are: the 2 on the left are my students to be, and they are the funniest. Tzvika and Pini.

In other news, prime minister Ariel Sharon is about to cark it. There are mixed feelings about this news. The next few weeks should be very interesting. He has been the most controversial PM Israel's ever had. He was supposed to die on 3 separate occassions (he survived 2 bullet wounds) and he is known here as 'the tank'. He's had a pretty interesting life actually (the newspapers here are a little early with the obituaries.. the poor guy hasn't even died yet and I've already read his biography. No time wasting in Israel I tell you...) Anyway, in Wall Street, just like at my place in Coogee when my grandpa is over- the rule is "no politics". Once you get Israelis started you see, there's no turning back. So we'll leave it at that.

Well that just about brings me to an end. I hope you've all enjoyed this update. Sorry if your eyes are square by now. I wish I could write more often and give you smaller chunks to deal with at a time, but I'm unfortunately restricted with time.

Lotsa kudos
xxx
sarah