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