Pants and Friend

Sorry I haven't written anything in a while – I've been really busy and I'm very sorry about that.

I'll go back in time: The last Friday of Ulpan, we went to Tel Aviv and the old city of Jaffa (Yafo in Hebrew). It was extremely hot so the sea breeze was nice. The most exciting thing to write about the Tel Aviv trip was my trip to the shook (a marketplace) where I bought “mihnaseh dagim” (which means fisherman pants, originally coming from Thailand). I had wanted these particular pants for a long time and was thrilled for the rest of the day. A photo is attached.

The last time that I went to Chabad, I saw something I had never seen before in services: During one of the final prayers, the men actually leaned over and spat on the tile floor, their shoes rubbing their saliva so it disappears. Needless to say, I was a bit shocked. It turns out that in the prayer, something is mentioned about other people or bad people or something like that, so they “cleanse” their mouths before they continue reading the prayer. The next time I say that prayer, I'm not spitting.

Before I continue, I must acknowledge someone (partially because I think they deserve it, partially because he asked). My best friend this summer was one of my flatmates, Daniel, an economics major from Denmark. I could almost always depend on him if I ever wanted to go out to town and he was really useful for Hebrew (well, sometimes), as well as entertaining with his anecdotes. It's good to know that if I happen to ever be in Denmark for whatever reason, I'll have a place to stay.

I feel like the junior of summer session. When the second Ulpan session started, I was one of the people staying from the first session and people looked up to me to help them find bus routs, where to eat, translate and interpret Hebrew to English, etc. Now, for Study Tour, I have the same responsibilities, though to a much smaller crowd (going from 280 students in the second Ulpan to 20 in Study Tour).

Observations:

Please forgive me if I repeat myself from earlier blogs.

1. In Haifa, as well as many other parts of the country, people don't live in houses, but rather some sort of communal living unit. The most common form of this is the apartment building, many of which are simply huge. I have only found two areas in Haifa where this not applicable and I will address one of these communities in my next blog.

2. Many eating establishments, homes, etc., have the bathroom sinks in a separate room or completely away from the restroom altogether. This is because many religious Jews say a blessing while ritually washing their hands before eating bread. Because the blessing has “God's” name in it, it is not appropriate to be said in the bathroom so by removing the washing station, the blessing can be said.

Pictures are of me wearing the fisherman pants and Daniel and me.

I hope to have another blog up soon as I still have more to talk about up 'till now.

-AZ