Mondays and Tuesdays are just really long for me. Yesterday I had seven hours of classes, another 3 hours of homework and somewhere in between I found time for two other activit ies: First of all, my volunteer program 'began' last night. I will be tutoring young Ethiopian olim in English. We were supposed to go to meet the kids last night. We drove to Kiryat Chaim (a low income suburb of Haifa) to a community center where we were meeting them. We got about 5 minutes of face time before they all left, and then we had 2 hours to sit around and do nothing before the bus came back to pick us all up. What an absolute waste of time. I'm usually pretty comfortable with minimal levels of organization, but this was total disorganization.
As frustrating as that was, I had the opportunity to do something fun that I never EVER considered doing in Israel. An Israeli friend of mine is a baseball fan, and he borrowed 2 gloves and a baseball from his younger brother. We played catch! Just like in the front yard with my dad, or back in Champaign on the quad. Such a merging of two of my greatest passions (baseball and Israel) I had never thought possible.
Rina is loading us with more Arabic homework than I can believe. I'm picking it up quickly, which is good, but I also need time for my other classes and a little time to relax during the week. We had 2 hours last night, and she gave us about 3 for an encore tonight. My sourpuss countenance didn't last long though. The student union was handing out cotton candy on the main pedestrian walkway between the dorms and the school buildings! I was thoroughly enjoying this childhood pleasure when one of the Israelis told me what cotton candy is called in Hebrew: grandmother's hair (שערות סבתה.) It's a revolting image, and the cotton candy became immediately became less appealing. This gave me an idea.
What if the solution to America's weight problem is giving horrible names to otherwise alluring junk food? Could this work? Would people really be less inclined to eat something that they know tastes good if it had a vile name? Of course being the amateur scientist that I am, I needed to test this hypothesis. We're going to go with something that is universally believed to have no health benefits whatsoever: soda-pop. People argue about whether to call it 'soda' or 'pop' but I'm dispensing with both of these terms. From now on, the only phrase you'll see in this space is "roadkill juice."
Who wants a cold bottle of roadkill juice?!Here's what I need from you: Tell me if this is having any effect at all. For my college-age readers: do you find yourselves more likely to take the vodka straight instead of mixing it with roadkill juice? For my fellow KS members: are there fewer roadkill juice rewards caps available for me at the end of a kiddush lunch? Don't tell me now. Assess after a few months of random reinforcement from this page.
I want to close today's entry on a serious note. Today is an international solidarity day for Israel's 3 kidnapped soldiers: Gilad Shalit, being held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev who are being held by Hizbollah, captured in the cross border attack that provoked the Second Lebanon War. Whether you are participating in an organized program or not, please take a few moments today to think of them, or pray for them if you are inclined to do so, that we will not forget them. Hopefully soon they will come home.
No comments:
Post a Comment