The Best Silvester Day Ever!

Little did this American son know, but much of the world refers to New Years Eve as "Silvester Day", in honor of Saint Silvester, a Catholic Pope from the third century C.E. It's mainly a European custom, but Israelis have adopted it. Oh yeah, and the dude was apparently virulently anti-Semitic. How quaint. The party got started at noon with my Rabbinic Literature exam! I didn't really know what he wanted from us when I walked in the door, and my feelings haven't changed much the day after the test. It was just one of those exams. I'll keep you abreast of my grades as they roll in of course.

Instead of going to the community center for our normal volunteering project, we celebrated the new year and the last meeting of the semester by going bowling with the kids at the mall in Lev HaMifratz. It was a blast. The bowling alley looked like any alley you would expect to see in the U.S., but as always there were some key differences. One in particular that caught my eye was the claw machine. The prizes weren't dolls or toys or anything like that. Each prize was a pack of cigarettes with a 20 shekel bill taped to the outside! I'd like to make a joke about this, but honestly it is simply a sad reflection of today's Israeli society.

Me with Amit, one of my tutees and a "checkers" hustler. I got whupped by a 12 year old.

I played my usual uninspired round of bowling, checking out somewhere in the mid 80's, but I still managed to win a free round of bowling when I bowled a strike during the special 6th frame. I gave it to one of the kids, since he'll get more use out of it than I would have. We all gathered for pizza afterwards and then had to bounce back to campus so the kids could go home.

Students and tutors chilling at the bowling alley.

I came back for a little pre party with some of the boys on campus, and then a bunch of us went over to the Hungarian's apartment for a new years party/birthday party for Anna. It was a nice, chill get together with some great homemade food and a nice mix of people. We toasted the new year at midnight with champagne and watched fireworks explode over Wadi Nisnas from their living room windows.

I called it a night early and was home by 1 A.M. on account of this still being finals week. I took my "Terrorism and Responses" exam this afternoon - piece of cake. Tomorrow's Arabic exam will be another story. There is just a massive amount of material and it all gets mixed together in what my professor benignly calls a 'salad.' To me, it's more like mixing cold medicine with alcohol. I'm not ready to go yet but I'll be putting in some heavy study hours tonight. Wish me luck!

0-0

This is the final score of last night's Maccabi Haifa - Beitar Jerusalem game. And that is wrong. Games should not end without a single score. They just should not. It's an affront to the concept of competition, and it's the reason this game will never catch on in the United States. It could have ended differently, and it should have. M. Haifa had their chances. There was a direct penalty kick that missed the goal completely. Then there was the goal that was called back on a foul (or "alleged" foul according to Menachem.) In the end it made no difference. What a total waste.

Haifa fans pack Kiryat Eliezer Stadium, prepare to kiss their sisters.

Kiryat Eliezer is much nicer than that dump in Netanya. They have a scoreboard and more than twice as much seating than at M. Netanya's stadium. Of course its the same whackos here, and in far greater numbers. This place was rocking. Beitar Jerusalem is Haifa's arch nemesis. Both teams have had recent success, including championship seasons, and they are the two richest and most popular teams in the country. This situation has spawned an intense and hostile rivalry between the opposing fan bases. The Haifa fans were chanting "Jerusalem on the dick" (it rhymes in Hebrew.) Beitar fans responded with chants of "we will fuck your mothers." Wholesome family entertainment.

The Premier League reminds fans that violence and racism set a poor example.

Of course there was no need for brawling with no winner. Rather the atmosphere was significantly tamer on the way out of the stadium than it was during the game. Getting home was an ordeal too. We waited for nearly an hour for a bus before finally breaking down and taking a cab home. I swear, Egged is less reliable than the CTA. It gets pretty frustrating. Our cabbie was easily the worst driver I've encountered in Israel too. I negotiated a price with him before we got in, so apparently he had no incentive to drive slowly. There is a road that winds up the mountain towards the University, and the speed limit is 70 KM/H. He was going 100, and weaving in and out of lanes like he had a death wish. I was thrilled to arrive back home in one piece.

My cabbie, B.D. Joe

Today was a very long day. 7 hours of class, plus my volunteer project this evening. I finally really got underway. My tutee is a 17 year old Ethiopian girl named Macey, who speaks almost no English. This is of course great practice for my Hebrew, but my goal is help her learn some English. Now that I know the situation I can start prepping for the tutoring session on the weekends. I'm not getting a curriculum or even materials from the University or the program, so I'll write my own exercises. No hassle there, it will afford me the kind of freedom that I crave in these situations.

Soapathy

When I get really busy or really tired, the first thing that I forgo is regular showers. It's not something I'm proud of but it's just how it is with me. As it stands now, I haven't showered since Sunday morning. I intended to get clean this morning, but instead I snoozed my alarm three times, and then there was only time for a quick bite to eat before I left for my 8 AM Hebrew ulpan class. I do plan on grabbing a shower this afternoon before "Terrorism and Responses."

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.