so so so much to tell!

Well, I'm gonna write fast, so I'm apologizing now for spelling errors.
I started sherut leumi (national service) on Monday. It's been a bit of an intense start but I think things have started to calm down a tad.

On Sunday morning I was at the army recruitment office in Tel Hashomer and got my exemption taken care of. They are going to send it to me in the mail in a few weeks they said. A part of me still wishes to be in the army, but I know that my place really is here. I'm doing much more good than I could be doing in the army.

I arrived in Tzur Hadassa late Sunday night and started work the next morning. I was placed in a gan (kindergarten) in the first half of the day. Gan starts at 8 in the morning and ends at 1:30. Kids eat at 10 and I usually eat with them too. It's a lot of fun for me. Sometimes that actually worries me. I'm such a little kid! Haha, I come in to gan and start playing with all the toys and stuff. The kids love me, too, which is really lucky for me because they just met me. But it's really cool.

I spent shabbat in Tzur Hadassa and ate shabbat meals with new people. Shul was also cool. Friday night I ate with a young couple that came from NY and England. My day meal was with the family of a girl that is really close to me in a gan that I'm in. This girl LOVES me! And everyone keeps saying how it's so special because this little girl doesn't really talk to a lot of people and stuff. It is pretty strange. We are very good friends. She will speak to me and pull me around everywhere but won't say a word to most other people outside her family. I don't even know what to think about that one.

sherut leumi is about serving the country as a civilian. Benefits are similar to the army, but not as great. I live with 2 girls, Mimi and Lia, in an apartment here and we all sleep in the same room and share one washroom. we have a nice TV with cable that I wish wasn't there, and a small crazy fridge that gives off electrical currents when you touch the handle. We have a small microwave, a grill cheese maker and a toaster oven, too.
Mimi is from Chashmonaim and speaks english, too. Her family made aliyah from Silverspring MD when she was three years old, so communication between us is easier. She also helps translate words for me and Lia. Mimi runs the Bnei Akiva here and I'm supposed to help her out because she has a lot of work since it's new and she's swamped with work. She's been working in a gan in the mornings but it going to start helping in school with Lia now too. Only 2 or 3 days a week though.
Lia is from Rosh Haayin and Yemenite. With a very different style than Mimi, she's just as nice. She just told me this shabbat that she didn't even know that Yemenite matzah is different. So Being a half-breed (half yemenite half ashkenaz) I think it's funny that I'm going to educate her about yemenite pesach. Lia works with the kida at risk here in Tzur hadassa and works in the elemetary school. I think she's also helping kids with difficulties one-on-one.
As far as my job, I'm sort of still figuring it all out. I don't have a set schedule with gan yet. I'm going to be in a different gan every day. I think I knopw where I will be Sundays and Thursdays and maybe Mondays, but nothing is really set in stone yet. Basically the kindergatens here need a lot of help so I"m just going to help wherever is most needed. Afternoons I'm not sure what I will be doing, but I've been hanging out a bit with the teens here, and the ones I spent time with were a lot of fun. Right now I'm working on starting a volunteer program for the Tzur Haddassa community. In order for kids to graduate high school they need a certain number of volunteer hours of community service. Kids go out of Tzur Hadassa for high school so they also end up spending those community service hours somewhere else. Schools have programs set up to help them find places to volunteer. What I'm going to be doing is setting up a program to give the kids here the chance to serve the needs in their own community. This will hopefully help them feel more connected to Tzur Hadasa since a lot of their friends from school live elsewhere.

It's been a bit rough settling in to sherut leumi but I think the initial hard beginning is over and things will run smoothly now. A lot of things still need to be set up but I'm getting settled.
My cousin from the Old City in Jerusalem helped me take all my stuff from my friend's house to my new apartment here. It was really nice of her and a HUGE help for me.

Anyway, looks like my time's up.
Tomorrow I'm going to Rishon Letziyon where I'll be spending Rosh Hashana with my savta (grandmother).
Have a sweet new year everyone!
(btw email me for my new cell # if you want to give me a call. just got it last week finally!)

This is part of the new bridge being built near the Jerusalem Central Bus Station. Not exactly Jerusalem style.

Olim Community

Since I've made aliyah two weeks ago, I've been discovering a whole new community of people in Israel. Many people live in Israel that have made aliyah and are friendly and looking to help others who made aliyah, too. Thursday night I went to Tel Aviv beach for a Nefesh B'nefesh event for young people (singles, really) where they had free beer and a lot of meeting new people. A girl I met there invited me to sleep over at her place for shabbat and have a Friday night meal with her friends. As usual it was Thursday night and I didn't really make plans yet so I went.

She lives in a nice apartment with two or three other French girls and is working as a teacher and finishing her master's degree in university. Really cool, she's also from Toronto like me! It was so nice to see what I could be like a few years down the line. Finally being in Israel I'm able to settle down and establish myself like I was never able to before. It's such a good feeling. I was waiting for this for so long.

Friday night we went to an amazing shul. Lots of young people and both Americans and Israeli. Mostly men with knitted yarmulkas. Singing was beautiful. Since being back in Israel I've been going to shul more and davening more. It's so good for my soul to be here. :)

Friday night's meal was soooo much fun! We went to eat at another girl's apartment with two other girls, so basically we were five girls sitting at a table laughing and joking and having serious conversations in between. What could be better? Something I really appreciated about the whole thing was that even though we were having a lot of fun, it didn't have the same loud immature feeling that I have gotten when I'm with younger girls. So it was just really nice. Being 20 years old, I was definitely the youngest there. My friend that I slept at was 29, and I don't remeber how old other girls were. Maybe one was 27? For dessert we sat on the couches in the living room and played taboo (after talking and laughing some more). Then in the middle of a great game, another friend who was supposed to come knocked on the door. She was with two guys that she had eaten her meal with that had walked her. So then they all sat with us and played taboo. Turned out one of the guys was in a band, and the other was actually a brother of a girl that was in my class in high school in Baltimore. Such a small world in Israel! It's like there's no way to stay anonymous there. Wow almost forgot, craziest thing ever! The friend that I slept at told me during the meal that she knows one other person with the same last name as me. So I was like, really? From France? And then she said my mom's first name.... Hahaha! Yeah ok it was weird for a few seconds. My mom was her teacher, and then she became a teacher there. Just so strange. I guess it's supposed to be cool, right? Just a little to weird for me.... (wow, something's actually too weird for me?)

Shabbat day meal I went to my friend from seminary that just got married in the winter and is living in Israel. It was so cute and really cool to see. Her and her husband make a great team in the kitchen, too. I see the difference with how she is finding the social life in Israel being that she hasn't made aliyah and is married, and how I've made aliyah and am meeting tons of people who for the most part are single. I think she will be talking to Nefesh B'nefesh soon about making aliyah.

Anyway, this past week was basically me discovering how small the world becomes when you're in Israel. Especially when you live there, you become part of a very close and warm community. Something very special and unexpected. Aliyah might be a hard thing to do but it's one of the best things to do.

Have a amazing week!