Saturday 21 March 2009

End of Hebrew classes and internship

It's been a while since I last wrote and a lot has happened... I've gotten through approximately six giant tubs of humous (nothing compared with my housemate Jennah's eleven - give or take 23), and I finally finished my Hebrew classes. I'd been looking forward to intensive Hebrew classes for months - the classes were five hours long, five days a week - but my expectations were dashed when I was put in the top class, and was consequently the least able (remedial) in the class. It turns out I dislike things I am bad at, which is a terrible virtue I know. But the bright side is that I totally excel in being bitter (especially about my Hebrew skills) - so every cloud has a silver lining. Hebrew highlights included our substitute teacher letting us watch Israeli TV ads, and singing along to really bad (good) cheesy songs. Check out this awesome Dana International song (Israeli transsexual - previously Yaron Cohen - who won Eurovision for Israel in 1998), which was my favourite sing-a-long fodder.

Aside from putting up with ulpan (Hebrew classes), our massive group all did Purim together - a Jewish festival that requires some serious dressing up and drinking. My outfit was the bearded lady (from the circus, duh), which was a nice change from all the sexy cats, nurses and angels that littered the streets of Tel Aviv that night. Though, if you ask me, what could be sexier than a bit of rough on a girl? After getting seriously inebriated at our flats (notable drinking head-cases included Mandy and Jess's melon vodka over-indulgence) we staggered out to Florentine - the funky, artsy-fartsy capital of Tel Aviv. It was basically a very over-sized street party and when we got down there, we were immediately split up amongst the crowd. It was so packed, I couldn't even move my elbows... until I found a stationary motorbike to sit on for an hour or so. After a while a few of us bravely pushed our way further down, where we found some cool-ish bars to hang out in. Despite wearing a sign saying 'bearded lady' in Hebrew and English, together with the special offer of one bearded kiss for 10 shekels - this bearded lady saw no action.

Strangely, Purim in Israel lasts for several days - as opposed to the one-night-only status it has in England. Therefore, for days we witnessed lots of 'she-hes' - the most interesting case being a guy called Howard who lived in our building. Howard was a very dedicated transvestite and constantly asked my opinion on whether his boobs were straight or 'even'. On one particular evening, a random girl in a pizza place we were sat in, mouthed instructions to Howard on how to adjust his assets. My friend and I were so bewildered by this that we stopped hanging around Howard for a while, concerned that the general public would assume we were both 'dressed up' as women for Purim as well. Also, Howard kept insisting that all semi-'interested' stares from random men were inspired by his presence. "Whatevs".

To mark the end of Hebrew classes and the beginning of our internships, the whole group went on a trip to the south for the weekend - Sde Boker - the final resting place of David Ben Gurion, visionary and first prime minister of Israel. We went on a few hikes, visited an unrecognised Bedouin village, played some inane games, ate a hell of a lot of humous, petted a fare amount of stray dogs and cats and generally froze our asses off in the unforgiving dessert breeze (for 'breeze', read mild tsunami). It was a great weekend and it was a little sad trekking back to Tel Aviv for my last few days before Jerusalem. In our group of 100, only 20 off us were hauling our hacky sacks to J-town, but I was still looking forward to it.

On Tuesday afternoon, the 20 off us packed up our stuff, shoved it on the bus and made our way to the holy city. We'd only have a few hours to put everything away before bed times as our internships started first thing on Wednesday. Everyone is doing very different things - one person is working for a member of 'parliament' or Knesset, in the Knesset, other people are working in the financial sector, Israeli-Palestinian dialogue groups, schools, PR firms and I'm working at the Jerusalem Post on the news desk.

It's been great so far and I've already learnt a lot. Unfortunately for the people having to decipher me, I'm having to use some Hebrew on the phone... My accent is embarrassingly bad but so far I have learnt a pretty important phrase 'efshar ledaber lemisrad haduver?' - 'Is it possible to speak to the spokesperson's office?' Which is a useful phrase after attempting to say this in a rather roundabout way:
'Hi, I'm a journalist and I'm writing a story. Is there someone I could talk to about this?'
To which the reply would be 'Talk to about what?'
'I can't explain in Hebrew, do you speak English?'
'No.'
'Ah.'
'Ah.'
'Isn't there an office I can speak to?'
'About what?'

You get the picture... I'll keep you posted on more newspaper-related tales in due course.

This is our first weekend in Jerusalem and we're slightly isolated due to where we live - up a mountain with no public transport because no buses or trains run on the sabbath... We've improvised pretty well so far by scouring the university campus we're living on (Hebrew University), forcing people to be our friends. So far, so good. As I type this, my housemate is entertaining a bunch of 18-year-olds demanding some wine from our fridge. Friendship comes at a price, apparently.