Endings and beginnings (again)

I didn't finish summing up last time, and as usual my "get back to you next week" turned into a fortnight... I'm blaming the ridiculous scorching weather (the tan lines are more than disturbing, and I'm pretty sure my swimming costume marks glow in the dark, though I've yet to find a nudist nightclub here that wouldn't involve me being forcibly contorted around a poll) and I'm also blaming my five-hour long Hebrew classes that begin at 8.15am and end with me in a gibbering heap, audibly reciting verb forms to myself, without blinking for minutes on end.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, thousands of thrilling things happened before I hauled myself back into a classroom... At the beginning of July, my group had a rather emotional closing seminar to sum up the past five months, discussing what we'd learnt and loathed, and it was also a good opportunity to see who'd been brainwashed into staying out here = a lot. I guess "brainwashing" is a little strong, but there was a lot of emotive and transformative phrases bouncing gleefully around the room, like "I feel like I've come home", "I'm a changed person in Israel", "I never want to leave" and "everyone is my brother and sister here" - which may, in another life, give me goodbumps if I wasn't busy being so crushingly cynical in this one.

Part of the seminar featured a talent show, which I and three other girls wrote and presented. We got the group to nominate people they'd like to see compete for the title "Mr and Ms Career Israel 2009", which required them to go through a number of treacherous but rigorous rounds to demonstrate how much they'd learnt about Israel and Israelis throughout their time here. These rounds, determined by a certified academic board, included fitting as much Bisli (Israeli crisps) in your mouth as possible and saying weird and wonderful Israeli-themed sentences in English but with an Israeli accent - such as: "You’re asking if my falafel balls are healthy? They’re made of chickpeas and after I cooked them, I dropped them in floor cleaner. Nothing gets your heart rate moving as healthily as bleach" (a reference to all the dodgy falafel stands that are curiously absent from the department of sanitation's records) and "Are my trousers too tight? I’m only asking because my testicles feel like they’re being used as stress balls by Michael Jackson’s life insurance company" (a nod to the millions of pairs of tight trousers currently on sale in mainstream Israeli men's shops).

Between rounds, various members entertained the group with their juggling, singing, dancing, drumming and comedy, and the organizing committee also presented awards as voted for by the whole group - including "best-looking", "most athletic" and "best fictional couple". I won "most intelligent" but would like to stress (though not too much, obviously) that many of the Americans are fooled by my apparently "posh"-sounding British accent. Nonetheless, I'm not one to argue with the wisdom of the masses. It's proven itself many times over the years if we skip over the minor incidents occuring in historical "episodes" such Nazi Germany.

The day after the seminar's end, I completed my last day at The Jerusalem Post. I'd been working on a feature for a few weeks which I'd filed a few days earlier, so my last day was spent feeding chocolates and cake to the editorial team and writing a small news story. The day's highlight was easily receiving a white Jerusalem Post t-shirt, which I shall wear with pride forevermore. It was definitely a challenging five months at the Post, but worth every minute (especially the minutes filled with my bad Hebrew grammar and laughable wannabe accent...)

After finishing work, I took a few days to do touristy things I hadn't managed to fit in. Ticked off my to-do list were: The temple mount in the old city of Jerusalem, the arty "Museum on the Seam", the old city of Caesaria (where I met (the projections of) King Herod and Rabbi Akiva), the Marc Chagall windows at Ein Kerem in western Jerusalem.

The next challenge was to move to Tel Aviv... very stressful but happily the tension was kept at bay because Jennah's boyfriend, Guy, drove us and our mountains of crap in his car. I have no idea how he managed it and I'm pretty sure the amount of sheer stuff compromised our air supply, but we all arrived in tact. Once becoming a fully-fledged Tel Aviv-ian, the next week or so was filled with sombre goodbye "parties" as a lot of the group were preparing to return to their homelands. The last parties concluded last week, and it dawned on us that we'd been saying "goodbye" for ten days and that the same frickin' people had attended every single party.

For the past week I have been attending Hebrew classes or "ulpan" (which literally means "studio"), and it's hard work. Tough because I haven't been in a classroom environment for two years and five hours is a long time to concentrate when you're prone to getting distracted by shiny things. Our first teacher, Leah, was very laid back and amusing, but she left after a week (apparently this was planned) and our new teacher, Sara, is very scary. She gets particularly frightening while making the class perform oral verb structuring. I won't get into the nitty gritty as you'll start to feel that life has very little to offer, but you get the idea. She also peppers her lessons (all in Hebrew only) with Jewish religious content, (perhaps because she is an orthodox Jew), and a healthy dose of guilt-trips about people not arriving on time. I'm signed up for another three weeks, and I just hope that by then I haven't figured out a way to craft a noose out of my multi-coloured biro collection.

That's a bit of a bleak way to end a blog entry, isn't it? So here's a happier final thought - if you times the number of students in my ulpan class (40) by the number of times we went over the verb structure "nifal" today (a lot), the number you'll be left with is still lower than the number of kilos worth of stuff I have to transport back to Blighty. Happier final thought for you that is. Now where HAVE those biros gone?